Crown Princess MetteMarit of Norway Fights Tears in First Interview About Jeffrey Epstein Ties Janine HenniFri, March 20, 2026 at 7:30 PM UTC 0 (Left) Crown Princess MetteMarit visits Fredrikstad Library on Jan. 28, 2026; (Right) Jeffrey Epstein in 2004Credit: Rune Hellestad Corbis/Corbis via Getty; Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Crown Princess MetteMarit of Norway expressed regret for not ending her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein sooner in a new interview She told NRK that she felt manipulated by Epstein and apologized for unknowingly giving him legitimacy through their association The conve...
Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway Fights Tears in First Interview About Jeffrey Epstein Ties
Janine HenniFri, March 20, 2026 at 7:30 PM UTC
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(Left) Crown Princess Mette-Marit visits Fredrikstad Library on Jan. 28, 2026; (Right) Jeffrey Epstein in 2004Credit: Rune Hellestad - Corbis/Corbis via Getty; Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty -
Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway expressed regret for not ending her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein sooner in a new interview
She told NRK that she felt manipulated by Epstein and apologized for unknowingly giving him legitimacy through their association
The conversation also addressed her health struggles and her family's recent challenges, including her son Marius' legal trial
Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway nearly broke down during her first interview addressing her connection to the late Jeffrey Epstein.
On March 19, the Crown Princess, 52, sat for an interview with Norwegian outlet NRK in which she addressed her friendship with Epstein. Mette-Marit was named in the U.S. Department of Justice's Jan. 30 drop of files relating to the Epstein investigation, shedding new light on the apparent extent of the friendship between them.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit sat for the interview at her royal home of Skaugum with her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, and got emotional several times during the rare media appearance as she reflected on knowing Epstein.
"It is incredibly important for me to take responsibility for not checking his background more carefully. And to take responsibility for being so manipulated and deceived as I was," she told NRK, according to an English translation.
Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette- Marit visit Fredrikstad Library to mark its 100th anniversary on Jan. 28, 2026 in Fredrikstad, Norway.Credit: Rune Hellestad - Corbis/Corbis via Getty
"But it is important for me to clarify that there is no blame on me in this situation. It is all the victims who have been subjected to the gross abuses who deserve justice," she continued, her voice cracking. "And I feel such great anger that they haven't received it. At the same time, it's important for me to say that if I've done something that has contributed to giving him legitimacy in some way, it's terribly difficult for me, of course."
Epstein, the American financier and convicted sex offender, and Mette-Marit were reportedly in touch from 2011 to 2014, which followed his 2008 sentencing in a Florida court for one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence. Years later, Epstein died while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.
Mette-Marit has been under scrutiny since the latest DOJ files were released. She used the media opportunity to share more about her side of the story and choked back tears as she reflected on her regret at staying at Epstein's Palm Beach, Florida, house for a few days in January 2013. (Being named in the Epstein files does not connote wrongdoing, and Mette-Marit has not been accused of any misconduct in connection with Epstein. She previously disavowed her association with Epstein in December 2019. She officially apologized for her friendship with Epstein last month, on Feb. 6, and also included previous details about her Palm Beach stay at his home.)
"A mutual friend of ours had borrowed the house. That's why I went there. If I may add, it is one of the things I have spent the most time processing after the serious abuses became known in 2019," the Crown Princess told NRK, before her voice cracked.
"The fact that I have been there and, not least, have a sense of guilt for the victims. I have spent a lot of time processing this. So it is very difficult for me personally and has actually been since 2019, when I became aware of the serious abuses," she continued, fighting back tears.
The Norwegian royal said she had "never seen anything illegal" during her stay at Epstein's home or in her meetings with him, and the people around him were all "adults" when they met.
"But Epstein behaved towards me in a way that I didn't like. I can't hide that," she said about the Florida trip.
(Left) Crown Princes Mette-Mairt on June 23, 2025; (Right) Jeffrey Epstein on Feb. 22, 1997.Credit: Rune Hellestad - Corbis/Getty; Davidoff Studios/Getty
Mette-Marit pinpointed that trip as the beginning of the end of their friendship, telling the outlet, "When he arrived on the last day of our stay in Palm Beach, he put me in a situation that made me so insecure that I called Haakon's house."
"But I had contact with him for a while after that. I think it was probably because he was so manipulative that he used the fact that we had a mutual friend. That I am gullible. I like to believe the best about people. But I also chose to end contact with him, and it was because of episodes like that," she continued, declining to disclose more.
Chiming in, her husband Crown Prince Haakon, 52, said, "I remember the conversation. It was a situation she was put in that made her feel unsafe and didn't really want to be there anymore. And which probably also made you think that this person doesn't like me."
The Royal House of Norway previously said that Mette-Marit cut off contact with Epstein in 2014, severing ties with an individual the Crown Princess said was someone she thought she could lean on.
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"Epstein was a close friend of a good friend of mine. So I was introduced to him through mutual acquaintances — through several, actually. And they all worked in global health and organizational life. They were people I trusted and trusted their judgment," she told NRK about how she met him.
When asked to comment on her October 2012 email exchange, unveiled in the DOJ file dump about Epstein's "wife hunt," which made news when the files were released, Mette-Marit said that it was sordid.
"It is a 'banter' between friends. There's nothing special about it. It's a friendly tone, and then it's sleazy," she explained.
"I have no desire to have these emails published in the newspaper, of course. I think it's embarrassing. And it doesn't really represent … I was in a period then where I found my role to be quite demanding. I experienced Epstein as someone I could somehow trust in a demanding phase of my life. I was very, very wrong there," she went on. "And I think one of the worst things for me is that I seem so ungrateful. So ... I think it's been quite challenging to get a lot of these emails published."
Norwegian King Harald, Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette- Marit and Princess Ingrid Alexandra attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony where Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado is the recipient of this years Nobel Peace Prize at Oslo City Hall on Dec. 10, 2025 in Oslo, Norway.Credit: Rune Hellestad/Getty
The princess wouldn't comment on her alleged October 2012 email to Epstein calling an unspecified marriage ceremony, believed to be Grand Duke Guillaume's royal nuptials that month, which she attended with Haakon, a "boring wedding," and said that it was hard for her to end the relationship with Epstein in general.
"I feel so manipulated. And when you are manipulated, you don't realize it from the start. It's information that comes to you at different times. I think I see more today how manipulated I was. Of course, it takes time to process. But there were a number of events that made me think 'this is not good,' " she told NRK. "Then I heard some more rumors that he wasn't a good person. Never that he was an abuser, but that he wasn't a good person. All of that together made me want to break off contact. But we had a mutual friend. I experienced him as caring towards this friend. That probably made me stay in touch with him longer than I wanted to."
When asked what she regrets about her ties to Epstein, Mette-Marit said that she should have warned more people that he was a "bad person."
"I regret and have thought a lot about the fact that I should have told more people that he was a bad person. Of course, I did it with my closest friends, but I have felt a lot about not warning more people," she said.
The royal maintained that she was unaware of his wrongdoings and said she saw how Epstein manipulated other people, which should have pushed her to do more.
"I still didn't know anything about all the abuse. But I had understood enough to think he was a bad guy who people shouldn't have contact with. And I had seen up close how he blackmailed others. So I regret not telling more people, because I should have," said the Crown Princess, according to the English translation.
NRK packed plenty of questions into the interview with Mette-Marit, which was reportedly limited to 20 minutes due to her health.
Before the sitdown at her royal residence, Crown Princess Mette-Marit had not been seen since late January. The palace revealed this year that she is in delicate health as her lung condition, chronic pulmonary fibrosis, has worsened. Earlier this week, a palace spokesperson shared that she would not participate in a state visit from Belgium next week as her health has "deteriorated."
The royal family of Norway has also been under stress since the start of the year, as Crown Princess Mette-Marit's 29-year-old son Marius Borg Høiby became the center of a widely publicized trial. In early February, the royal's son from a previous relationship headed to court in Oslo on 38 charges, including four counts of rape, to which he pleaded not guilty, in a weekslong trial that concluded on Thursday, the same day Mette-Marit gave her interview. A verdict has not yet been reached in the trial.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, and her son, Marius Borg Hoiby on a visit to Trondheim, during the King and Queen of Norway's Silver Jubilee Tour, on June 23, 2016.Credit: Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty
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Flicking at the situation, the Crown Princess said, "We are a family that has been in a very demanding situation in recent weeks. For us, the focus has been primarily on the family. I am the mother of a young man who has been in a very demanding situation. In addition, I have health that requires a lot of rest, and it has developed even more."
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: March 20, 2026 at 03:45PM on Source: PRIME TIME
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