Prince William is set to star in a new BBC documentary about the Earthshot Prize, airing just days after his brother’s new series about polo hits Netflix this month.
The Prince of Wales will feature in a guest capacity in the Earthshot Report, a programme hosted by Ted Lasso actor Hannah Waddingham highlighting the work of finalists for the Earthshot Awards.
A short trailer for the BBC production shows the prince asking viewers: “Our planet needs our help and every year counts, so what have we achieved in 2024?”
It will reportedly explore the ideas behind winning innovations, including the Notpla packaging company, the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, the Restor nature restoration platform and the Kenyan social enterprise Mukuru Clean Stoves.
The documentary will be broadcast on the BBC on December 15 – less than a week after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s latest foray into streaming, a docu-series about the world of professional polo, arrives on Netflix on December 10.
Prince William founded the Earthshot Prize in 2020 with the aiming of discovering and scaling up solutions to repairing the planet, with a £50 million prize fund spanning 10 years.
He travelled to Cape Town at the start of November to host the annual awards ceremony in a sustainable eco-dome alongside stars including Heidi Klum – awarding £1 million to the Green Africa Youth Organisation and the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, which is working to save the Saiga antelope from extinction, among others.
Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan’s newest project through Archewell Productions in association with Boardwalk Pictures, titled simply Polo, will follow “elite global players and offer an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the fast-paced world of the sport”, according to a Netflix synopsis.
The Duke of Sussex is known to be an avid polo player, and his friend and Argentinian sportsman Nacho Figueras told People that the series was intended to “introduce millions of people to what the sport is all about”.
“You know, behind-the-scenes, kind of like what Drive to Survive did for Formula 1,” Mr Figueras, who has been dubbed the ‘David Beckham of polo’, said. “I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens … Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a longer series that will expose our sport to millions of people.”
