Prince Harry, without a grandpapa or grandmama to call his own, is finding surrogate grandfather figures elsewhere. On Thursday, September 15, Matt Smith appeared on Today to promote House of the Dragon and spoke about his relationship to the British royals as one of the men who played Prince Philip on The Crown. Smith said he’d met Prince Harry “at polo, which sounds a bit grand, but it wasn’t grand, and he walked up to me and went, ‘Granddad,’†because he had seen Smith on the show. Smith had an inside scoop that the late Queen Elizabeth II did, in fact, watch her fictionalized self on Netflix. “I heard the queen had watched it, and she used to watch it on a projector on a Sunday night, apparently,†he said. “And I know that Philip definitely didn’t.â€
Smith is far less familiar, however, with American royalty. Toward the end of his segment, Smith read off the teleprompter and threw the weather to, “Al … Rocker?†The insolence! (He does rock, though.)