Jeremy Clarkson issued a public apology Monday morning for his highly controversial column in The Sun denouncing Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
The apology, posted to Instagram, claims that Clarkson reached out to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex personally, as well. It comes amid a Monday morning report from Variety that Amazon is likely to part ways with the “Grand Tour” and “Clarkson’s Farm” personality after his commissioned series run up in 2024.
At publishing time, Amazon told TheWrap they were not commenting on the matter.
“I’m just not sexist and I abhor violence against women,” Clarkson wrote. View the full original post below.
“I really am sorry. All the way from the balls of my feet to the follicles on my head,” Clarkson wrote. “This is me putting my hands up. It’s a mea culpa with bells on.”
Recalling how the column, which ran in December and expressed how he hated Markle “on a cellular level” and wanted people to “throw lumps of excrement” at her, was a rush job that didn’t get a second read before filing, Clarkson added in his apology that he couldn’t believe he had written what was on the page.
“It was a slow rumble to start with and I ignored it. And then the rumble got louder,” Clarkson wrote. “So I picked up a copy of the Sun to see what all the fuss was about. We’ve all been there, I guess, in that precise moment when we suddenly realize we’ve completely messed up. You are sweaty and cold at the same time. And your head pounds. And you feel sick. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Had I really said that?”
He then clarified that the instances in the column where it seemed like he was “calling for revolting violence to rain down on Meghan’s head” were actually meant to be an allusion to “Game of Thrones,” which he hadn’t adequately laid out in the column.
“I’m just not sexist and I abhor violence against women,” Clarkson added. “And yet I seemed to be advocating just that.”
And so, he says, he emailed “everyone who works with me” across ITV, Amazon and elsewhere to apologize for the column as calls were mounting for him to be fired. Clarkson also said that he emailed Markle and Prince Harry personally on Christmas morning.
“I said I was baffled by what they had been saying on TV but that the language I’d used in my column was disgraceful and I was profoundly sorry.”
Read the full apology in Clarkson’s embedded Instagram post above.