During his historic Netflix event, Chris Rock couldn’t help but poke fun at Meghan Markle and her spat with the Royal Family.
Last weekend, the famed cartoonist, 58, made history by being the first artist to have a show live-streamed internationally on the site.
The hour-long programme, titled Chris Rock: Selective Outrage, aired in the early hours of Sunday morning in the UK and featured Chris openly confront Will Smith hitting him at the Oscars for the first time.
While he wasn’t making fun of himself, the New York City star was delving into some of the year’s biggest news stories.
Meghan, 41, found herself in the comedian’s crosshairs after he joked about her and Prince Harry’s explosive encounter with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. During the contentious tell-all, Harry, 38, and Meghan claimed a senior member of the Royal Family made a remark about the couple’s then-unborn child Archie’s skin colour.
‘Like who is this chick Meghan Markle?’ Chris asked the crowd during his stand-up set. She appears to be a decent person who is only moaning. Didn’t she win the fair-skinned lottery?’
Mocking the Duchess of Sussex, the funnyman continued: ‘“They’re so racist, they’re so racist”. Some of that s*** she went through was not racism. It was just some in-law s***.
‘Sometimes it’s just some in-law s*** because she’s complaining, I’m like “What the f*** is she talking about?”’
Chris went on: ‘“Oprah, they’re so racist they wanted to know how brown the baby was going to be”.’
‘I’m like, “That’s not racist, because even Black people want to know how brown the baby going to be,’ he quipped.
During the Oprah interview, which aired more than a year after Harry and Meghan quit the UK for California, the Duchess said: ‘In those months when I was pregnant … 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.’
Harry seemed to backtrack slightly on their earlier words, adding that the Royal Family, from whom he is separated, is not racist but instead have ‘a large amount of unconscious bias’.
His usage of the word “unconscious prejudice” has been hotly contested, with many in the Black community believing that it is synonymous with racism.
Chris Rock: Selective Outrage is available to stream on Netflix.