Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Josh & Archie
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, UK News, US News, YouTube, Tucker Carlson, Royal Family
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, UK News, US News, YouTube, Tucker Carlson, Royal Family
People are flooding to social media in stitches after a pair of YouTubers 'pranked' Tucker Carlson.
If you've been living under a rock - or simply don't care to engage with anything that happens on the other side of the pond - you may've not realised the Princess of Wales has been hitting headlines as a result of not being spotted in public for several months and for a photograph shared for Mother's Day which had been edited.
However, as many others responded by running round like headless chickens, a pair of YouTubers decided to put the edited photograph controversy to good use by playing a practical joke on Carlson, a conservative news commentator who'd previously worked for Fox News and now hosts his own show on X.
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YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners - who have a 1.5 million-strong following on the platform - shared a video to X posing as a former employee of Kensington Palace, claiming they'd been sacked as a result of being the editor behind the now-infamous photo.
However, the million plus views just the beginning, as they also reached out to the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) to tempt Carlson with an 'exclusive' interview for their palace employee alias George - who they said was 'Williams' digital content creator'.
The email to TCN from 'George' read: "I am all too aware of the Royal Family’s ability to throw people like me under the bus in order to protect their reputation.
"They are not telling the truth about the Princess' health and are now willing to fire staff in order to conceal the truth."
'George' said he was 'in the process of being let go' and wanted to tell his side of the story.
After a call with a TCN researcher, Pieters and Manners made the appeal even more convincing by sharing a fake contract of employment with a Kensington Palace crest.
Alas, TCN researchers clearly didn't notice the crest's Latin didn't actually read any sort of iconic regal saying, but actually Tesco's slogan 'Every Little Helps' and one of the clauses in the fake contract said if so-called employee George should fail his probationary period, the royal family reserved the right to 'amputate one limb of their choosing'.
And so the network confirmed and set up an interview between George (Manners) and Carlson.
Manners headed over to a studio in London and the interview commenced.
In a clip of the interview, Carlson - hilariously - says the network has done its 'best' to 'verify' Manners' identity is who he says he is and that he's 'not a fake Navalny or doing a prank' before going to ask him what he did for Middleton.
Nailing his part as George, Manners said he had to edit a Christmas tree out of the picture as it was taken months before people believed it was, to which Carlson responded by saying it was an 'amazing' tale, resolving he didn't expect to be 'so interested in it' as he was because Manners 'told such a great story'.
Cue lots of background chuckles.
And it hasn't taken long for people to flood to social media in similar responses.
One YouTube user wrote: "How the hell did you guys pull this off."
"Fascinating, really makes you think about similar networks not doing enough checks," another added.
And a third commented: "Hilarious."
But why did the YouTubers do it? Catch the video here:
Well, in their video, they explain they wanted to test whether the media are 'so hungry for royal news that they'd interview anyone who claimed to know something about Kate and her famous photo' and 'how carefully' the media would check the reliability of the supposed source.
The YouTubers uploaded the video documenting their prank before the TCN episode featuring the interview aired, noting to Deadline they 'didn't want to cause any more rumors, that are not true, to go out to lots and lots of people'.
UNILAD has contacted TCN for comment.