Meghan Markle will be honored with a comedy New Year’s Day musical to air on BBC Radio, Hello! magazine is reporting. What’s more, she will be the first member of the British royal family to be given such an honor.
For a while now, it’s been tradition for BBC’s Radio 4 to broadcast a comedy New Year’s Day musical about a “serious” topic, with hosts Pippa Evans, Dave Lamb, and Richie Webb, according to the Telegraph . Previous “honorees” have included Mother Theresa ( The Legend of Holy Superior Mother Theresa May and the Magic Money Tree ), British politician Jeremy Corbyn ( Jeremy Corbyn Superstar! ), and Brexit ( Cabarexit , which “[turned] the EU referendum into a sexy, sassy, sensationalized, sublime-sounding musical”).
Meghan’s musical will be entitled The Sixth In Line to be King and I . The first part references her husband Prince Harry’s status as the sixth in line to the throne. The second part of the title is a nod to the famed Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King And I . Not for nothing, the plot of The King And I involves a woman of humble birth (in this case British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens) getting in good and falling in love with a member of a foreign royal family – which doesn’t at all sound like Meghan Markle’s life.
Meghan Markle’s PA quit ‘after being reduced to tears by the Duchess’ https://t.co/ofuhrhgIcx pic.twitter.com/MAbnPxbV68
— Mirror Royal (@MirrorRoyal) December 2, 2018
That connection between Meghan’s story and the plot of The King and I is not lost on the show’s producers, who note that the New Year’s Day musical will be a “Rodgers and Hammerstein-inspired” comedy.
As of this writing, there’s not a lot of information about what the comedy will be about. Pippa Davis will play Meghan, and the show’s producers promise that the show will look at Meghan’s past, in particular, her acting career and her role on Suits as well as Meghan’s future, which, in 2019, will include the birth of her first child.
It bears noting that the royal family was not contacted for permission or for help in making the musical.
It remains unclear, as of this writing, if the show will be a respectful satire that pokes fun at the duchess in a loving way (such as by milking her “fish-out-of-water” status as a regular girl from LA who married into the British royal family) or will be a biting satire that doesn’t spare the duchess from some of the more uncomfortable aspects of her life (such as her family, which continually tries to embarrass her).
Meghan Markle’s New Year’s Day musical will air January 1, 2019, on BBC Radio 4 at a time to be determined.
