Last September, Prince Harry made a surprise appearance on the Tonight Show, where Harry and Jimmy Fallon went through a “haunted maze” at 30 Rock. It was a cute segment and there was no controversy whatsoever. That’s Fallon’s whole deal as the host of the Tonight Show – everything has to be as uncontroversial as possible. He’s not there to attack celebrities or do hard-hitting interviews or be super-political. Well, on Monday night’s Tonight Show, Fallon did a joke about the Duchess of Sussex and With Love, Meghan. Obviously, the British media just learned about this joke and they’re convinced that Fallon is brutally mocking Meghan.
Jimmy Fallon has become the latest American celebrity to mock Meghan Markle as he made a joke about her making her own pretzel bags on her Netflix show.
During NBC’s The Tonight Show on Monday, Fallon’s sidekick Steve Higgins asked the 50-year-old chat show host a series of questions in a ‘Trivia Night’ segment.
One of the queries put to Fallon by Higgins was: ‘Ready, you’re going to get this. What is the number one question that mystifies scientists? Number one question.’
Fallon then suggested: ‘Is there life on another planet?’ But Higgins said: ‘Ooh, no. Why does Meghan Markle make her own pretzel bags? They don’t know why.’
As the audience erupted in laughter, Fallon chuckled and replied: ‘That’s interesting. She takes it from one bag and puts it in another bag, and that confuses people.’
They were referring to a moment in ‘With Love, Meghan’, which began streaming on March 4, where the Duchess of Sussex transfers pre-packaged pretzels into another bag with a personalised label on to show visiting guests that she is thinking of them. In the scene, Meghan tears open a pre-packaged bag of supermarket pretzels, transferring them into her own plastic bag, and securing it with a neat string bow.
‘This, we’re just going to put into a different bag,’ she says, with fans spotting the recognisable Trader Joe packaging of the peanut butter flavoured snacks.
What’s funny is… Fallon wouldn’t have done this joke if no one watched WLM. It wouldn’t land if people didn’t know the reference. My point is that this is far from a brutal takedown, it’s a confirmation that people are watching WLM and that Meghan is famous enough to be gently ribbed on the Tonight Show. This is the kind of joke Fallon would make about Martha Stewart or Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s also the kind of thing which I hope Meghan and her fans can laugh about too, because it honestly would not surprise me if Meghan ended up going on the Tonight Show at some point to promote WLM (and she should bring a bag of pretzels as a gift).
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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Netflix.
