Prince Harry just wowed an audience in London’s West End, by taking to the stage to sing a line from the award-winning musical Hamilton.
The Duke of Sussex, accompanied by the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, was at the Victoria Palace Theatre for a charity performance of the show on Wednesday — and he did not disappoint.
Video: #princeharry thanks the audience, cast and crew of @HamiltonMusical for raising money for @Sentebale (hundreds of thousands💰 tonight) & sends himself up by parodying the comedy King George III character. A very adept off-the-cuff riff. The energy in the theatre was UNREAL pic.twitter.com/hicafusHdJ
— Emily Andrews (@byEmilyAndrews) August 29, 2018
“You say…” he began, launching into “You’ll Be Back”, a number sung by the role of King George III — Harry’s sixth great-grandfather — before laughing and telling the audience “that’s definitely not going to happen.”
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The performance reportedly raised £300,000 for Sentebale, a charity co-founded by Prince Harry and Lesotho's Prince Seeiso in 2006 that supports young people living with HIV in Lesotho and Botswana.
Harry and Meghan took to the stage after the show to thank the cast, crew, and audience for helping to raise “a huge amount of money to change the lives of thousands of children in Botswana and Lesotho and through that work that we’re going to be doing now, we will be able to stop the generational … hand-down of the stigma around HIV.”
“Thank you so much for being here this evening,” he added, before telling the cast: “I don’t know how you guys do it every single night, over and over again.”
Meghan reportedly told actors the energy was “palpable,” adding: “It was so engaging, every moment of it.”
Hamilton tells the story of US founding father Alexander Hamilton, and has picked up Tony and Olivier awards.
Harry also told the audience that the show’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda had tried to get him to sing more, but he’d said no.
#Meghan told one of the cast that Harry loves the show and now can’t stop singing all the songs from @HamiltonMusicalpic.twitter.com/uvRCXF8hMZ
— Emily Andrews (@byEmilyAndrews) August 29, 2018
Miranda later told reporters that “you don’t often get a direct descendent” to watch a show that’s set in the 18th century, reported the BBC.
Just last month, Prince Harry also joined forces with Elton John and Nelson Mandela’s grandson Ndaba to launch a billion-dollar global partnership — the MenStar Coalition — at the 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.
The trio warned about the “dangerous complacency” that is threatening the progress that has been made around the world against HIV/AIDS — particularly highlighting a lack of awareness about HIV prevention among “hard-to-reach” young men.
“As an African man who has seen far too many people succumb to this epidemic, including my own parents, this coalition will allow men to finally fully participate in creating an HIV-free generation of the future,” said Ndaba Mandela.
About 37 million people around the world have HIV, according to the United Nations’ programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS — but a serious obstacle in tackling the spread of the disease is the stigma and discrimination that people living with it face.
According to a recent UNAIDS report, discriminatory attitudes are still held in almost all areas of society — including health, law enforcement, education, employment, family, religion, and the community.
And it’s holding people living with HIV back from seeking diagnosis, treatment, and other reproductive health services.