Photographer Alison Jackson: No one wants to play Harry & Meghan in my staged photos

Alison Jackson is a British photographer, known for staging photos of celebrity/royal look-alikes. As in, she hired models or normal people who sort of look like various celebrities or royals and she stages photoshoots. She’s 65 years old and she’s been doing this for decades. Incidentally, when I was looking for photos of Jackson, one of the first ones to pop up was a 2013 pic she took with Ghislaine Maxwell. They were both attending a performance by the National Youth Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. Fascinating, huh? Well, Jackson is making headlines this week for what she said about British people’s favorite subject: Prince Harry and Meghan. Obviously, Jackson was speaking to Richard Eden at the Daily Mail:

Bafta-winning photographer Alison Jackson – who specialises in amusing images featuring lookalikes of the rich, famous and powerful – is planning to stage a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival later this month. She has, however, encountered a serious problem.

The show was due to include doppelgangers of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but Jackson has failed to cast actors to play them with little more than a fortnight until the curtain goes up.

‘I have a couple of ‘Prince Williams’ who’ve come forward and they look quite good, but no ‘Meghan’ or ‘Harry’ has turned up,’ she tells me. The artist, 65, claims this is because the Sussexes have become such toxic figures that no one wants to play them.

‘I think that people don’t like Meghan, they don’t trust her and they think she’s an operator who sucks everything she can out of Harry,’ Jackson claims. She explains that her lookalikes ‘tend to relate to’ the person they are playing.

Jackson blames Harry’s explosive interview with the BBC in May after he lost a legal challenge over his taxpayer-funded security in Britain. The California-based prince said the King ‘won’t speak to me because of this security stuff’, but that he did not want to fight any more and did ‘not know how much longer my father has’.

Jackson tells me: ‘He’s gone too far, because every time he does a TV interview he takes some dig at King Charles, which is below the belt and beyond the pale and people don’t like it. He implied that his father might die.’

She previously had lookalikes of Harry, 40, and Meghan, who turned 44 yesterday, but says ‘they now won’t come forward’.

Jackson adds: ‘As Meghan gets more and more assertive, the lookalikes disappear. They’ve probably all cut their hair short and look different.’

[From The Daily Mail]

On the subjects of look-alikes… I’ve seen some of the staged photos done by other photographers, and they tend to just cast whatever redheaded man they find for Harry. They don’t actually seek to find people who actually look like Harry and Meghan, both of whom are very attractive. It certainly feels like if there are women who actually look like Meghan, they probably don’t want to participate in something tacky like this. Ditto with the Harry look-alikes. The guys who look like William probably have nothing better to do. Anyway, the way these people obsess over the Sussexes is really something.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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33 Responses to “Photographer Alison Jackson: No one wants to play Harry & Meghan in my staged photos”

  1. RandomThoughts says:

    Oooh. Maybe she’s the one who found the video Kate double??

    • Miranda says:

      I had the same thought…

    • Friendly Crow says:

      These people are insane. There were multiple faked photos of Kate and some impersonators and now they are like – close friend to this reporter who deals in look alikes….

      who do they think they are fooling?!? Just because they can’t keep their stories straight doesn’t mean we can’t connect the dots.

    • Friendly Crow says:

      I don’t know why this particular thing has gotten under my skin. I think perhaps because it’s so unhinged and so blatant on so many levels.

      But – he implied his father might die? That’s Harry’s unforgivable crime?

      His father is a mortal man. Potential deals with the devil aside. As such – He WILL die. At some point. Because that’s what happens to living things. No one knows how much time they have less.

      Furthermore – Charles is currently living with and fighting cancer with no talk of remission. He is elderly and while “healthy” didn’t seem to take care of himself in terms of exercise etc.

      Charles was also photographed at official events – when he would be at peak form- looking absolutely awful and as though he was in a serious steady decline for months.

      During which time, Charles refused to talk directly to Harry and seemingly would have had the men in grey – who hate Harry, want the rift to continue and make Harry jump through hoops for anything and of course lie – act as his go between.

      • jais says:

        Ha! Yes, I had the same thought. Charles WILL die. We all will die at some point. This lady sounds like she drinks the tabloid kool-aid in very very large quantities.

  2. somebody says:

    And yet, I can do a simple search on-line and find look-alikes who advertise and are apparently making money at it. Is she too stupid to do so? Why does she want to stage photos with look-alikes of any of them, anyway? Makes it seem as if something underhanded is going on with her attitude. What did she want people to pose doing so she could fake nastiness?

    • kirk says:

      @somebody – If you can readily find look-alikes who advertise on-line, then the problem is her. Or the the DailyFail duo staged a setup designed to achieve the desired negative result, in which case the problem is her (also him). If she’s truly looking for people, and not playing at it for the DF article, my guess is she’s too cheap to pay the advertisers’ price.

    • BeanieBean says:

      Gotta say, it’s a weird way to make a living. Both from doing the photography & from being photographed because you look like a famous person.

  3. Pebbles says:

    It is important to remember that Richard Eden is a social diarist. Aka a gatecrasher at big social events or red carpets and he uses his column in the daily mail to promote them.

    The jist is that these people have some upcoming thing to promote and they agree to exchange some derogatory comment about M&H for the daily mail to promote the thing. Eden gets his hate fix and clicks on his articles for the daily mail and the person gets promoted.

    Like a month ago he interviewed a black musician who has some shows coming up in October and in exchange he got some mean quotes about Meghan and how she shouldnt have spoken about the racism she faced.

    Vile people

  4. Over it says:

    These wackos obsession with all things Harry and especially Meghan will one day be a college course I swear .It Will be taught at oxford or Cambridge.

  5. Dee(2) says:

    “Jackson adds: ‘As Meghan gets more and more assertive, the lookalikes disappear. They’ve probably all cut their hair short and look different.’”
    This is weird. These people all act like scorned exes. Why are you so emotionally invested in whether or not you can find look alikes? And I agree if I looked like Meghan or Harry based off of what she’s saying, I wouldn’t want to be associated with her either.

    • Friendly Crow says:

      Since she has so much venom for the actual individuals she intends to “satirize” in photos – I’m assuming the photos she has planned are deeply vile and full of nasty racially motivated hate.

      Why would anyone who looked like ANYONE want to be part of an “artists”
      hit pieces on two individuals who have done nothing but help make the world a better place and try to live their lives in peace?

    • BeanieBean says:

      Assertive = bad. Got it. 🙄x1000

  6. Miranda says:

    “He implied that his father might die.”

    Out of frustration, genuine concern, and (at this point, frankly inexplicable) love. Meanwhile, William is constantly, gleefully briefing any reporter who will listen about who gets to come to his father’s funeral, which royal properties he and his feckless wife want, and how when he becomes king, he’s going to basically destroy what little support remains for the monarchy by doing absolutely f–k all.

  7. jais says:

    LOL. Okay.

  8. 😂😂😂.Ok now move along. Man they are just crawling out of the woodwork these days!!

  9. Becks1 says:

    This is…..weird. the lookalike thing is weird to me and then to say that she can’t find people to play H&M because of how “toxic” they are is just….well, its a bit of a reach.

  10. Eurydice says:

    Wow, this is bottom of the barrel stuff.

    • kelleybelle says:

      It sure is. What exactly is her point by saying this? She already sounds like an idiot, and now she looks like one too.

  11. Anon says:

    You know who might be available that guy who starred in “I wanna marry Harry”, I bet he has an open calendar to play a super convincing Harry.

  12. ariel says:

    Unsolicited tip for us all- don’t do cocaine and then step in front of cameras.

    Kidding. Mostly.

    is that just bad plastic surgery.

    One of my favorites in pop culture is John Waters who talked about an old friend, who had been a gangster moll (sp?) decades ago, how she has had a lot of work done and always looks surprised.

  13. Jen says:

    She says people don’t trust Meghan, all kinds of sh*t about Meghan, and then says lookalikes tend to relate to the person they’d be playing. Alison, I think it’s *you* they don’t trust, not Meghan.

  14. Nanooo says:

    Let me see if I’ve got this right. A woman who exploits the famous for cash and associates with a person who exploits children for sex is whining about two royals she’s having trouble exploiting to someone who has himself spent years exploiting said royals for cash.
    Am I right?
    Am I close?
    What do I win?

  15. martha says:

    Oh, no!

    She’s stolen Spinal Tap’s reunion album title:

    “below the belt and beyond the pale”

  16. bisynaptic says:

    “He implied that his father might die.”
    — Quelle horreur! 😱

  17. L4Frimaire says:

    This is so random. Also, wonder what she means by Meghan getting more assertive. In what way? As in someone not to be trifled with? I suspect the reluctance is not wanting to get in the crosshairs of either the Sussexes legal team, or the models not wanting to be harassed and trolled just for looking like the Sussexes. The Sussexes didn’t end up being the desperate parodies the UK press were hoping they’d be and no lookalikes who even came me close to looking as good as they do.

  18. Amy Bee says:

    I think this is a good thing. Those impersonator photos always look so cringe and Meghan is always played by a white woman.

  19. AMity says:

    She looks like her breath really stinks. I wouldnt want to work for her either.

  20. Maja says:

    Why doesn’t she photograph the people herself? Obviously she’s docked to Maxwell, other real celebrities apparently prefer to have photographers without that background and without a right-wing tabloid foothold.
    Irving Penn, Manfred Baumann, Annie Leibowitz, Herbert Ritts, Peter Lindbergh – obviously she can’t keep up with them.

  21. AC says:

    My 1st thought, Who? My 2nd thought, must be a Brit.

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