Prince Harry is, famously, a man who bears a grudge. And in an interview with entrepreneur Emma Grede this week, the Duchess of Sussex revealed they have that peevish capacity in common.
Grede asked Meghan on her Aspire podcast: ‘If you could rewrite your public narrative from scratch, is there anything you would do differently?’ Meghan replies: ‘Yes. I would ask people to tell the truth.’
Grede, a founding partner of Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims, replies: ‘You’re very measured about it . . . I would just get so angry if I felt like everyone was lying about me all the time.’
‘Peaks and valleys,’ Meghan replies. ‘Of course, I’ve gone through those chapters and you do a lot of work, you do a lot of self work and go, “What’s the why?” It’s happening for a reason.’
She then declared that her ‘dear friend’ Serena (tennis champion Serena Williams), told her ‘a lie can’t live for ever’, before adding with a laugh for emphasis: ‘Eight years is a long time, but not for ever.’
So what on earth can she have been talking about? To answer this, we must go back to 2017 when she was still dating Harry – the news of their romance broke in November 2016 – and they were navigating the early stages of their relationship.
It wasn’t long before Meghan quit the TV show Suits and closed down her lifestyle blog, The Tig.
The couple announced their engagement in November 2017 and were married on May 19, 2018.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex emerge from St George Chapel in Windsor Castle after their wedding ceremony. The couple announced their engagement in November 2017 and were married on May 19, 2018
There is a large number of candidates who might have incurred the not-quite-yet-Royal displeasure, including the Palace, her own half-sister, an old school friend, or even the Princess of Wales.
So whom do we think the culprit might be – and what did they say?
THE OLD SCHOOL FRIEND: Meghan knew of royals
Ninaki Priddy was Meghan’s Maid of Honour at her first wedding to producer Trevor Engelson and says they were best friends since childhood.
In 2017 she cast doubt on Meghan’s claim in her engagement interview that she ‘never looked up her husband online’ and didn’t really know who he was.
Meghan repeated these claims in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey: ‘I didn’t grow up knowing much about the Royal Family . . . It wasn’t something we followed’.
And she sticks with that line in the Netflix documentary on the couple which followed, claiming she had no idea who ‘Prince Haz’ was before being introduced. ‘Did I Google him? No!’
Childhood friends remember things differently, however. Priddy shared a picture of Meghan posing outside Buckingham Palace as a child and said: ‘She was always fascinated by the Royal Family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0’.
She added: ‘She had one of Princess Diana’s books [Diana: Her True Story] on her bookshelf, and even when she was with Trevor she told me she wanted to go and stay in London for at least a month. I know she used to love The Princess Diaries films.’
Her account was backed up by the mother of Suzy Ardakani, one of the duchess’s high school friends, who has described how she taped Diana’s wedding and, years later, would watch it with her daughter and Meghan.
IS THIS THE LIE?
The timings certainly fit, and Priddy’s account was instantly damaging to Meghan’s credibility. But surely this has fallen too far into obscurity for Meghan to be bothering herself about it now.
THOMAS MARKLE: I didn’t pose for paparazzo
Meghan pictured with her father Tomas, who she felt let her down by collaborating with paparazzo before her marriage to Harry
Meghan has spoken of how let down she felt in 2018 when her father Thomas apparently collaborated with a paparazzo just before she married. He told Meghan he hadn’t posed for pictures – even though footage showed him chatting to photographers, and bringing his own tape measure to make it look like he was being fitted for his wedding suit. The sum he seemingly made from this debacle was said to be small: around $1,500.
The humiliation was intense for Meghan. And it only got worse. While her father had said he looked forward to walking her down the aisle, this did not happen. Just after it emerged he had staged the pictures, TMZ, a Los Angeles celebrity website and TV broadcaster, said Mr Markle could not go to the wedding because he needed heart surgery.
In the couple’s Netflix documentary, Meghan said she ‘found out that [he’s] not coming to our wedding through a tabloid’. It is thought they haven’t spoken since.
IS THIS THE LIE?
Surely this is one of the most consequential falsehoods in her life – a lie which continues to burn to this day. In her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan disclosed she and her father were still estranged, sharing that she felt she had ‘lost my father’.
THE PRINCESS OF WALES: Who made who cry over bridesmaids’ dresses?
The Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte on Harry and Meghan’s wedding day in 2018. A newspaper report six months later suggested Meghan made Kate cry after they clashed over the wearing of tights with the bridesmaids’ dresses
Has ever a simple bridesmaid dress proved so notorious? So who made who cry over Princess Charlotte’s gown for Harry and Meghan’s wedding: Kate or Meghan?
A newspaper report in November 2018, six months after the wedding, suggested Meghan made Kate – who had not long given birth to Prince Louis – cry after they clashed over the wearing of tights with the bridesmaids’ dresses. Kate allegedly felt the bridesmaids should have their legs covered as a matter of protocol.
Meghan, clearly most annoyed by the report, told Oprah in 2021 that it had been the other way around: Kate had made her cry, but had sent flowers and apologised.
She said: ‘She [Kate] was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised. And she brought me flowers. I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that, because she apologised.’
Harry, though, later ‘set the record straight’ at length in his book, Spare, saying the issue was actually with the fit of Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress. Meghan had a tailor standing by to make alterations, yet Kate hadn’t been willing to make use of them, he claimed.
Later, he said he’d found his bride-to-be crying on the floor.
Harry wrote that he, Meghan, William and Kate had discussed the report. ‘Kate got things rolling straightaway by acknowledging that these stories in the papers about Meg making her cry were totally false. “I know, Meghan, that I was the one who made you cry”,’ Harry quoted his sister-in-law as saying.
It’s what comes next, however, that’s perhaps more significant in decoding what Meghan may feel was the big lie of this period: why no one defended her against media criticism.
Harry said Meghan ‘appreciated’ Kate’s apology, but then asked what was being done to correct the issue. He writes: ‘Why haven’t they phoned this execrable woman [respected Daily Telegraph journalist Camilla Tominey] who wrote this story, and demanded a retraction? Kate, flustered, didn’t answer, and Willy chimed in with some very supportive-sounding evasions, but I already knew the truth.
‘No one at the Palace could phone the correspondent, because that would invite the inevitable retort: “Well, if the story’s wrong, what’s the real story? What did happen between the two duchesses?” And that door must never be opened, because it would embarrass the future queen.’
So was Meghan sacrificed on this great ‘lie’ about the dress in order that Kate must be perceived to never do anything wrong?
IS THIS THE LIE?
The timing may be out by a few months – but everything else is right. Some years later, in the Netflix documentary, Meghan showed she was clearly still very upset. Why? Because of what it said about the Palace and their agenda, which both she and Harry believe has always been unfairly pro-Kate and William, and anti-them.
She said: ‘What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do but that happened to me. And the people who were part of our wedding were going to our comms team and saying: “I know this didn’t happen. I don’t have to tell them what actually happened”.’
Harry went on to say: ‘Where more depth was required or perhaps a stronger shoulder of support from the Duchess of Cambridge’s side, we saw that that didn’t happen, over and over again.’
SAMANTHA MARKLE: ‘Meghan the hypocrite’
Meghan Markle with her half sister Samantha at Samantha’s graduation in 2008
The glow of true love suffuses most commentary about Harry and Meghan in 2017. Except where it comes to Meghan’s half-sister, Samantha, who dubbed her Princess Pushy and accused her of being unkind to their father.
In February 2017, Samantha attacked Meghan’s now defunct lifestyle website, The Tig, saying: ‘There is so much more to focus on in the world than shoes and handbags’, and accused Meghan of ‘hypocrisy’ for claiming to be a humanitarian activist. She added: ‘Meghan Markle needs to practise what she preaches or change her speeches.’
However, earlier this year a defamation case against Meghan by Samantha was thrown out of court in Florida after the judge ruled public statements from the Duchess were ‘substantially true’.
IS THIS THE LIE?
Surely not because there are no ‘peaks and valleys’ where the Markle family goes – only deep valleys.
In the Netflix documentary, Meghan said she knew little about her half-sister, saying: ‘My half-sister, who I hadn’t seen for over a decade, and that was only for a day and a half, suddenly it felt like she was everywhere . . . I don’t know your middle name, I don’t know your birthday, and you’re telling people that you raised me and you’ve coined me “Princess Pushy”?’
Meghan added: ‘The last time that I saw her I remember was when I was in my early 20s. I hadn’t had a fallout with her; we didn’t have a closeness to be able to have that.
Clearly, Meghan’s moved on from this ‘lie’, so surely it can’t be one that still rankles.
OR IS IT THE SILENCE FROM THE PALACE?
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry attending the Invictus Games in Toronto in 2017. There was online criticism of Meghan for apparently embarrassing the royals by wearing ripped jeans to the event
Sources close to the Duchess say that the ‘lie’ is actually a general sense she feels that the Palace failed to stick up for her and correct false stories about her which amounted to a narrative that she was not a good person.
I’m told: ‘She meant in general – not one specific moment.’
Among the stories which she has objected to – but which the palace were silent on – are ‘Tiara-gate’ and the bullying allegations, sparked by the Sussexes high staff turnover.
In the summer of 2017, there was online criticism of Meghan for apparently embarrassing the royals by wearing ripped jeans to the Invictus Games. Harry thought Meghan should have been better defended, as he said all her clothing had been approved by the Palace, a fact which was not wielded against the negative coverage.
‘A single declaration in defence of Meg would have been enough to make a tremendous difference,’ he wrote in Spare.
Then in early 2018, came Tiara-gate. Several books reported that there had been a row between Harry and the late Queen’s dresser Angela Kelly over which tiara Meghan would be offered to wear on her wedding day.
Harry was widely reported to have raged: ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets’ when they were offered a tiara from the Royal Collection which was not her first choice. The Queen was said to have been displeased with Harry over this ‘rudeness’.
In Spare he said that actually Ms Kelly was the problem, by not responding to requests to get the tiara in order to practise with a hairdresser. He said that when Kelly handed the tiara over she: ‘fixed me with a look that made me shiver. I could read in her face a clear warning. ‘This isn’t over.”’
Another occasion which frustrated Meghan and Harry was the way the ‘bullying’ probe was handled by the Palace. It was reported that one of their former top aides had made a complaint in 2018 about bullying by the Duchess, claiming that she allegedly drove two personal assistants out of the royal household and undermined the confidence of a third.
In March 2021, the palace announced they would investigate allegations that Meghan, dubbed ‘Duchess Difficult’ was a bully, but would not be sharing the results of the inquiry.
Sources close to the Sussexes said they were ‘disappointed’ that the results would not be made public. They have firmly and consistently denied any bullying, with the claims being described by their lawyers as “misleading and harmful misinformation”.
IS THIS THE LIE?
This one fits like a glove! Meghan’s pointed observation on Emma Grede’s podcast that: ‘I would ask people to tell the truth’ – note, not one person but people, can very easily be read as a barb aimed at those in the Palace who allowed negative narratives about the Duchess to flourish.
As she told Oprah in 2021: “I don’t know how they could expect that, after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that The Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us.”
She added: ‘It was only once we were married and everything started to really worsen that I came to understand that, not only was I not being protected, but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family.
‘They were not willing to tell the truth to protect myself and my husband.’
