Prince Harry’s memoir revelation that he once caught frostbite on his penis has become the butt of a quip made by writer and comedian Seth Rogen on social media.
Rogen was responding to an Instagram post made by actress Mindy Kaling on Thursday after she attended a mental health and professional coaching summit in California with Harry.
Kaling was a guest on Meghan Markle’s hit podcast Archetypes in 2022 and in a lighthearted jab at Harry, she posted a photo of herself with the royal captioned: “Met my friend’s husband at a work event. Seemed pretty cool. Said he wrote a book. Gonna go check it out!”
This was a joking reference to Harry’s bombshell-packed 2023 memoir titled Spare. The book became a worldwide bestseller, breaking the record for fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time.
The contents of the book earned worldwide news coverage for its behind-palace-walls revelations, spanning Harry’s lifetime and including critical looks at his closest family members, namely Prince William and King Charles III.
One of the more surprising inclusions in the book was Harry’s description of the time he caught frostbite on his penis after undertaking a charity trek to the North Pole in the weeks before Prince William and Princess Kate’s royal wedding in 2011.
In a response to Kaling’s Instagram post, Rogen joked about the royal’s anatomy disclosures.
“He talks a lot about getting frost bite on his dick,” he wrote. “10/10 read.”
Newsweek approached representatives of Prince Harry and Seth Rogen via email for comment.
Harry’s frostbite anecdote appeared to prove unwise following Spare’s publication as it opened him up to mockery from late-night hosts and comedians. This appeared to return him to the clown persona he was depicted as by the press in his youth and that he has worked hard to shed in the years since.
Beyond the initial reaction to a royal prince discussing his penis in public, the overall reaction to the Spare inclusion appeared to be over its link to Princess Diana, which was described by one commentator as “Freudian.”
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images/Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images for Invictus Games Düsseldorf 2023
Describing his discomfort at the time of his brother’s wedding, Harry wrote: “My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized. The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan.”
He went on to describe how a home remedy he’d been recommended was awkwardly linked to Diana, who was a main feature in Spare. “I’d been trying some home remedies,” he said. “Including one recommended by a friend. She’d urged me to apply Elizabeth Arden cream. My mum used that on her lips. ‘You want me to put that on my todger?’
“‘It works, Harry. Trust me.’ I found a tube, and the minute I opened it, the smell transported me through time. I felt as if my mother was right there in the room.
“Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there,” he continued. “‘Weird’ doesn’t really do the feeling justice.”
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, Prince William and Kate, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.