"Of course, I wish I had never met him," Mette-Marit said in a 20-minute joint interview with Crown Prince Haakon. "I feel so manipulated. And when you are manipulated, you don't realise it from the start. 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 said.
READ MORE: Epstein scandal deals new blow to Norway's crown princess
Mette-Marit said she could not remember the context of her most controversial email to Epstein, which surfaced as part of a dump of Epstein evidence by the US Department of Justice.
In the 2011 mail Mette-Marit told Epstein that she had “Googled” him, adding, “it didn’t look too good” along with a smiling emoji.
"I've spent a lot of time figuring that out myself. I wish I had the rest of that email correspondence. I don't know what I found, and I don't know if it was information he had asked me to Google. I wish I had remembered what it was, it would probably have made my life a little easier now," she said.
"It is extremely important for me to acknowledge that I did not look into his past more carefully, and also to acknowledge that I was manipulated and deceived to such an extent," she said. "But if I had found information that made me realise that he was an abuser and sex offender, I wouldn't have written a smiley face behind it."
She also tried to end speculation about her relationship with Epstein. "It was a friendly relationship: above all, he was a friend to me. But if your question is whether the relationship had another nature, the answer is no," she added.
Crown Prince Haakon said in the interview that he knew about the contact between Epstein and Mette-Marit, and that he understood that she broke off contact with him when she felt she was being exploited.
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