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The Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, who broke the Internet with his rousing sermon at last weekend’s wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, visited NBC’s “Today” show this morning (May 22) to talk about bringing the black church into the royal event, his impersonation hours later on “Saturday Night Live” and what the royal couple said to him after the ceremony.
Rev. Curry admitted that he had some doubts about his style of preaching going over well in that royal environment.
“I didn’t know [how it would go over], but I knew that they had asked me to come, and that’s me…so, I showed up,” said Curry, who is the first African-American to serve as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and also became the first American to preach at a British royal wedding.
Curry admitted to being nervous about speaking before the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as well as several of her heirs and other members of the royal family.
“But then after that, it turned into a church, and I was speaking to a young couple who are in love,” he said. “They are so passionately in love with each other.”
He also cited Martin Luther King and made reference to slavery in his sermon, but Curry said he wasn’t worried that his subject matter may turn off his audience because he already touched base with church officials and the couple about what he planned to say during the ceremony.
Curry said he spoke briefly with the royal couple at the wedding reception and “they were very gracious.”
He’d also developed a way of learning whether his message was getting through to parishioners whose traditions demand they remain quiet and seated.
“Episcopalians aren’t known for being loud and raucous in church, but I’ve learned to be able to hear an ‘amen’ by looking in their eyes,” he said. “And I was looking in the eyes of people who were there and they were doing quiet British amen.”
Asked to comment on Kenan Thompson’s impersonation of him on “Saturday Night Live,” the Bishop cracked up as the footage was being played and christened the performance “brilliant.”
Watch Rev. Curry’s entire interview on “Today” below: