‘Utterly embarrassing’: Prince Harry faces fresh blow

The Duke of Sussex has had a bruising week having been labelled “pathetic” for one particularly American hobby he has picked up.

By the time you read this, there will be just that much less space on Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ mantelpiece.

The Duke picked up his second award of the year, namely the Pat Tillman Award, given to those who have made “remarkable civic contributions”, at the The 2024 ESPY Awards also known as the Sporting Oscars.

And so today, while the Sussexes’ housekeeper tries to work out how to dust the Duke’s new knobbly silver showpiece of a trophy, we are left to ponder, just how big of a mess has this award been for him?

After two weeks of negative coverage and tens of thousands of people rallying online to express their displeasure, no matter how no matter how humble and moving his speech, no matter how proud (and fabulous) Meghan looked, watching on from the audience, it’s hard to frame this all as anything but quite the stumble as the couple attempts to pull off their US relaunch.

Prince Harry gave an emotional four minute speech after accepting the award on Friday. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex accepts the Pat Tillman Award onstage from Kirstie Ennis, Israel Del Toro and Elizabeth Marks during the 2024 ESPY Awards. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

What should have been same-same, a bit ho-hum and par for the course – ‘Harry gets gong’ being about as much of a shocker as ‘King opens park, smiles’ or ‘Queen out of tonic’ – has instead blown up in the Duke’s face, serving to highlight the undertow of unfavourable opinion the 39-year-old faces in his adopted homeland.

What this award mess drives home is that the Sussexes left the UK to escape a toxic atmosphere – only to end up in a country where the mood music surrounding them is not exactly leagues better either right now.

Or as the Telegraph put it, “it has become increasingly clear that he is now as divisive a figure in the US as he is in the UK.”

Unlike on previous occasions, however, this month’s uncorking, if you will, of disapproval with the Duke is harder to brush off given it was Tillman’s mother Mary calling him “controversial and divisive” that set this all off.

Even though Harry turned up on Friday and gave an eloquent and emotional four minute speech, the numbers point to this being a certifiable bollix.

Polling done by Redfield & Wilton for Newsweek found that nearly double the number of American adults thought it was wrong of ESPN to give Harry this award than those who supported the choice (38 per cent versus 21 per cent).

A change.org petition calling for ESPN, which runs the ESPYs, to rethink the choice of Harry had garnered more than 76,000 signatures and kick up over being given the award had been covered by The New York Times, the Today show, and People.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at the 2024 ESPY Awards.

Meanwhile, back in the UK Harry’s collecting of the Tillman, the seventh honour the Sussexes have been given in just over two and a half years, has seen him draw fresh fire.

A friend of the royal family, speaking to the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes, labelled Harry’s gong-show-going as “pathetic”.

“I’m afraid it’s just a clear symbol of his desperate need for attention,” the friend told the Beast.

“The irony of the whole of the last four years is that Harry and Meghan said they were leaving the royal family so the media would leave them alone. And now, here Harry is, literally picking up retail awards on live TV. It’s pathetic.”

Nor has this gone down well with his former comrades. A source who worked with Harry in the army told the Beast: “If you get a medal in the army, you don’t brag about it, so the idea of turning up at a televised awards ceremony to be honoured would be utterly embarrassing to most military people. It’s really sad to see Harry, who was an amazing guy who everyone respected, doing this kind of stuff.”

(This is not the first time this year even that military voices have called out the duke over his awards outings. In January, when it was announced that Harry would be honoured as a “living legend of aviation” at a Los Angeles awards night, British defence force grandees let forth.

Admiral Lord West, former head of the Royal Navy, declared, “He is not a living legend of aviation. To suggest he is, is pathetic” and retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp said that it was a case of “celebrities massaging each other’s egos”.)

The Sussexes now have more prizes to their names than years they have been in the United States. In the space of two and a half years they have been taken home a Ripple of Hope award, the NAACP President’s award, a Ms Award, a Gracie Award (for Meghan’s Archetypes podcast), a Living Legends of Aviation award, and the duchess has been named as a Variety Power of Women honouree.

Harry and Meghan have had a busy couple of years of accepting awards. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The ESPYs was the seventh such outing, putting the couple at an average of a new accolade every four months since early 2022.

Perhaps their free time is not exactly at a premium even though the Sussexes are in the midst of staging a brand re-do.

Their support Stateside is a mixed bag, with polling from May, also done by Redfield & Wilton for Newsweek, found that he had a net approval rating of +24. (42 percent of Americans had a favourable view of him and 18 percent unfavourable.) While better than Meghan, on +12, Harry still sits behind Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales on +32 and +28 respectively.

Having truthed about their royal experiences at length, the Sussexes now seem focused on producing infotainment – homemaking and horses, oh my! – with their Netflix deal reportedly set to expire next year, while the duchess works away on her still-shrouded-in-mystery American Riviera Orchard lifestyle business.

What the Tillman award brouhaha really crystallises is the extent to which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have struggled to fully convert the US to their side.

Blame their years of anti-palace rhetoric and propagandising, blame the broader US political and cultural climate, blame the lockdowns and the fact that maybe making podcasts is harder than a couple of novices with their eyes on the bottom line might have thought. Whatever.

After years of ups and downs and maybe another down, the Sussexes could have done with a straightforward win right now, a nice bit of PR runway as they go into their next phase and their TV projects and ARO are finally unveiled.

The only obviously good news here? The shape of the actual physical Tillman award should be pretty easy for the Sussexes’ staff to keep clean with a quick spritz now and then of Spray and Wipe. Even a small win is still a win. Now if they ever get a Golden Globe on the other hand …

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.