
Stephen Colbert has found himself on the receiving end of a legal threat from a woman who’s rumored to have had an affair with Prince William.
Lawyers for former model Lady Rose Hanbury, Marchioness of Cholmondeley confirmed Friday that they sent a legal notice to The Late Show in response to jokes Colbert made earlier this month on his show.
Although rumors of an alleged affair between William and Hanbury have circulated for several years, they’ve resurfaced amid the fevered speculation surrounding Kate Middleton’s absence from the public eye following her reported abdominal surgery earlier this year. Hanbury, through her lawyers, has denied the alleged affair, calling the rumors “completely false.”
It was during his monologue on the night of March 12th that Colbert joked of Prince William’s rumored affair, “I think we all know who the other woman is… Say it with me: the Marchioness of Cholmondeley.” He went on to mock her title, calling her “the Marching Band of Chicanery.”
Hanbury has since sent a legal notice to The Late Show in response to his comments, directly blaming the show for spreading the rumor further.
“The rumor appears to have entered into the mainstream media recently as a result of another joke made about it on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Hanbury’s lawyers said in a statement. “We have written on our client’s behalf to CBS and various other reputable media organizations to confirm that the allegation is false.”
This is not the first time one of Colbert’s monologues has generated controversy. In 2017, he faced backlash for remarks made about then-President Trump that some found homophobic, causing the hashtag #FireColbert to trend. He apologized on air two days later, saying, “I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be.”
Colbert is back with new episodes on Monday, so we’ll see if he addresses this latest development. Maybe he can even get some legal advice from his Monday guest former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.