Pranksters claim they tricked Tucker Carlson into an interview over edited British royals photo

Tucker Carlson seems to have been taken in by a prank about the heavily edited Mother’s Day photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her children.

YouTube pranksters Josh Pieters and Archie Manners claimed to have duped the former Fox News host into believing he’d scored an interview with a Kensington Palace digital content producer who had been fired for poorly editing the family’s photo. In a video posted on X on Thursday, the duo show Manners posing as the disgruntled employee, faking palace employment papers and engineering what is ostensibly the “original” of the now-infamous photo.

According to the video, the fake employment contract Manners and Pieters drew up included a clause that stipulates that if an employee fails their probationary period, the employer can amputate one limb of its choosing — a detail that Carlson’s team apparently did not notice.

Manners was then interviewed by Carlson via teleconference from a studio in London. The duo told Deadline that they posted their video ahead of Carlson because they did not want to spread disinformation. Per Deadline:

The video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times on X, and Carlson has not posted the interview to his streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network. (His network did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MSNBC.)

Over the years, Carlson has promoted debunked conspiracy theories and platformed ridiculous claims as part of an attempt to craft an image as a warrior who’s fighting the “elite ruling class.” For example, who could forget his baffling interview with a man who claimed to have done drugs and had sex with former President Barack Obama?

It’s unclear if Carlson would’ve released the interview had the pranksters not gone public with it, but it’s entirely plausible that he would’ve had no qualms about airing it — whether or not he believed it to be true.