Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway broke her silence on her ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a tearful televised interview, telling Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that she had been “manipulated and deceived.” The 52-year-old wife of Crown Prince Haakon, heir to the Norwegian throne, sat alongside her husband for the 20-minute interview recorded on Thursday, as CNN reported.
The interview came after the U.S. Justice Department released millions of Epstein documents on January 30, revealing the disgraced financier’s ties to the crown princess as well as top Norwegian politicians, business executives, and diplomats. Norwegians discovered that Mette-Marit had exchanged hundreds of emails with Epstein between 2011 and 2014. The Epstein files contained several hundred mentions of the crown princess, according to CBS News.
The contact continued years after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution, as HuffPost noted. U.S. files show that Mette-Marit maintained contact with Epstein from 2011 to 2014 and stayed at his Palm Beach house for four days during a private trip in 2013. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he sexually abused underage girls.
Among the most scrutinized revelations was a released email from October 2011 — three years after Epstein’s guilty plea — in which Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein that she had googled him and agreed “it didn’t look too good,” followed by a smiley. When NRK pressed her about the email, the crown princess said she could not remember why she wrote it.
Another email exchange drew sharp public attention. In it, Epstein wrote that he was in Paris “on my wife hunt,” to which Mette-Marit replied that Paris was “good for adultery” but that “Scandis” were “better wife material,” according to CP24. The casual tone of the correspondence has fueled weeks of intense media coverage and public debate in Norway.
However, Mette-Marit also told NRK that she felt unsafe during an encounter at Epstein’s Palm Beach home and called Crown Prince Haakon about it. She has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The crown princess first expressed regret in 2019, saying she was sorry for having had contact with Epstein and apologizing for not having investigated his past.
Crown Prince Haakon sat beside his wife throughout the interview and offered his public support. “Marriage is for both the good days and the bad,” he said, as The Washington Post reported. The interview was time-limited due to Mette-Marit’s health; she suffers from pulmonary fibrosis, which causes serious breathing problems.
In a statement dated February 6, Mette-Marit apologized to King Harald and Queen Sonja for the embarrassment caused by the revelations. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere weighed in as well, saying in an emailed statement to Reuters that Mette-Marit “regretted her contact with him and she was genuinely remorseful” and “took responsibility for not having checked his background more thoroughly,” according to NBC News.
The Epstein scandal is not the only crisis engulfing the Norwegian royal family. Mette-Marit’s 29-year-old son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Høiby, who faces 40 charges (with prosecutors seeking conviction on 39), including four rapes and assaults, multiple breaches of restraining orders, and drug and driving offences, according to The Irish Times. Prosecutors have sought a prison sentence of seven years and seven months. Høiby denies the rape allegations, and a verdict is not expected until June.
The twin crises have placed extraordinary pressure on one of Europe’s most popular royal families. For weeks, Norwegian media have dissected the Epstein files, and public trust in the monarchy has faced its most serious test in a generation. Mette-Marit’s emotional appearance before the cameras was widely seen as an attempt to regain some measure of public sympathy.
Whether the interview will be enough to quiet the storm remains uncertain. The sheer volume of correspondence — hundreds of emails over three years with a man already convicted of a sex crime — has left many Norwegians demanding fuller answers than the crown princess has so far provided. Her inability to explain the October 2011 email, in particular, has drawn pointed criticism from commentators across the political spectrum.
