Two YouTubers posted a video showing Tucker Carlson interviewing one of them posing as a fired Kensington Palace employee who edited a controversial manipulated U.K. Mother’s Day photo of Kate Middleton and her three children.
According to pranksters Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, who post videos under the YouTube account Josh & Archie, they duped former Fox News presenter Carlson into conducting the interview for his streaming service the Tucker Carlson Network.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In the video posted on Pieters’ X (formerly Twitter) account and on the Josh & Archie YouTube channel on March 14, four days after the photo was released, the pair chronicle their ruse, including photoshopping a fake employment contract and the Princess of Wales’ photo into a supposed original, unedited version (which the palace has not released). At the time of publication, the video had 1.5 million views on X and 56,000 views on YouTube.
Manners told Deadline that the pair exposed their stunt before the interview aired in a bid to not spread further misinformation: “We didn’t want to cause any more rumors, that are not true, to go out to lots and lots of people.”
TIME reached out to the Tucker Carlson Network for comment, along with contacting Manners and Pieters via their YouTube and Instagram accounts and Manners’ representative Dana Malmstrom for more information.
The botched photo editing, for which Kate took credit and apologized, furthered a media frenzy around the Princess of Wales’ whereabouts and her health after she was hospitalized for two weeks in January for a “planned abdominal surgery.” Kensington Palace said she would recover and return to the public eye after Easter, which is on March 31. The edited picture, which was presented on March 10 as the first look at Kate post-surgery other than a paparazzi photo, did not assuage the public’s concern, and instead heightened conspiracy theories about her.
According to the video, the prank started with Pieters sending an email to Carlson’s team introducing Manners as “George,” a recently fired Kensington Palace digital content creator who wanted to “get my side of the story out,” saying: “They are not telling the truth about the Princess’ health, and are now willing to fire staff in order to conceal the truth.”
Carlson’s team called to discuss and asked for “proof” of George’s employment and the original photo, according to a recording of the call in the video. Pieters then photoshopped the released photo to make it look as though it was taken in December by adding a Christmas tree in the background window. Pieters also created a fake “letter of engagement” with a Kensington Palace emblem that featured the words “Every Little Helps”—the slogan of British supermarket chain Tesco—in Latin. One section of the contract said that if the employee failed their probationary period “the company retains the right to amputate 1 (1) limb of their choosing.”
Carlson’s team then confirmed the interview at a TV studio in Westminster, London, according to a screenshot of a text, and Manners attended with his own camera. The camera filmed the interview taking place on a split screen, during which Carlson—seated in front of a TCN (Tucker Carlson Network) sign—said, per the subtitles provided by the Josh & Archie YouTube account: “We’ve done our best to verify that your identity is what you say it is. You’re not a fake [Alexei] Navalny or doing a prank or anything.””
Manners, posing as George, said the editing job was shoddy because it was “too big to do.” He said the photo, which the Prince and Princess of Wales’ social media accounts said was taken by Prince William in 2024, was actually taken by Kate’s maternal uncle, Gary Goldsmith, at Christmastime.
After the interview, but with the cameras still rolling, Carlson said: “That was great and it was really interesting too.”
It’s not clear when the interview was filmed. In the video posted March 14, Manners, posing as George, said he worked at the palace until “yesterday morning.” After the interview, Carlson’s team told Manners in a text message that the interview would likely broadcast “early next week,” according to a screenshot in the footage.
Before it could, though, the YouTubers exposed their prank to the world.
