After all the hype, the numbers are in: More than 29 million Americans tuned in on Saturday to watch one of their own become British royalty.
The Nielsen metric refers to the live telecast of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding on 15 US networks, according to Deadline, which means the figure doesn’t even include recap viewers who were too lazy to wake up at 7am or those who streamed it online. For context, around 23 million Americans watched the 2011 nuptials of Kate Middleton and Prince William, the actual heir to the throne, on 11 US networks. Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding attracted just over 17 million American viewers to broadcast networks in 1981. (Harry’s pulled in 17.6 million if you just keep it to ABC, CBS and NBC.)
So why the increase? First, some wild speculation: Maybe the level of Anglophilia among Americans has risen quite a bit since 2011. In that time, we received five more seasons of Masterpiece’s Downton Abbey, three of BBC’s Sherlock and two of Netflix’s The Crown, a Windsor-specific drama. Our nation was founded by men who believed in separation from the British monarchy, but come on — those accents are irresistible.
A second theory: The inexplicably large fan base of USA Network’s Suits boosted the viewership of Saturday’s wedding. In its seventh season, which aired last year, the legal drama was the second-highest-rated show on a cable network — second only to Game of Thrones on HBO. Markle’s final episode aired in April and centred on her character’s wedding (to longtime boyfriend Mike Ross, played by Patrick J. Adams). Perhaps Suits fans tuned in for the real-life version.
More than anything, it’s Markle who captivates viewers. The newly minted Duchess of Sussex is an unusual member of British royalty as a biracial American who has been married once before.
Setting aside the novelty and our obsession with the “American falls in love with a foreign prince” genre, Markle has brought a sense of modernity to the royal family, starting with the wedding gown itself. She also entered St. George’s Chapel and walked down much of the aisle on her own. Soon after the wedding, Markle declared on the British monarchy’s official website that she is “proud to be a woman and a feminist.”
