Say ‘Hello!’ to the Coronation

I’m heading to London to cover the crowning of King Charles III.

(Photo by Micaela Karina)

With just three weeks to go until the coronation of King Charles III, I’m thrilled to share I will be in London covering the festivities. My diary is filling up quickly with all kinds of fun plans. I can’t wait to bring you with me for this major moment in royal history!

Here’s one bit I’m particularly excited about: I will be joining the team at Hello! for Coronation Saturday. You can read all about it in their (lovely!) announcement here. We will be stationed along the procession route, where I will be adding my commentary to their robust coverage of the ceremony. 

It is such an honor to be invited. As a loyal reader for many years, I have long-admired Hello!’s thorough and unbiased reporting on the Windsors. My stack of keepsake royal magazines includes copies of Hello! from William and Catherine’s 2011 wedding through Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee last year. (BTW: You may know Hello! as a UK-based outlet covering the royals and all kinds of celeb news. The brand has begun growing its digital presence in the U.S., working in concert with London HQ. Check ’em out here!)

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Hello!’s Royal Editor Emily Nash and I first crossed paths back in 2014, when the then-Duke and Duchess of Cambridge came to New York. She was representing the British media on an engagement with Kate; I was working at the Wall Street Journal and was the American pool reporter. I’ve followed her work ever since.

Nash has spent more than a decade covering the royal family, reporting on the birth of 10 royal babies and traveling across five continents on tour with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, King Charles and Queen Camilla, as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As the coronation nears, I wanted to chat with her about how she got into royal reporting, how she approaches the beat (that’s the journalism term for the area of coverage), and what she is doing to prepare for this historic moment. Lots more in our conversation below!

PS: I was a guest on Hello!’s Right Royal Podcast, where we made all sorts of coronation predictions. Have a listen! You can catch all of the magazine’s coronation coverage here.

Hear ye! Hear ye!

The first episode of the So Many Thoughts Coronation Podcast is coming this weekend on Substack (check out the preview clip above!). I will email it out to paid subscribers, so make sure you are signed up.

ICYMI: My conversations with two insightful authors of newly released royal books, Sally Bedell Smith on ‘George VI and Elizabeth’ and Jennifer Robson on ‘Coronation Year.’

And here is the SMT discussion thread (with 300+ comments!) on Harry attending the coronation and Meghan staying home in California.

‘Hello!’ Royal Editor Emily Nash on a Decade of Covering the Windsors

Please note: Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

Hello, Emily! So nice to chat with you. I’d like to start by asking you to share your path to becoming a royal reporter. Was it something you always wanted to do? 

Emily Nash: I always wanted to be a journalist. I loved talking to people and I realized that if I could be paid to talk to people and write it down that I would probably be very happy. I went into newspapers as a news reporter and I did that for 10 years. I traveled the world, I covered all sorts of things from earthquakes and plane crashes to the Olympic Games, the Chilean mine rescue, really varied stories and great experiences. 

Then I fell pregnant and let’s just say that the environment where I was working wasn’t fully catering to women in news at the time. They decided that I could do the royal beat because there’s a lot more control in terms of where you need to be. You know things in advance, you can forward plan. And actually, it turned out to be a really good thing for me. I was still able to travel, but I knew where I was going, when I was going, how long I’d be away for, which was something that didn’t happen before in news.

It seemed like a strange step for me at the time. I must confess, I never set out to be a royal correspondent. It was not on my radar at all — and it has just turned out to be one of the busiest news beats going over the last few years. So much for there being a better work-life balance! But I’ve had a fantastic 10 years of traveling with them and covering their major life events and being there for the historic moments. I’m very lucky.

We met back in 2014, which feels like a lifetime ago, during Will and Kate’s visit to New York.

We were in the British Consul’s residence. I remember there being the big Andy Warhol picture of the queen on the wall. We chatted briefly, and you were probably thinking, “What is this ridiculous job that these people are doing? Following [the royal family around] around and writing about what they’re wearing and who said what to who?” You were on the other side of that for the US pool. 

I remember it so clearly! I was at the Wall Street Journal at the time and raised my hand to cover the royal visit. I had done pool reporting for a presidential campaign — but royal pool duty felt different. 

It is a very strange job as a reporter to do. You can’t ask any questions, you’re just an observer. You are purely there to observe and then relay what happens.

The thing that really stuck with me was how this room full of accomplished Brits all stood up a little straighter when Kate arrived.

I’ve witnessed that so many times. There’s sort of anxiety before someone arrives, then a sort of giddiness while they’re actually there. And then there’s this palpable sense of relief, but also joy because people genuinely, really, get something from these engagements and from these interactions.

You were working at a newspaper at the time. What made you want to move to a magazine?

I was at the Sun at that point. I switched to Hello! in 2015. That was a nice move, from one extreme to the other really, in terms of the way things are done. And I’ve been there ever since, becoming royal editor in 2017. I had perhaps thought that working on a magazine, a weekly magazine, might be a gentler pace and there might be less coverage. Boy, was I wrong!

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This has been a busy few years. Is there a moment in all of your royal watching that really stands out?

I would have to say the Queen’s funeral as a reporting experience for me. I was lucky enough to be inside Westminster Abbey and it just felt like it wasn’t real. It was like watching something from the Crown — and yet I was sitting there and could hear the music. I had goosebumps. You could look right across and see the members of the late queen’s family sitting there. And that, for me, was something I’ll never forget.

I’ve had so many great experiences, particularly on tour. We’ve seen some brilliant people working in all corners of the world. That’s the thing that I really find satisfying about the job, you are able to give a bit of a spotlight to people who might not otherwise get one. The royals do that so well. They are able to highlight really good and positive things.

With my news background, I was very used to always focusing on what had gone wrong and things that hadn’t worked out for people and sadness and tragedy. It’s lovely to have more uplifting takes on life.

I’m curious how you would describe your approach to royal reporting at Hello!. There has been a lot of talk, especially around the publication of Harry’s memoir Spare, about how the press covers the royal family and the effect it has on the people involved.

The approach for Hello! — and this goes for everybody we write about, not just the royals — is very much that we let our readers decide. We’re there to present the facts, we’re there to fill you in on what they’re wearing, to give you all the lovely glamour, but we’re also there to tell you about the day-to-day stuff that they’re doing. We are fortunate to have space to give that, quite a lot of words every week. We are able to go into more detail than the newspapers can — on their jobs, on their interests, on their charitable pursuits, for example. 

Hello! doesn’t exist in the same way that newspapers do, to hold the powerful to account. We’re there more to celebrate people. We might be accused of being overly soft on people, perhaps, sometimes, but that’s not what our readers want. Our readers want to know what they’re doing and they want to make up their own minds about the situation. 

And obviously, as any good journalist, you aim to have balance in the stories that you are telling. When there is conflict, you try to speak to both sides. But on the whole, we focus on the positive and I think that there’s definitely room for that in the news media and in the wider media at the moment, when things can be so polarized.

Speaking of polarized: One moment in Hello!’s royal coverage that really jumps out to me is your “Hello! To Kindness” campaign in 2018. It came at a time when the discourse, particularly online, took a real turn. What was behind your initiative?

We found out that Kensington Palace were having to moderate their social media boards in a way they’d never had to before because of the torrent of abuse. It was directed at both Kate and Meghan. And we decided to say to readers: Look, these two women are doing what they do, they are allowed to get on with their lives without us pitting them against each other. It was a real narrative, Kate versus Meghan, at the time. We subsequently found that actually a lot of the conflict was between the two princes rather than the wives, per se.

We wanted people to think about what they were saying, not just in media, but on social media. People have a responsibility, when they post things, to not just unleash their thoughts about someone without thinking through what the impact on that person might be. I feel that everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but we really do need to be kinder towards each other.

It’s very easy to be anonymous and be a keyboard warrior and say something for fun or for, I don’t know, attention — but I think it’s dangerous. Particularly when it’s used against women, it’s really demeaning.

Harry has been quite vocal about his frustrations with the royal rota, which you are a part of on behalf of Hello! Can you explain what that system is? 

As you saw yourself, back in New York on that one occasion, if you have access to a rota job, you are purely there to write about what’s happening in that moment. You are not making comments on the person, you are not digging into their private life, you’re not discussing the state of their marriage or anything like that. You are literally writing about, I don’t know, the King visiting an organic farm: What did he do? Who did he speak to? What was their reaction? What was the charity or the issue that he was trying to highlight? It’s that simple. 

[The rota is made up of] the national newspapers, but also the national broadcasters and the Press Association. It’s the fairest and simplest way of covering what the royal family do, and highlighting their work, without having sort of 20 or 30 people following them around.

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In the US, we call it a pool system. I was part of it when I did political reporting. In a lot of ways, it’s a logistical necessity — not every reporter and photographer can be there at every moment, so everyone takes turns being the one who goes, writes it all down, and shares it with everyone.

I think Harry’s issue with [the royal rota] is a little more complex, it’s to do with his particular concerns around certain titles who are part of that setup. But I think on the whole, it’s a good working relationship. I think some of the royal correspondents are some of the best journalists in Fleet Street. They are very good at their jobs, they are asking the questions, they know their readers want people to be held to account and I don’t think they’re unfair. These are the people who are following the royal family day in day out, who go on tour, who cover the actual engagements. 

Where I think things get a bit murkier is with columnists or commentators who are paid to give their opinion. That’s very different from the people who are reporting who are the stories. I don’t want to be naive enough to say that there’s no overlap. Of course there is some overlap occasionally. Some publications may have an angle they want to pursue. But I think a lot of the headlines, for example, around Meghan that caused the most controversy came from columnists and commentators rather than the people doing the on the ground reporting. I think it’s important to differentiate between those. 

There is another aspect of palace-press relations Harry has talked about: Behind-the-scenes briefing. What has your experience with that been like?

I can’t speak for the other royal correspondents who I work alongside, but I certainly know from my own point of view if I sat around waiting for a call from the palace to brief me or to leak something to me, I would be sitting around for a very long time. It’s never happened to me. [Laughs]

If we are given information, it’s relating to what they’re doing in terms of their public work. Obviously we’ve had situations like the passing of the queen where there was a lot of briefing around the funeral, how that was all going to play out, and that’s to help people prepare their work and carry out their jobs. It’s like any other industry where you have a communications team who are helping journalists to tell the story accurately and to deadline.

I think that in the past, there were probably slightly murkier relations between the media and the palace — certainly if you listened to what Princess Diana was saying. But in the 10 years that I’ve been doing this job, I personally haven’t experienced that.

Let’s turn to the coronation: How are you thinking about covering this major moment in royal history? 

So many thoughts, Elizabeth! I have so many questions that are still unanswered and I think many will be unanswered until sort of the eve of the coronation or the day itself. There are all the questions around the family, whether Harry and Meghan will come [EH note: We spoke before the Sussex news was released!], what involvement the children might have.

There are so many bits you want to make sure you get right. The historical elements, the spiritual elements, the ritual involved in this piece of theater is going to be so detailed, the outfits, the regalia. It’s going to take a lot of research leading up to that to make sure we get it right. 

And then there’s the who’s-who of people in the congregation, trying to spot and recognize them as they come in. I’m assuming we may not have a full guest list in advance. We haven’t had [one] with weddings, for example, so a lot of it is just seeing who comes on the day. [We can expect] a lot of celebrity spotting, a lot of heads of state spotting, which is more challenging unless you are very up on your foreign leaders. And then there’s the fashion thrown in on top! There are so many different aspects to it that we will be trying to cover as comprehensively as possible.

It’s such a unique position to be in, since the last coronation was 70 years ago! Have you studied the queen’s ceremony at all?

I do plan to go back and look at footage, that is very helpful in just looking at the rituals and the way things are done. And then you have some authority when you look at how things have changed I guess, or you can see how things have modernized. 

I think that’s going to be really interesting to see how the King makes this more personal to him. He’s certainly going to have faith leaders from different religions there in the abbey, and that’s new for the coronation of a British monarch. We’ll have a much wider representation of modern Britain than we had at the last coronation, which was full of lords and ladies in tiaras and long dresses and peers — people who were at the top of society and perhaps hadn’t earned their place in the way that NHS workers or teachers or other people might do at this next coronation.

Last question: Are we going to see tiaras on coronation day? I’ve heard conflicting reports in terms of a dress code.

Well, I can say this now and then I can be proven wrong very soon, but I feel day wear on the day — purely because you are going to have a lot of guests from different backgrounds who don't have access to a tiara, maybe, for the ceremony itself. 

That being said, they could work out a different dress code for members of the royal family so that they could come in tiara and long gowns. But I do feel that they're being sensitive to the modern age and they will want this to not look like a relic from the 1950s. There may be some sort of reception or engagement around the coronation weekend where we could get tiaras, that might be the way that they add some glamour. Of course the king is going to have the biggest amount of bling ever, the actual crown jewels on his head, so he’s going to win, whatever happens.

So wonderful to chat with Emily! You can find her on Instagram at @EmilyNashHello. Bookmark this page for all of Hello!’s coronation coverage.