Trevor Noah Opened the 2021 Grammys With a Joke About Buckingham Palace
He hosted "music's biggest night" exactly a week after Meghan and Harry's earth-shattering Oprah interview.


For the second Sunday night in a row, all eyes are glued to CBS—and while, this time around, the night's big event is the 2021 Grammy Awards, rather than a potentially earth-shattering conversation between Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, and Oprah Winfrey, that shocking discussion is clearly still top of mind. In his opening monologue, which was delivered not in the usual overcrowded Staples Center but on a nearby outdoor stage in front of an incredibly sparse crowd, host Trevor Noah made sure to throw in a quick joke about the aftermath of last week's bombshell interview.
While walking away from the tent-covered stage to introduce the night's first live performers, Noah mentioned that the famous attendees at the first location were likely impatient to get the show started. "There's more tension in that tent than a family reunion at Buckingham Palace." Honestly, he's got a point: By most reports, Buckingham Palace is less than thrilled with Meghan and Harry's decision to spill the beans on what they described as the truly isolating and even occasionally racist behavior they experienced before stepping down as senior royals last year.
Mere minutes later, after Harry Styles had kicked off the night's stacked slate of performances with a gloriously ab-baring rendition of "Watermelon Sugar," Noah tossed out yet another jab at the U.K., registering his (understandable) shock that "someone that handsome is from the same place as Boris Johnson." Zing!
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Andrea Park is a freelance writer for Marie Claire, where she writes mainly about pop culture, drawing on her lifelong obsessions with consuming every book, movie, and TV show she can get her hands on. Andrea is based in Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Her byline has also appeared in W, Glamour, Teen Vogue, PEOPLE, and more.
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