"He's so good it looks like improv. I was really impressed with that dude," Rhys Darby has said of Prince Harry's acting ability. Photo / YouTube
"He's so good it looks like improv. I was really impressed with that dude," Rhys Darby has said of Prince Harry's acting ability. Photo / YouTube
Kiwi comedian Rhys Darby has worked with some of the world's biggest celebrities. But it was the acting chops of one Prince Harry that really impressed him.
Speaking to The Hits hosts Jono and Ben on their podcast, Darby has dished on what it was really like to work with Prince Harry on an ad for the Duke's eco-travel non-profit, Travalyst, earlier this year.
Darby, who is gearing up to perform three retrospective comedy specials next month to celebrate 25 years as a comedian, told Jono and Ben that acting alongside Harry was "something different".
"[It] was just another one of these opportunities that tend to happen with me for one reason or another. Usually they want me involved in a comedy aspect. That's the only reason, let's be honest," he said of writing the script, which saw the Prince jogging through a park before being pulled up by Darby's character and given a rating for his environmental impact on New Zealand after his last visit.
"... to have Harry act alongside me - first of all, obviously, to meet him - to have him do my scripted piece ... what an actor. He completely nailed it," says Darby. "You look at what he was doing there, that was written stuff. He's so good it looks like improv. I was really impressed with that dude."
Rhys Darby wrote and acted in an ad for Prince Harry's eco-travel non-profit, Travalyst, earlier this year. Photo / YouTube
Host Ben Boyce tells Darby: "I'd be inside my head if I was around a Prince: the protocol, how to act." He asks the seasoned comedian, "Were you comfortable?"
"I've met and worked with a lot of big celebrity actors and it was different to that because there's something about the royal family," says Darby. "There's something about us here in New Zealand, under the Commonwealth, and knowing about royalty and never expecting to ever, sort of, get that close to it. There was a different feeling," he says before adding that he was glad it was Harry rather than William on the job.
"Harry's kind of the more relaxed one. He's pushed off to the side. He's pushed himself off to the side," Darby jests, referring to the Prince's decision to step down as a senior royal alongside his wife, Meghan Markle, in 2020.
"He's kind of one of the people," continues the comedian. "There was that but his manner and his poshness was still very much there. And you find yourself talking to the best of your ability when you're speaking with one as well. I was pulling stuff out of my hair, that I'd heard somewhere on The Crown or something."
Despite what may have been a fleeting attempt to sound pompous, Darby, who has made a name for himself internationally, is well known for being quintessentially Kiwi.
The podcast hosts tell the comedian: "You have your voice, it's you. And you don't seem to change that. Whether it's voicing something on The Simpsons or Jake and the Never Land Pirates or Our Flag Means Death."
Asked if he's ever been asked to play anyone other than himself, Darby says "not at all".
"The roles I get allow me to use my own voice because I think the characters I portray are unique and are either aliens or weirdos or someone from a world that no one believes in. And it always fits in for me.
"I think Taika mentioned the other day - he came across this as well, he's basically always playing his own voice. And there's only a few of us Kiwis that are doing that. You look at the entertainment business in the globe and there's thousands of Americans and thousands of English speakers, but there's not too many Kiwi accents. So we're like, let's do it. Let's put our voices in there. Let's not change them. Because we're all humans and we're all storytellers and when we close this whole thing up in a few years ... we're going to look back and go, 'Oh, remember those five voices that were different?'"
• Listen to Rhys Darby's full interview on Jono & Ben - The Podcast, below:
