Are Prince Harry and Meghan Markle suing ‘South Park’ after its new episode?
Prince Harry & Meghan Markle are the latest celebrities to be put through the South Park buzzsaw. The couple was parodied in the new episode of the long-running animated series, and the response to the episode has been so notable that the possibility of legal action has been brought into the mix.
Harry & Meghan are no strangers to criticism, as many people have derided their actions since their “split” from the Royal Family. Harry was subject to a widespread critical mauling when he released his memoir, Space, and the Netflix documentary series Harry and Meghan has an underwhelming 42% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Is the South Park episode the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Are the couple going to take legal action against this particular act of mockery? Let’s investigate.
What happened in the South Park episode?
The episode in question, titled “The Worldwide Privacy Tour”, spends most of its runtime mocking the paradoxical aspects of Harry & Meghan’s celebrity. The show paints them as people who obsess over the notion of privacy, yet are constantly doing interviews and sharing their personal lives with the world (hence, the title).
Now, technically, the couple who are depicted in the episode are not Harry & Meghan. While they are formerly part of a Royal Family and bear a striking resemblance to Harry & Meghan, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker decided to make the couple hail from Canada instead of the UK.
In the episode, the fake Harry is promoting a book called Waagh, and a character at one point complains that “They have this huge jet parked in front of my house and they keep on wanting me to buy their book.” Needless to say, South Park did not go easy on the ex-Royals.
Have Harry & Meghan issued a public response?
The attention that the episode has gotten has dwarfed anything South Park has done over the last decade, so naturally, there would be the anticipation for a Harry & Meghan response.
Ironically, the first person to respond to the episode was Meghan’s estranged sister, Samatha Markle, who had nothing but kind words for its comedy. “People who want privacy don’t do that”, Samantha noted. “You live your life quietly in privacy, so it’s such hypocrisy. I think they did a brilliant job. Really.”
Eventually, a source told The Spectator that the couple had caught wind of the episode and were none too happy about it. The source claimed that Megan was “upset and overwhelmed” when he was told what occurred in South Park and refused to watch the episode herself. It was during this interview that the idea of a lawsuit was introduced. It was alleged that the couple’s legal team was looking into the episode to determine if anything could be crossing the line.
Will the celebrity couple be suing South Park?
Are the lawsuit rumors baseless or will the South Park creators eventually be brought to court for their parody? It doesn’t sound like it. Stone & Parker are no strangers to legal discourse, as the duo has been sued numerous times for their South Park material, but they claimed to have heard nothing from lawyers regarding Harry and Meghan.
This silence was seemingly confirmed by a rep for the couple, who told the New York Post that the rumors of a lawsuit were “all frankly nonsense . . . totally baseless and boring.” This is, according to some experts, the smartest way to deal with the whole situation.
U.S. celebrity publicity expert Matt Yanofsky told The Mirror that Meghan’s divisiveness is already part of her brand, but if she were to lash out at a comedic depiction, “It could impact her differently.”
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What do you think of the South Park episode? Let us know your theories in the comments.
