Prince Edward’s ex spills the tea on royal gay rumors & what really went down inside the palace
The Duke of Edinburgh famously told the press he was “not gay” in 1990.
Mark
Sit down, gays, because this Royals tea is piping! ????
When it comes to the House of Windsor, we tend to only know what the British family wants us to, although we just got some major hot goss about Prince Edward, courtesy of his ex.
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On a recent episode of HELLO!‘s A Right Royal Podcast, his former girlfriend and actress Ruthie Henshall opened up about her relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh, namely, what he really thought about those gay rumors. Oop!
During the ’80s and ’90s, the public began to speculate about the then-unwed Prince Edward’s sexuality while he was dating Henshell.
For a period of time, there was even an LGBTQ+ club in London called “The Queen’s Youngest Son.” And according to the West End star, her ex-BF thought it was funny… until it wasn’t.
“He got out of the Marines, went into showbiz, so therefore he must be gay,” she explained. “So there was where the rumors started.”
That said, he would “roll his eyes and just laugh about it,” until 1990 when tabloids spread a rumor that he was romantically involved with British actor Michael Ball.
The two worked closely together on Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical Aspects of Love.
“Something happened with Michael Ball in New York,” Henshall explained. “[At that point,] he sort of had enough of that and didn’t want the label and didn’t want Michael Ball to have the label either.”
It was then that Prince Edward, then 26, famously took matters into his own hands and issued a decree to Daily Mirror: “I’m not gay.” (At the time, Buckingham Palace declined to comment. LOL.)
Still, Henshell, who opened up about their five-year relationship in her new memoir The Showgirl and the Prince, maintained Prince Edward was not homophobic.
“Without revealing too much, one of his staff was gay,” she said. “He had no problem with anybody being gay. Not around him.”
According to Henshell, his main issue was that he had tired of the “persistence of the rumor” and “didn’t want his sexuality questioned in the newspaper,” nor other parties getting dragged into it.
Of course, the speculation largely died out after Prince Edward finally married his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, in 1999. The couple’s two children, Louise and James, are 17th and 16th in line to the throne, respectively.
And for his part, Ball married his wife Cathy McGowan, a British journalist and broadcaster, in 1992.
Nevertheless, Henshell said she always knew Prince Edward was not gay, especially after their first, erm, sexual rendezvous.
“No, that boy ain’t gay,” she recalled thinking. “That’s what I thought.” LOL.
Watch the full interview below.
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