How Tucker Carlson Got Roped Into The Kate Middleton Photoshop Scandal

These days, it seems like everyone has an opinion on the many Kate Middleton conspiracies amid the serious doctored photo accusations. In fact, even Tucker Carlson has gotten involved. It was all thanks to a prank courtesy of Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, who you may recognize from their YouTube Channel, Josh & Archie. By now, we all know that the photos of Kate Middleton's first reemergence since she disappeared from the public eye are seriously suspect. Pieters and Manners managed to convince Carlson that they were behind the Mother's Day photoshop blunder.

On March 11, the royal family shocked the world when Kate confessed to editing her suspicious Mother's Day portrait via X, formerly known as Twitter. Just a few days later on March 14, Pieters and Manners also took to X to share how they pranked Carlson. In the video, which gained nearly 80,000 views on their YouTube channel in just three days, the creators explained that they gave an interview for the Tucker Carlson Network under the guise that Manners was a former employee at Kensington Palace. 

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't exactly easy to make this claim and actually get an interview. They were equipped with an entirely falsified contract claiming that Manners worked for the palace and an in-depth explanation of his job there. They even edited the infamous photo of Kate and her kids to pretend that they had the original, unedited version. And, yes — they had Carlson fooled.

Between Josh Pieters and Archie Manners' YouTube and X accounts, the video garnered quite a few comments. Many of them asked why the creators chose to post the video and publicize their prank before it actually aired on the Tucker Carlson Network. In an interview with TIME, Pieters explained the reasoning behind their decision. "We obviously discussed it, but we thought that it would be a bit irresponsible potentially to let the actual interview publish," he admitted. So, while they were more than happy to prank Carlson, they didn't want to prank the entire world. "We just thought that this interview would obviously go so big on Tucker's channel that it could potentially do some harm. So we thought it was a better idea to get it up first and to show what we did," he explained. 

In an interview with Deadline, Manners claimed that flattering Carlson by giving him the exclusive interview, claiming that the "mainstream media in the U.K. wouldn't touch it" helped to get them on the show. Despite accomplishing that mission, though, they didn't let it get out of hand by allowing the interview to air. "We didn't want to cause any more rumors, that are not true, to go out to lots and lots of people," he said. And, while their fake original version of the famous Mother's Day photo may have been convincing, a real original has not been released.