The Grand Tour host Jeremy Clarkson posted an apology on Instagram Monday for disparaging remarks he made about Britain's Prince Harry and his wife, American actress Meghan Markle, in an opinion column he wrote in The Sun last month.
The royal couple replied to the post with a statement to People.com, declining to accept Clarkson's mea culpa.
"One of the strange things I've noticed in recent times is that whenever an MP or a well-known person is asked to apologize for something, no matter how heartfelt or profound that apology may be, it's never enough for the people who called for it in the first place," Clarkson wrote, admitting that his words in the column were "horrible" and made him "feel sick" in retrospect.
"So I'm going to try and buck the trend this morning with an apology for the things I said in a Sun column recently about Meghan Markle. I really am sorry. All the way from the balls of my feet to the follicles on my head. This is me putting my hands up. It's a mea culpa with bells on," he added.
"Usually, I read what I've written to someone else before filing, but I was home alone on that fateful day, and in a hurry. So when I'd finished, I just pressed send. And then, when the column appeared the next day, the land mine exploded."
Harry and Meghan swiftly fired back their response to Monday's statement.
"On December 25, 2022, Mr. Clarkson wrote solely to Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex. The contents of his correspondence were marked Private and Confidential," the couple said.
"While a new public apology has been issued today by Mr. Clarkson, what remains to be addressed is his long standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories, and misogyny," the statement went on. "Unless each of his other pieces were also written "in a hurry," as he states, it is clear that this is not an isolated incident shared in haste, but rather a series of articles shared in hate."
Harry and Meghan have been married since 2018. They stepped down as senior members of the British royal family in early 2020 and have been living in the United States since.
ADVERTISEMENT
They recently starred in a Netflix docu-series where they alleged they suffered verbal and emotional abuse from Harry's relatives.
Harry released a blockbuster memoir called Spare last week where he detailed further grievances he had with his father, King Charles, brother, Prince William, and various other members of the royal family.
His grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September at the age of 96.