Prince William agreed to appear on The Graham Norton Show because he has been pulled into a battle for public attention with Prince Harry following his estranged brother’s surprise return to the UK, according to a public relations expert.
The Prince of Wales’s unprecedented chat-show appearance appears to be a response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s string of high-profile media engagements, which began with their notorious interview with Oprah Winfrey more than five years ago.
PR consultant Mark Borkowski told Our News Outlet that William appeared to be breaking with decades of royal tradition in response to Harry and Meghan’s dominance of media coverage since their dramatic return to Britain in August.
Mr Borkowski said William’s appearance on the BBC One programme, officially intended to promote the Earthshot Prize, revealed “just how angry he is about his brother”.
“When the late Queen was alive, she maintained the Royal mystique by staying above all this kind of stuff, just releasing the odd cleverly worded statement here and there,” Mr Borkowski said. He believes that approach has now shifted, adding: “It looks petulant, it looks like sibling rivalry, Cain and Abel.”
The PR expert, who has spent decades advising leading brands and high-profile figures on their public image, said William was making “a mistake” by engaging on the same terms as his brother.
He said: “It’s playing Harry at his own game and the Royals should be above that – it’s a misstep.
“As soon as you start talking about a PR war, you know you’ve lost. As simple as that.”
PR guru Mark Borkowski said Prince William’s appearance on The Graham Norton Show, ostensibly to discuss the Earthshot Prize, showed “just how angry he is about his brother”.
Mr Borkowski said William was abandoning decades of royal tradition in response to Harry and Meghan’s dominance of media coverage. William is pictured during a visit to Nottingham earlier this month.
“Sometimes in a war, the greatest impact is achieved by ignoring something. Just stay above it all.
“And I think that’s always previously been the strength of the Royal Family: say nothing, don’t complain, just carry on and do what you need to do.”
Mr Borkowski said Harry appeared “desperate” to be welcomed back into the royal fold now that he was in Britain. However, he argued that the Duke was also mishandling his media strategy and suggested that, with better advice, “we all might have been looking at Harry and Meghan in a totally different way”.
He added: “Harry’s just not very bright and it shows that he and Meghan haven’t got much wisdom at the core of their comms.
“Their whole strategy of coming back to the UK has been ‘noise, noise, noise’. But they’re still playing the same song.
“And the way for the royals, William or whoever, to counter that is just to rise above it.”
Examples of what Mr Borkowski described as this “noise” included changing their children’s school during their first week, complaining that a foreign photographer had been stalking them and giving an explosive interview to GQ.
During his appearance, William also sought to highlight his relatability, discussing his enthusiasm for Celebrity Traitors, his abandoned ambition to become a DJ and his support for Aston Villa.
William appeared on the BBC One show alongside fellow guests Cate Blanchett, Hannah Waddingham, Robert Irwin and Jorja Smith.
The much-discussed 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey was one example of the high-profile media appearances pursued by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
William’s appearance on the show, flanked by actors Cate Blanchett and Hannah Waddingham and conservationist Robert Irwin, came just two days after a bombshell GQ interview with Harry.
Harry used that platform to reopen old wounds with his family, apparently blaming William for their rift, declaring that ‘some people don’t want it to work out’.
When Harry and Meghan carried out their controversial pseudo-royal walkabout in Nottingham last week, it received global coverage with the BBC news website alone reporting the visit with a live blog of the kind normally reserved for major news.
Other royal engagements on the same day – many of which had been planned for weeks – received a fraction of the coverage Harry and Meghan’s unofficial appearance received.
Those overshadowed events included William welcoming Crown Prince Hussein and Princess Rajwa of Jordan at Windsor, King Charles hosting a party of scientists and business leaders at St James’s Palace and Princess Anne visiting a tech centre in Exeter before attending a naval dinner in Portsmouth.
Our News Outlet readers backed William’s decision to appear on The Graham Norton Show, with 71 per cent of them agreeing with the statement that it made the royals ‘more relatable’ in our online poll.
In his first ever appearance on a chat show, William largely discussed his work on the Earthshot Prize, which he set up in 2020, but he also gave glimpses into his private life.
As he took to Graham’s sofa he spoke about The Celebrity Traitors, saying: ‘I love it, the family love it. Charlotte and Louis are obsessed with it. It’s really good telly.’
He humorously added: ‘I saw Ross Kemp the day after the first episode and I couldn’t help but try – in the most appropriate way – to touch him to see what reaction I got from him. Turns out he was really jumpy!’
William spoke about what he would be if he were not set to be king, and said that he would have been a police officer or a DJ.
Kensington Palace was contacted for comment.
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