Matt Hicks was working for an environmental consultancy firm when he landed the gig, having performed a few "small 'Harry' jobs" prior to this one, as he told Variety in 2014.

Matt Hicks was working for an environmental consultancy firm when he landed the gig, having performed a few "small 'Harry' jobs" prior to this one, as he told Variety in 2014. Producers found him through a Prince Harry lookalike website. He was one of over 100 lookalikes producers interviewed for the job.

As he told the trade publication, throughout his interview process and even upon being offered the job, he'd only been told that the show involved royal lookalikes. "On the fourth or fifth interview they were like ‘Great, so you've got the job,' and then they told me the premise of the show and I was like 'Say what?' he told Variety, adding that the idea sounded "absolutely ridiculous."

With a week to go before meeting the contestants, he was put through a crash course in becoming Harry. "They put me through learning everything there was to know about him, from his schooling, his history, his military career, his friends, where he hangs out in London, previous scandals, ex-girlfriends," he told Variety. "I just had to do a lot of research and find out everything about him so when I was in date situations and these girls asked me questions I had something to fall back on." He was also giving intensive training on activities a royal such as Harry would be intimately familiar with, such as horseback riding, fencing, etiquette, ballroom dancing, clay pigeon shooting and fly fishing.