Whoopi Goldberg isn’t sold on the story of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle being involved in what their spokesperson called a “near catastrophic car chase” after being targeted by paparazzi in New York this week.
On Thursday’s episode of “The View,” Goldberg expressed her doubts over the way in which the Tuesday incident was described by a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
“If it was possible to have car chases in New York, we’d all make it to the theater on time,” Goldberg quipped.
“I think their spokesperson referenced something you generally would reference in Los Angeles,” she said. “That’s where you have chases, that’s where you can move at high speeds.”
And though she acknowledged the couple “were dealing with aggressive paparazzi,” she nonetheless reiterated, “It just doesn’t work in New York.”
Watch Whoopi Goldberg discuss the car chase reports below.
Before the alleged chaos unfolded, Harry, Meghan and her mother, Doria Ragland, attended Tuesday’s Ms. Foundation for Women gala, where the Duchess of Sussex received a Woman of Vision Award.
After exiting New York’s Ziegfeld Ballroom at the conclusion of the event, the trio boarded an SUV that was subsequently chased by a barrage of photographers in “a dozen vehicles: cars, scooters and bicycles,” according to Chris Sanchez, a member of their security detail.
“The public were in jeopardy at several points,” Sanchez told CNN. “It could have been fatal. They were jumping curbs and red lights.”
A spokesperson for the couple said it was a “relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours.”
Though the New York Police Department confirmed that the couple had arrived safely at their destination, the news evoked the story of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, who died in a 1997 car crash after her driver sped away from paparazzi in Paris.
Subsequent accounts of Tuesday’s incident, however, have been conflicting. On Wednesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams slammed the paparazzi for being “reckless and irresponsible” in their approach but also appeared to cast doubt on the way the chase had been characterized.
“I would find it hard to believe there was a two-hour high-speed chase,” he said, according to People. “We have a lot of traffic, a lot of movement, a lot of people are using our streets.”
As for Goldberg, she suggested any discrepancies regarding the reality of the situation were the fault of the spokesperson for Harry and Meghan rather than the couple.
“I don’t think anybody realized that the verbiage that they were using was going to cause the kind of thing that it did,” she said Thursday. “When you use that kind of verbiage, know that your credibility is going to get cut in half, because the first thing that New Yorkers will say is: ‘Nobody moves that fast in New York City.’”