Nicki Minaj’s Message to Prince Harry Is Turning Heads — And Meghan Markle May Not Agree
The Grammy-nominated artist discussed Harry and Meghan on a podcast, and shared what she thought about the estrangement.
Nicki Minaj has never been one to sit on the fence, and when the conversation turned to Prince Harry, she did not hold back, offering a pop-culture-laden take on the Duke of Sussex's long-running rift with his family. However, it was not much different from the other thousand opinions swirling around. Appearing on The Katie Miller Podcast, Minaj weighed in on Harry and his marriage to Meghan Markle, suggesting the Duke of Sussex should consider returning to the UK and repairing ties with the royal family. Minaj said her thoughts on the royals were biased, in part, by her recent habit of watching Netflix’s The Crown, the historical drama centered on the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and life inside “The Firm.”
As the discussion turned naturally toward the modern-day royal family, host Katie Miller asked the Grammy-nominated star for her take on Harry and Markle. Her response was not surprising, because it was a typical ‘Nicki Minaj’ reply. Minaj said she believed Harry “should go home like E.T.,” adding that he should “phone home and then go home.” For anybody who did not get the reference, Minaj was trying to reference the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, in which the stranded alien repeatedly says “phone home” as he tries to return to his own planet.
Harry has been estranged from much of the royal family since he and Markle gave a bombshell interview to Oprah Winfrey in 2021, in which they alleged racism within the monarchy as one of the reasons they left the family. The divide widened further with the release of Harry’s memoir Spare in 2023, which laid bare deeply personal details about his upbringing, relationships, and grievances with senior royals. Minaj had an opinion about it, too, as she could. She said, “I don't think he should've aired the family's dirty laundry, but that's just me,” she said, referencing Harry’s decision to publicly share private family matters.
At the same time, she stressed that her comments came without malice. “I have nothing but love for them, love for everyone. But I love the Royal Family as if I know them,” she said, adding that Americans are deeply fascinated by the monarchy. “But I think we as Americans love the idea of the Royal Family so much... but people do things, and you don't know why... so I don't judge.”
Minaj admitted that Harry’s disclosures made her wince, largely because of the odd sense of familiarity she felt as a viewer. When he laid bare the inner workings of royal life, she said her first reaction was simply, “Ah man,” explaining that she “felt like she knew them in some way.” Leaning fully into the moment, the rapper even slipped into a mock British accent as she imagined scolding the Duke from afar. “I was like, ‘Harry, don’t do tha… yew know beh-ah,’” she joked, before shrugging it off with a final concession, “he did what he did.”
Watch the moment here.
