Dawn Porter reveals Prince Harry’s heartwarming reaction over Black culture-themed gift for Baby Archie
"I think he really understands and has a lot of empathy and a lot more in common with people of different races than most people think.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle just welcomed their daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor to the world and that means they’re in for all of the sweet surprises that come with raising a baby girl.
During a recent episode of Acting Up, the award-winning director revealed how her gift for Baby Archie went over with Prince Harry when she went to meet him for the first time before directing his collaboration with Oprah Winfrey, The Me You Can’t See.
When Oprah invited Porter to meet the Prince, it was shortly after he and his wife, Meghan Markle had welcomed their firstborn, Archie. When her producer suggested she bring a gift for the new dad, the documentarian made a pretty fantastic choice.
“I don’t know what you give a prince, but I figured he had everything and he had a baby. So why do we only give women the gifts? We were finishing up ‘The Way I See It’ and we were filming in the African-American Museum at the Smithsonian,” she explained. “So I went to the gift store and I got him like a red, black and green onesie and some books about brown babies and like, loving yourself. And so I put this little package together.”
When it came time to present the gift, her gesture went over even better than expected.
“He flipped out. He loved it. He was like, ‘This is his culture. This is his background’ and he just couldn’t get over the gift. He kept remarking on it,” said Porter.
“Prince Harry strikes me as very curious and very respectful and I think despite the fact that he comes from where he comes from, he also feels a little bit like an outsider. And so I think he really understands and has a lot of empathy and a lot more in common with people of different races than most people think.”
She also discussed how involved he and Oprah were in the Apple TV+ series that features real people and superstars discussing their experiences with mental health.
“We would have a meeting with Prince Harry every other week. We would talk about the subjects, we would talk about how we were going to approach the stories. We would talk about the mix of stories, and the range of conditions,” she explained.
“The other thing was the team Oprah put in place. We had a team of advisers, experts of different races, nationalities, and genders from around the world. We had story producers who were an inclusive community who were reaching out and looking for different stories and then we had a group of directors who were different races and genders,” she continued.
“The cherry on top of the cake was Oprah opening up and Prince Harry opening up. I know they appreciated the openness of all of our subjects and it didn’t occur to either of them to not also be as open and to share as much as we were asking from everybody else and they did that.
“I think they were more worried about the focus being on them because they’re so well known and so that was more their hesitancy than sharing personal things. They didn’t hold back.”
The Me You Can’t See is steaming now on Apple TV+ and her latest documentary, Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer hits NatGeo on June 18.
Check out the full conversation on Acting Up.
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