Royal interview

Royal Interview – nicely done

The royal interview was, for us spin doctors and media trainers, a highlight last week.  Prince Harry and fiancée Meghan Markle faced respectful but very personal questioning from the BBC’s Mishal Husain; and they handled it with aplomb.

The couple appeared natural, shared bits of their story but never looked uncomfortable. I may be wrong but I am guessing a fair amount of work went into that, if not formally then informally.

As the Daily Telegraph noted:

‘A divorced, mixed race, Hollywood actress who attended a Roman Catholic school is to marry the son of the next King. Such a sentence simply could not have been written a generation ago.’

So many taboos and traditions have been swept away by this engagement that the handling of the interview is probably rather unimportant. But perhaps it did illustrate how this generation of royals are handling the media differently and with much more professionalism than in the past.

Royal interview – professional approach to the personal

This was an interview that perfectly illustrates a professional approach to the personal.

Any spin doctor advising on such an important and sensitive interview would say: give away enough to tell the narrative you want to tell, don’t lie but artfully steer away from anything you don’t want to share. Asked about some of the coverage of the relationship Markle said it was ‘disheartening’ and ‘discriminatory’. But she said this with disappointment rather than rancor. Call me cynical but I am pretty sure ‘disheartening’ and ‘discriminatory’ were prepared lines – and even the tone was carefully chosen. I could be wrong, she might just be a natural but neither are words that most people use every day. They are a good choice because they are suitably negative but not inflammatory. Just what was needed.

Royal interview gave clear sign posting

There was also the very clear signposting that the couple would not reveal the name of the mutual friend who set them up on the blind date: “We must respect her privacy” they both repeated. This is apparently now known but Meghan and Prince Harry were clear but not defensive about controlling the interview on this point. It’s always easier to tell a journalist you are not going to answer a question than to fudge it.

There were a couple of other nice touches that might or might not have been inserted by a spin doctor. Several uses of the word ‘cottage’ with all its small and frugal connotations (!), and the roast chicken dinner. As we often say to people, just insert a bit of colour! It’s not that I doubt the truth of the roast chicken, I just think most people wouldn’t have automatically mentioned it. But it played its role in adding a homely touch to the royal romance.

Royal interview

The roast chicken dinner was one of those irrelevant facts that nevertheless has a role in adding ‘colour’ to a story.

Anyway, all in all nicely done and given that managing the media is going to have to be such a big part of their lives it bodes well that together – and undoubtedly with the help of others – they delivered a charming, happy, uncontroversial interview.

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