Note: I’m going to publish a special post this weekend with more of my thoughts of the Eugene Levy interview of Prince William.
As I watched Eugene Levy chat with Prince William in Windsor Castle, on a dog walk, in a pub while enjoying a pint, I was struck not only by the content but also by the impact of having his first major interview since his wife and father were diagnosed with cancer be with a 78-year-old Canadian comedian on a travel show. The Reluctant Traveler may be an award-winning series in its third season on Apple TV+ but it’s hardly the show one would expect to feature such must-see royal watching.
The Prince of Wales wasn’t the only royal to appear in an exclusive interview in recent weeks. On September 14, the Guardian published its piece after joining Prince Harry on his latest visit to Ukraine, after four days in the U.K., during which he visited his father, King Charles III, for the first time since early 2024.
Prince Harry and Prince William are remarkably personal and candid in how they open up to decidedly unconventional outlets. The left-wing Guardian and The Reluctant Traveler are decidedly unconventional outlets for such exclusives, but those outside-the-box choices produced two of the most interesting royal interviews in recent years.
The Guardian interview was a risk for both sides, as it admits:
The Guardian accompanies him on the journey to the capital – something of a gamble for both sides, as Harry noted. He is suspicious of the media, and the Guardian has long been critical of the monarchy.
And over the next 36 hours, we learn a lot – big and small – about this complex, conflicted man.
Prince Harry and the Guardian’s journalist and photographer are together during the long train rides into and out of Ukraine as well as their time in Kyiv. The photos and bulk of the article may be of his trip to Ukraine, which was designed to promote the work of the Invictus Games Foundation and its focus on the recovery and rehabilitation of war veterans, yet the Guardian headlined their article by using Harry’s answer as to whether he regrets “putting his side of the story in the very public way that he has?” “My conscience is clear,” the prince responded. It’s both attention grabbing and makes it clear that this wasn’t going to be a soft read.
Meanwhile, Eugene Levy was with Prince William for three hours, along with a crew capturing every moment for a 42-minute, highly-produced episode of his travel show. Levy told Chris Ship of ITV News that no topics were off limits and that he could ask whatever he wanted. So while there was a chat about Levy’s elevation to the Companion level of the Order of Canada (Levy wears the maple leaf pin of the honour on his lapel) and that William had seen the raunchy American Pie movie series, there are no queries about William’s relationship with his brother and sister-in-law. “I had no interest in asking him about that …. it was something very delicate, and not up to me to get into it,” Levy told Ship, saying he wanted to talk about other things.
Their PR teams would have thought long and hard before committing to the projects. For Harry, it’s a way to focus on one initiative — the Invictus Games – that has escaped the controversies that have enveloped so many of his other ventures, including Sentebale, his memoir, and his lawsuits. The work that Invictus is doing in Ukraine is genuinely life changing with Harry getting a lot of credit.
“Ordinary people know who he is. We honestly didn’t know he had become such a celebrity,” Olga Rudnieva, the founder of the Superhumans trauma centre in Lviv told the Guardian. “I think Prince Harry coming here is a symbol of victory and power. People look at him and his military experience and they see he is not afraid to come to Ukraine. It is so important that he came.”
