Prince Harry has been living in the United States for several years, relocating from the U.K. with wife Meghan Markle and building a life together in California with their kids and a Netflix deal. Settling into life on the American side of the pond doesn't necessarily mean that Harry has mastered the art of the American accent, and The Daily Show vet Hasan Minhaj had some fun with his attempts to say "Applebee's." Personally, I've now discovered that it's impossible to just watch the video once. To quote Harry: "Yee-haw!"
The royal joined Minhaj on the Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know podcast to talk about serious topics like social media and A.I., but the duo had some laughs as well when the host came up with "the most American sentence I could think of" to test Harry's skills with the accent. Harry clearly knows the U.S. well enough to know that there are many different kinds of accents within the country, but... well, I'm not sure his accent really fits with any of them. Take a look:
Was this perhaps revenge for all the times that Prince Harry has likely heard Americans butchering an English accent? He actually didn't sound that bad, as far as I'm concerned, but I also don't think he'd pass for somebody who grew up in the U.S. without some more practice on enunciating "ranch," "breadsticks," and "Applebee's."
Maybe Hasan Minhaj needs to have some Applebee's snacks on hand if he ever wants to try this experiment on Harry again. It does seem safe to say that even though he lost the Daily Show hosting gig, he still knows his way around bantering with a guest in front of a camera. As for Harry, he's spent plenty of time in the spotlight in the U.S. due to the Netflix deal and the release of the controversial Spare, although he hasn't had a huge role on With Love, Meghan in the 2025 TV schedule.
That said, one of my favorite parts of the video was at the very beginning, when Prince Harry immediately started looking nervous when he learned that Hasan Minhaj had a sentence prepared for Harry to say on camera. He responded:
You got a sentence there? Well, [I'll say] it depends on what it says, but let's try.
That said, I think the funniest part of the video was when it became clear that even though Hasan Minhaj was successfully keeping a straight face, the off-camera crew was cracking up at Harry's attempts. The prince attempted to look on the bright side of the crew laughing at him:
By the way, the laughter, it's encouraging. Is it encouraging or is it mocking me? I'm not sure. Come on, y'all!
Honestly, Harry's off-the-cuff "Yee-haw!" and "Come on, y'all!" sounded the most believably American, so maybe he just needs to not put too much thought into it before giving it a shot. As one commenter on the Instagram post noted, asking "which part of America" is a "great follow up question." A Midwesterner is going to sound different from a Southerner, for example!
As for Applebee's, the restaurant chain of course hit up the comment section to pitch an idea to improve Prince Harry's pronunciation:
Give him a few Dollaritas and he'll have it down.
Forget ranch dressing and breadsticks – maybe what Prince Harry needs to really nail the American vibe is to indulge in a $1 margarita or two from Applebee's. Considering that the restaurant chain basically got a free commercial out of this segment, though, maybe those Dollaritas should be on the house.
In all seriousness, Hasan Minhaj getting Prince Harry to declare love for Applebee's was a random bit of fun that I didn't know I needed, so I'll probably be rewatching it another time or two before the end of the day.
