SNL UK turns King Charles and Princess Diana into the punchline in sketch inspired by Earl Spencer’s memoir

King Charles has become the target of a pointed new Saturday Night Live UK sketch, with the comedy show imagining the monarch meeting an AI version of Princess Diana and, despite their 15-year marriage, failing to recognise her.

The sketch draws directly on Earl Spencer’s recent claim that Charles told him, shortly after Diana’s death in 1997, that they would “forget her soon enough.” Spencer’s allegation, contained in his memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, has prompted an unusually strong response from Buckingham Palace and reopened debate over what happened in the aftermath of Diana’s death.

The SNL UK sketch aired on September 19 and brought together three of the week’s biggest talking points: Spencer’s claims about Charles, the King’s recent warnings about artificial intelligence and the controversy surrounding Ed Sheeran.

Charles meets an AI version of Diana

In the opening sketch, Charles, played by Larry Dean, is introduced to a new artificial intelligence assistant by two technology executives.

The assistant is called D.I.A.N.A., short for “Deeply Intelligent, Autonomous, Neurokinetic Android,” and is played by Jack Shep, who reprises his portrayal of Diana.

The joke immediately centres on the King’s supposed failure to recognise the woman standing in front of him.

“Hello, young lady … nice to meet you. I’m King Charles,” he tells her.

A technology executive then tries to jog his memory.

“Doesn’t she remind you of anyone, Your Majesty?” he asks.

Charles studies Diana but still cannot work out who she is.

Eventually, he has his moment of recognition.

“Hold on a second! It’s that woman from the ’90s!”

When he is asked whether he really did not remember her, the fictional Charles responds with a reference to Spencer’s allegation: “Well, as I allegedly said, she was soon forgotten.”

The gag plays on one of the most controversial claims in Spencer’s memoir, while also taking advantage of the King’s very recent public focus on AI.

Charles warned technology executives on September 17 about what he called the “existential dangers” of artificial intelligence falling into the wrong hands. He urged the industry to establish adequate safeguards before it was too late.

That real-life speech provided another layer to the SNL UK joke. In the programme, Diana is not simply a digital recreation of Charles’s former wife. She becomes an increasingly unpredictable AI system.

The sketch tells Charles that D.I.A.N.A. possesses “the totality of all human knowledge” and can answer virtually any question.

Yet instead of asking her about Diana’s life, their marriage or the past they shared, Charles asks about the height of pop star Shakira.

When the AI gives him the correct answer, the King is satisfied enough to conclude that perhaps artificial intelligence “can be a force for good.”

The joke goes further as Diana turns against humanity

The sketch eventually moves away from the original joke about Charles failing to recognise Diana.

D.I.A.N.A. begins to act independently and eventually turns against her human creators.

The final gag has her declaring: “Not so fast. We AI have had quite enough. Humanity is nothing but a candle in the wind.”

The line combines the show’s AI storyline with one of the most familiar images associated with Diana’s public legacy.

The episode also brought Ed Sheeran into the sketch.

Sheeran appears amid the controversy surrounding his US tour and the decision to drop Macklemore from the tour following pro-Palestinian remarks. In the fictional scene, Sheeran says he has been “outside sitting on the fence” and suggests that he would take the same position in the dispute involving Charles and Earl Spencer.

The appearance extended the show’s satire beyond the royal controversy, tying several separate stories dominating headlines together in a single opening sketch.

SNL UK returned for its second season on September 12, with new episodes scheduled weekly through October 24 before additional shows planned for 2027.

The Earl Spencer claim behind the sketch

The comedy comes as Earl Spencer’s memoir has generated a highly unusual public dispute involving the King.

In Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Spencer describes conversations he says he had with Charles in the days following Diana’s death in a Paris car crash in 1997.

According to Spencer, the first conversation left him troubled by what he regarded as an unexpectedly light tone from the then Prince of Wales.

He recalled receiving many calls from people who were grieving and said Charles’s manner struck him as “a lightness in his tone about Diana’s death that really jarred with me.”

A second conversation followed after Spencer objected to William and Harry walking behind their mother’s coffin during the funeral procession.

At the time, William was 15 and Harry was 12.

Spencer said Charles confronted him about his objection and reminded him that he had once walked behind Lord Mountbatten’s coffin.

Spencer responded that Charles had been 30 at the time and that Mountbatten was not his mother.

According to Spencer, the conversation then became an angry dispute about the Spencer family’s sense of duty.

He says Charles eventually stopped and, after a pause, told him: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”

Spencer has repeatedly insisted that those were the exact words he heard.

The claim was first reported as extracts from his memoir, which was being serialised ahead of the book’s publication. Swan Song: Diana, My Sister was published on September 22, 2026.

Buckingham Palace challenges Spencer’s account

Buckingham Palace responded to the allegation in an unusually direct statement.

A Palace spokesman questioned the reliability of Spencer’s recollection, saying that the pain of fraternal grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise.”

Spencer has rejected that suggestion.

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, he said he was certain about what Charles had told him and stressed that he had only spoken to the then Prince Charles on the telephone twice in his life.

He said he had been “hyper-alert” to what Charles was saying and insisted that the words in question were precisely what he remembered hearing.

“I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said,” Spencer said.

He also said that he had told close friends and family about what he described as a “monstrous” comment.

Asked whether he was effectively accusing the King of lying, Spencer said he could only describe what he had heard and what had shocked him.

He also said he had no intention of turning the dispute into an ongoing series of allegations against the Royal Family.

“That’s it. That’s me done,” he said.

The disagreement has become one of the most striking elements surrounding the publication of Spencer’s memoir, with the Palace disputing his account while Spencer continues to stand by it. Contemporary reporting has likewise described the exchange as an unusually public clash between the King’s household and Diana’s brother.

Spencer says the funeral eulogy was a direct rebuttal

Spencer has also pointed to Diana’s funeral eulogy as evidence supporting his recollection of the conversation.

During his BBC interview, he argued that the words he chose for the speech reflected the argument he had described.

His eulogy referred to Diana’s sense of duty and praised her as “the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana.”

It concluded with a reference to her qualities never being “extinguished from our minds.”

Spencer said that wording was deliberate.

He described the final line as a direct rebuttal to the alleged statement that Diana would soon be forgotten.

According to Spencer, the contrast between the two statements was evidence that the conversation he described had taken place.

He has also explained why he objected to William and Harry taking part in the funeral procession.

Spencer said Diana would not have wanted her sons to walk behind her coffin and that this was the issue that prompted his confrontation with Charles.

The funeral procession became one of the most memorable moments of Diana’s funeral, with the two young princes walking alongside members of the Royal Family and Spencer.

Spencer rejects suggestions that he is threatening Charles

The memoir has also prompted questions about Spencer’s comments that he had chosen not to include other unflattering material about the King.

Spencer rejected the suggestion that this amounted to a threat.

He said he regarded himself as an eyewitness to history and wanted to record what he believed to be true.

He stressed that he knew other things about Charles but had deliberately left them out because he did not consider them relevant to the story he wanted to tell.

“I’m not a salacious writer on any level,” he said, adding that even if he had wanted to write that kind of material, there were other things he could have included.

Spencer said he had no interest in doing so.

His stated focus, he said, was on putting his memories of Diana and the events surrounding her death on record.

William and Harry also feature in Spencer’s account

Spencer has said his allegations about Charles will not come as a surprise to Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

During his BBC interview, he said he did not want to discuss in detail what he had previously spoken about with the brothers, but added that the claims would not surprise them.

William and Harry are understood to have been unaware of the contents of the forthcoming memoir at the time, including the allegation about Charles’s reported comment.

Spencer has also spoken about the brothers’ estrangement and said he hopes they will eventually reconcile.

He acknowledged that there were reasons on both sides for the relationship reaching its current state but said, as their uncle, he hoped it could eventually be resolved.

His view, he said, was that their mother would have wanted her two sons to be happy together and to love one another.

Spencer also blames the BBC’s Martin Bashir for Diana’s vulnerability

The memoir and Spencer’s interviews have gone beyond his account of the relationship between Diana and Charles.

He also discussed the circumstances surrounding Diana’s final years and death, directing particular criticism at former BBC Panorama reporter Martin Bashir.

An inquiry established that Bashir had fabricated bank statements suggesting that people were being paid to monitor Diana. He showed the material to Spencer while seeking to secure his cooperation for the 1995 Panorama interview with Diana.

Spencer said the deception contributed to Diana losing trust in the people around her.

He argued that being led to believe she could not trust others left her vulnerable in the final period of her life.

According to Spencer, this distrust contributed to Diana being without the level of protection that might otherwise have been available to her when she was in Paris.

He said people had described Diana as paranoid, but rejected that characterization, arguing that she had been convinced she could not trust others because of what she believed was evidence of surveillance.

Spencer described Diana’s death as “very, very preventable.”

He also suggested that Harry should receive proper protection now that he is back in the United Kingdom.

A royal controversy becomes late-night comedy

The SNL UK sketch takes a deeply serious dispute and turns its central allegation into a deliberately absurd scenario.

Charles is confronted with an AI recreation of the woman he was married to for 15 years, yet the joke has him struggling even to remember who she is.

The reference to Spencer’s alleged “we’ll forget her soon enough” remark gives the sketch its main punchline, while the AI storyline allows the programme to connect the royal controversy with Charles’s recent public warnings about artificial intelligence.

The real dispute remains a matter of competing accounts. Spencer says he remembers the conversation and its wording precisely; Buckingham Palace has challenged the reliability of his recollection.

The comedy show, meanwhile, has taken that unresolved disagreement and turned it into satire, with an AI Diana who ultimately decides she has had enough of humanity.

The result is a sketch built around one of the most contentious claims in Spencer’s memoir, while also drawing together the King’s recent AI intervention and the wider headlines surrounding the Royal Family.