The pranksters paid four royal experts to comment on the interview three days before it was released. Photo / Josh Pieters & Archie Manners
The pranksters paid four royal experts to comment on the interview three days before it was released. Photo / Josh Pieters & Archie Manners
Four royal commentators were fooled into participating in interviews about the Sussexes tell-all chat with Oprah, despite not having seen the interview.
The prank, orchestrated by YouTube creators Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, duped the experts into agreeing to interviews about Meghan under the guise of a fake production company. They were paid appearance fees for the interviews - the amounts of which were undisclosed.
Ingrid Seward, editor of Her Majesty magazine, fell for the prank.
The Queen's former press secretary Dickie Arbiter, CNN's royal commentator Victoria Arbiter, Majesty magazine editor Ingrid Seward and commentator Richard Fitzwilliams featured in the video published on YouTube.
The experts were tricked into giving comments about the Sussexes' interview with Oprah before the conversation aired, and commented on how it went as if they had seen it. The video was titled: "We proved royal experts lie about Harry and Meghan."
The prank has since been viewed more than 900,000 times, and the YouTube creators staged the interview by telling the experts it was to air after the CBS interview was released.
She had not seen the full interview, but Seward said in the clip: "To my mind, this was an actress giving one of her great performances – from start to finish, Meghan was acting."
Fitzwilliams said it was "not a balanced interview" and accused Winfrey of being "totally sympathetic" to Meghan. He added Meghan "used extremely strong language to describe her relations with members of the royal household".
Victoria Arbiter also participated in the fake interview. Photo / Josh Pieters & Archie Manners
The prank didn't end there. Pieters and Manners asked specific questions about the Oprah interview and pretended Meghan said that she would refuse the Covid-19 vaccine and pledged her support for a donkey sanctuary. And some of the experts fell for it.
Pieters told Insider: "We gave them facts, which weren't facts, and they spoke about them as facts."
In an interview with The Guardian, he further explained the reasoning behind the prank.
"The arrangement was that the comments would be broadcast depending on what was in the interview, so nothing inappropriate would have appeared from anyone contributing," he said.
"We had by then seen two trailers. Together with the hype, it promised to be pretty toxic and define Harry and Meghan's relationship with the royal family for the foreseeable future."
Pieters and Manners are known for their high profile YouTube pranks.
In one video, they flew far-right media personality Katie Hopkins to Prague to present her with a fake award. The clip has been viewed more than million times.
