Succession creator Jesse Armstrong took a dig at King Charles III in his acceptance speech for Best Drama Series at the Emmys 2022 on Monday night.
“Big week for successions. New king in the UK … for us,” the UK native said while on stage at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater.
“Uh, evidently a little more voting involved in our winning than Prince Charles,” he continued, acknowledging the Television Academy’s votes that earned his team the award.
Armstrong added, “I’m not saying we’re more legitimate in our position that he is. We’ll leave that up to other people. We are incredibly grateful to have this wonderful honor.”
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Emmys viewers had mixed feelings about Armstrong joking about the new king of Britain.
“Winning Best Drama and cracking a joke about the royal succession on national TV is quite a choice,” one person tweeted, while another said, “the royal family succession bit during Succession’s best drama speech I cringe.”
Meanwhile, some fans seemed amused by Armstrong’s comments.
“Why is the dude accepting the award for Succession looking for enemies in the royal family omgndjsksmddjj,” one person wrote.
“it’s so funny bc ik those ppl watch succession and laugh at all the f—— up jokes and they can’t laugh at this even though it’s literally the truth there IS in fact more voting done for the emmy’s compared to making a british royal in charge of the country get a grip LMAO,” another added.
However, the Emmys audience was not pleased by the joke.
An eyewitness told E! News there were a lot of audible “wtfs” and no laughter in the crowd. “It seemed most people felt it was in poor taste,” the witness said. Another eyewitness said, “It was just very awkward.”
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Charles, 73, was announced the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Saturday after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The queen died at the age of 96 and her state funeral is set for September 19.
