Prince William and Kate visited Boston last December and it was a trip to forget. Or rather, William and Kate were so forgettable. Omid Scobie’s Endgame includes a lot of information about the Boston trip within the larger story of “QEII died and the remaining Windsors can’t stop tripping over themselves for two seconds.” As I covered in real time, William was incandescent over the twin crises outside of his control during the Boston trip. The first crisis was the Susan Hussey mess back in England. But then Netflix dropped the first trailer for the Sussexes’ docuseries in the middle of the Keens’ Boston trip, and suddenly William was raging at the royal rota for days. Remember all of the “Sussexes are like the Kardashians” nonsense? Well, here are some (hilarious) highlights of how everything went down in Boston:
The Hussey debacle overshadowed their first days in Boston: “…By the time they landed in Boston, the furor over Lady Susan was at full volume, drowning out much of the hoopla for the event. The couple flew commercial to make a point, but it was lost on a public already outraged by yet another royal race incident. Both former U.S. secretary of state and current Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and the author, diplomat, and member of America’s “royal family” Caroline Kennedy, their chief guests, appeared to tap the brakes on joining the engagement—Kerry cited illness and Kennedy “disrupted travel plans” but in reality, it’s likely they both wanted to see how the scandal played out.
The Celtics game: On the second night, William and Kate attended a Celtics basketball game at TD Garden Arena, where, to their surprise, many fans booed and subjected the royal couple to chants of “USA! USA!” whenever they appeared on the jumbotron. In all fairness, Boston sports fans will boo just about anyone who shows up on their turf, but the latest scandal, along with all the other baggage William and Kate drag around as royals (including their treatment of Harry and Meghan, for one), only made the jeers louder. In fact, there appeared to be little excitement for the royal visit in general…
William’s Super Bowl moment: Despite the promotional efforts and high expectations, the [Earthshot] awards ceremony, by most accounts, didn’t make the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl. There was, however, halftime show entertainment courtesy of another royal couple. The first trailer for the Sussexes’ intimate Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, released that same day (an intentional move by the streamer, I’m told), promising the “full truth” behind the couple’s departure.
The Earthshot Flop: As for the Earthshot ceremony, viewers were less than captivated, to say the least. In the United Kingdom, newspapers claimed the public “switched off” in droves within minutes of the BBC airing it, while the audience watching live in the United States via PBS’s streaming platform fell to the hundreds at times. Despite certain celebrity guests flying in to the “green” event at great expense and using thousands of gallons of jet fuel (Beckham flew on a private jet from Qatar), the environmental award winners themselves were strangely forced to stay at home and appear via Zoom. Rather than buying a new outfit, Kate made a statement by renting her off-the-shoulder gown (a genuinely good idea, but one that has never been repeated at a royal event since). The green carpet the couple walked down at the start of the evening was repurposed from the previous year’s ceremony, but the Palace refused to comment on the fact it was shipped halfway across the world to make the environmentally conscious statement. As for local media coverage, it focused mostly on the cost of the trip for the city ($170,407) and how it would affect traffic.
[From Omid Scobie’s Endgame]
I thank Scobie for his service here – too few people paid attention to the fact that William refused to invite the award-winners and instead persuaded celebrities to fly into Boston (on their private jets) all to hang out with him. I had never heard the detail about the green carpet either – did the palace honestly brief the media about how they used the same carpet, but then they didn’t want to talk about the cost of shipping it over??? Jesus. Anyway, yeah, the Boston trip was hilariously bad and hahahaha at Netflix deliberately timing the trailer drop for that week.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
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