When Harry Met Gaga (in My Imagination, Bonding Over the Capitol Riots)

Sometimes in life, you come across two different people and instantly know that they would get along great if introduced to each other. Maybe it’s something about their energy, or their mutual interests, or the way they both talk about the Jan. 6 Capitol riots like they remain haunted by the cold specter of what could have been. Based purely on that last criterion, I believe that Prince Harry and Lady Gaga would be the best of friends.

Exhibit A: Here’s Harry at Wired’s RE:WIRED conference this week:

Jack [Dorsey, CEO of Twitter] and I were emailing each other prior to January 6 when I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before, and then it happened, and I haven’t heard from him since.

Exhibit B: Lady Gaga quoted in her British Vogue profile:

I don’t know if people know this about me, but if I weren’t who I am today, I would have been a combat journalist. That was one of my dreams. When I was at the Capitol, the day before the inauguration, I remember walking around and looking for evidence of the insurrection.

Wow… I have chills.

I have further reasons to believe that the British prince and the Italian-American lady are kindred spirits, beyond their shared world-weary passion for civic integrity and drama. (In fact, maybe a beautiful friendship has already bloomed, dating back to that time Lady Gaga met Harry in 2015, or perhaps earlier this year, when Gaga appeared in the mental health documentary series produced by Harry and Oprah.)

They both commonly use titles — his royal, hers artistic. They are both multihyphenates: Gaga sings, writes music, dances, acts, and does professional accent work, while Harry creates content as well as impact. They both understand the complicated trappings of the fame monster — how it can open doors as well as imprison. They are both also actually around the same age, which is hard to wrap my mind around because Gaga has just accomplished so much in her years on this earth whereas I’m still struggling to remember what Harry has done recently besides appear on talk shows and visit the Big Apple with his wife and partner-in-impact Meghan.

At the end of the day, Harry and Gaga are both clearly sensitive souls with a weakness for spectacle and danger. I know I can’t make them be friends. I’m just saying I think they would find mutual, platonic fulfillment in each other’s company — and in today’s fast-paced world of high-power podcast deals and tumultuous film promotion cycles, that’s not nothing.