HBO Max shouldn't have been surprised by the negative reaction to Gary Janetti's The Prince

Pajiba

On Gary Janetti's Instagram feed that inspired The Prince, he would direct "extreme misogyny" towards Meghan Markle, describing her as "trash" and having an eating disorder, according to Kayleigh Donaldson. But those offensive posts disappeared and Markle is given a remarkably kind portrayal on HBO Max's The Prince -- in contrast to everybody else. "It’s no coincidence that Janetti went on his deletion spree after the death of George Floyd, when every minor celebrity acknowledged that racism existed for a moment and posted black squares to their feed," says Donaldson, who adds: "The show’s mere existence has, of course, sparked the usual slate of conversations regarding satire, the depictions of real people, and the media’s attitude towards the royals. Most of this discourse has, in my opinion, missed the point as to why The Prince has proven to be particularly galling. It’s not about whether one should do a show like this — if you’re British then you’ve likely seen more than one comedy of this ilk that tears into the Windsors — but what a creator actually wishes to say through this perspective. Janetti’s take on Prince George is extremely American and limited by his obvious lack of understanding of the bonkers intricacies of Britishness and the class system. The Prince shows George, voiced by Janetti himself with an American accent, as being obsessed with Kelly Ripa (?) and the Real Housewives (??) He’s cruel and swears a lot and seems to seriously hate women. Bring in Seth MacFarlane and this is just Stewie Griffin. It’s certainly ethically questionable to appropriate a real-life child for these purposes but the sheer laziness of Janetti’s approach certainly doesn’t help his case. It’s not especially satirical either. As the scant number of critics who reviewed the show noted, it’s mostly dull, too lazy to even be all that offensive. The Queen says ‘f**k’ a lot and that’s the joke. Charles is weak and beholden to his mother’s whims. Harry is stupid. Prince Philip is essentially a corpse, a depiction that would almost be biting had it not been extremely worn out at least a decade before he died. Anyone familiar with old-school episodes of Spitting Image will have such comedic routines memorized thanks to their cultural omnipresence. The royals have certainly never been immune to satire, and we certainly could have used some sharp comedic takedowns of the family in their current state. It’s not as though one would be short of material regarding a clan that includes a corrupt prince who was BFFs with a pedophile, a notoriously racist elder, and generations of plotting, affairs, and tampon-related flirting. Hell, an American perspective on this could have been refreshing, especially with Meghan now back in the States and the truly entrenched nature of The Firm’s racism open to all. Yet The Prince proved to be utterly uninterested in such ideas. It’s almost impressive how little Janetti and his writer’s room seemed to care. It’s almost as if they got the show greenlit and he suddenly realized how bad an idea the entire concept was."