Chris Rock mocked Meghan Markle on his Netflix stand-up comedy special, saying, “Didn’t she hit the light-skinned lottery?” Rock joined a growing list of American comedians in taking aim at Prince Harry and Meghan in his Baltimore show, which aired live on the streaming platform on March 4.
Netflix has a multi-year contract with the couple and hosted their docu-series Harry & Meghan, which premiered in December 2022. South Park, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Saturday Night Live all made fun of Harry and Meghan.
During Chris Rock LIVE: Selective Outrage, the comedian said: “Everybody trying to be a victim. Like, who is this girl Meghan Markle? Seemed like a nice lady, just complaining.
“I was like, didn’t she hit the light-skinned lottery? Hit the f***ing light-skinned lottery and still going off complaining. Acting all dumb like she didn’t know anything. Going on Oprah like ‘I didn’t know, I had no idea how racist they were.’
“It’s the royal family, you didn’t Google these mother f******. What the f*** is she talking about she didn’t know. It’s the royal family. They’re the original racists. They invented colonialism. They’re the OGs of racism. They’re the Sugar Hill Gang of racism.”
“That’s like marrying into the Budweiser family and saying, ‘they drink a lot’,” he added. Meghan’s remarks in March 2021 were widely interpreted as an allegation of racism, but Prince Harry later stated that “neither of us believes” it was racism.
The duchess told Oprah: “So we have in tandem the conversation of ‘he won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title’ and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Oprah clarified whether that meant “too brown” and whether “that would be a problem” and Meghan replied: “If that’s the assumption you’re making, I think that feels like a pretty safe one.”
Prince Harry told 60 Minutes: “The way the British press reacted to that was fairly typical. There was like a hunt for the royal racist. Neither of us believes that that comment or that experience or that opinion was based on racism.
“Unconscious bias, yes. But I think that you speak to the majority—maybe not all—but the majority of mixed race couples around the world that the white side of the family would wonder, whether talking openly about it or amongst themselves, what the kids are gonna look like.”
“Sometimes it’s just some in-law s—,” Rock said. “Because she’s complaining, I’m like, ‘What the f— is she talking about?’ ‘Oprah, they’re so racist, they wanted to know how brown the baby was going to be.’
“I’m like, ‘That’s not racist,’ cause’ even Black people want to know how brown the baby gonna be. S—. We check behind their ears.”
“I know her dilemma,” he continued. “Black girl trying to be accepted by her white in-laws. Oh, it’s hard. It’s so hard, it’s very hard—but it ain’t as hard as a white girl trying to be accepted by her Black in-laws. Now that s**t is really hard.”