SerpApi.Org
Prince Harry appeared on two sports-themed podcasts in quick succession, giving him the chance to showcase a lighter side of his personality and echoing a media strategy Prince William has used for years.
The Duke of Sussex joined his friend James Corden to talk about Soccer on Fox after the World Cup Final on Sunday, around a week after the broadcast of his appearance on Joe Marler Will See You Now to promote his Invictus Games adaptive sports tournament.
The Prince of Wales has done several podcasts over the years through his role as patron and former president of the FA, English football’s governing body. As far back as July 2020, he was a guest on the BBC’s That Peter Crouch Podcast where he shared a curry and beer with the hosts.
Why It Matters
Podcasts have been one feature of William’s redesigned relationship with the media. The prince has increasingly favored conversational formats which afford him a chance to present a warm and accessible version of himself.
Prince Harry’s early years in America were dominated by more serious media appearances, including high-profile interviews where he criticized the royal family, such as with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
Harry’s recent media profile has often been defined by litigation, family disputes and campaigning work, whereas these appearances placed him in a setting more commonly associated with William’s lighter-touch approach to maintaining his public profile.
Prince Harry’s Podcast Appearances
Prince Harry was a guest on Fox’s After Hours with James Corden, where he joined Corden and former England soccer player Rio Ferdinand for a loose, post-World Cup conversation that mixed football analysis and comedy.
Corden teased Harry about going to Eton College, saying: “I always thought that you went to a school that was too posh for soccer.”
“Too posh to play football,” Harry said, correcting Corden. “Why are you calling it soccer?”
“Because we’re in the United States, baby,” the host said.
Harry joked about the decline in his own sporting performance: “In prep school, I was in the first team. And then I went to the bigger school, and I ended up in the E team.”
After Hours came roughly a week after the broadcast of his appearance on Joe Marler Will See You Now, hosted by a former England rugby player and Celebrity Traitors contestant.
Like Fox, the atmosphere was irreverent, complete with swearing. Asked his occupation, Harry said he was a “full-time dad, British Army veteran, Prince of England,” before settling on “Duke.” He later joked that people get it wrong when they call him ginger, insisting he was “more sort of like sunset, like auburn.”
In both appearances, Harry displayed a willingness to laugh at himself while talking about sport, service and resilience.
Prince Harry’s Previous Podcast Appearances
Harry has made podcast appearances before but less frequently about sport and often with far more serious themes, including mental health and the royal rift.
In May 2021, Harry followed his Oprah interview by appearing on Armchair Expert, where he said royal life was “a mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo.”
“There is no blame,” he said. “I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.
“It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway, so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.'”
In 2020, Harry and Meghan Markle were guests on Teenager Therapy, a joint appearance which became most famous in the media for Meghan’s statement that she had been the most trolled person in the world in 2019, which she described as “almost unsurvivable.”
In 2017, he was a guest on Bryony Gordon’s Mad World to mark 20 years since the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
“I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle,” he said.
“During those years I took up boxing, because everyone was saying boxing is good for you and it’s a really good way of letting out aggression.
“And that really saved me because I was on the verge of punching someone, so being able to punch someone who had pads was certainly easier.”
Prince William’s Podcast Appearances
Prince William’s podcast appearances have largely been rooted in sport and have offered some of the most relaxed and revealing glimpses of the future king.
His best-known appearance came on That Peter Crouch Podcast in 2020, when he discussed his lifelong support for Aston Villa and joked with the hosts about football. William joined former England striker Peter Crouch and co-hosts Tom Fordyce and Chris Stark for beer and take out, ordered to Kensington Palace from Crouch’s favorite curry house.
William joked that his son Prince George could become Aston Villa’s “all-time top goal scorer” and described seizing control of the official palace X account, then known as Twitter, to post about a soccer match.
“They deliberately keep me away from that,” he said. “I have tried a couple times, when Liverpool did that amazing semi-final against Barcelona, I grabbed hold of the Twitter thing and I just posted it. It was an amazing match, I was literally blown away by it.”
In May, Prince William discussed Aston Villa’s prospects of winning the Europa League final on TNT Sports before the match in Istanbul began, and said it was important to bring Prince George to watch a match live, although he never attended the final. When After Villa, who he supports, won the trophy he told the Claret & Blue podcast the experience was “unbelievable” if “slightly surreal.”
“I was expecting a rollercoaster, but it’s actually gone quite smoothly hasn’t it?” he added.
William also joined Princess Catherine and his aunt Princess Anne as guests on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, before the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The show is co-hosted by Mike Tindall, husband of William’s cousin Zara Tindall.
Tindall joked “I’ve seen her play beer pong,” in reference to Kate. The princess also joked about having a sporting rivalry with William: “I don’t think we’ve actually been able to finish a game of tennis,” because “it becomes a mental challenge between the two of us.” William joked: “Who can out-mental each other.”
His most recent was on New Heights, the podcast hosted by NFL brothers Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce, earlier this month, shortly before Travis married singer Taylor Swift. William talked about the World Cup, stating that “my father hates football” and added that he would only go out to America for the tournament if England made it to the final.
Prince William and Harry’s Competitive Rivalry
Harry portrayed competition over charitable causes and areas of interest as a feature of his relationship with William in his book, Spare, including their shared desire to do charitable work in Africa.
“One small problem: Willy,” he wrote. “Africa was his thing, he said. And he had the right to say this, or felt he did, because he was the Heir. It was ever in his power to veto my thing, and he had every intention of exercising, even flexing, that veto power. We’d had some real rows about it.”
During one such argument, Harry wrote that “Willy had a fit” at the suggestion they might both work in Africa. Harry quoted him saying: “Because rhinos, elephants, that’s mine!”
“It was all so obvious,” Harry wrote. “He cared less about finding his purpose or passion than about winning his lifelong competition with me.”
“I let you have veterans, why can’t you let me have African elephants and rhinos?” William said, according to the book.
Soccer, or football as it’s called in Britain, has also been William’s “thing” more than Harry’s and not only because of his role as patron of the FA. William has a team that he is known for supporting while Harry said in his book, Spare, that rugby was his favorite sport.
“Sport, I decided, would be my thing at Eton,” Harry wrote. “Sporty boys were separated into two groups: dry bobs and wet bobs. Dry bobs played cricket, football, rugby, or polo. Wet bobs rowed, sailed, or swam. I was a dry who occasionally got wet. I played every dry sport, though rugby captured my heart. Beautiful game, plus a good excuse to run into stuff very hard.”
Related Articles
