Prince Harry revealed that he is no longer setting up a new charity foundation with Meghan Markle. The Duke of Sussex shared this detail while talking to someone he thought was the climate activist Greta Thunberg.
According to The Sun, Prince Harry opened up to "fake Greta" without knowing who were really behind the call. He told the person he was speaking to that he and Meghan are foregoing building a new foundation as there are "enough foundations out there doing amazing work."
Prince Harry apparently also told the caller that he and the Duchess of Sussex are taking their time in deciding what they shall do as they officially step back from their royal roles. The Duke of Sussex said that he and Meghan would instead like to use their voices to affect "real change and real difference."
The caller, however, are the Russian pranksters, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov. They posed as the 17-year old climate change activist and her father Svante Thunberg.
The pranksters apparently phoned Prince Harry on New Year's Day and then again on Jan. 22 while he was in Vancouver. The recording of the calls was released on March 11. It's unclear, however, how the pranksters got hold of the Duke of Sussex's phone number.
As he believed he was talking to the Thunbergs, Prince Harry apparently made his personal feelings known about the issues affecting him lately, including losing the Sussex Royal name. Prince Harry and Meghan decided to drop this after Buckingham Palace said that they cannot build a brand around Sussex Royal, which is the name of their foundation.
In June last year, Prince Harry and Meghan formed Sussex Royal after splitting with Prince William and Kate Middleton's Royal Foundation. A spokesperson for Prince Harry said that they will not comment on the hoax phone call.
Former press secretary to Queen Elizabeth, Dickie Arbiter, said that Prince Harry could have been angry with the prank. Arbiter also said that this would not have happened if the Sussexes were staying in Buckingham, where they will get the protection.
Prince Harry isn't the first royal to fall victim to a prank phone call. In 1995, Queen Elizabeth was also fooled by pranksters while she was on her royal tour of Canada, into speaking to the Canadian Prime Minister, who turned out to be fake.
According to Daily Express, the prank phone call with the Queen lasted 17 minutes and was broadcasted a few hours after the call was made. The man behind it was Pierre Brassard, a presenter of a satirical program in Canada.
