Why Meghan has suddenly been silenced: Once a loud and proud social justice warrior, she’s now (whisper it) quite boring. Experts say it’s all part of a master plan

A man had been murdered and protests were spreading across the United States.

Traumatized Americans, sickened by violence, were searching their souls, asking what should be done. It was a fraught time, but the Duchess of Sussex knew she had to speak out.

‘I wanted to say the right thing and I was really nervous that I wouldn’t, or that it would get picked apart,’ she told students at her old Los Angeles high school in June 2020, after the killing of George Floyd.

‘I realize,’ she said, ‘the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.’

Meghan Markle seemed fearless back then.

Now, with the country stunned once more by murder – this time of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk – and with President Donald Trump visiting her husband’s homeland, Meghan’s relative silence may speak volumes.

Natalie Trice, who has spent 30 years advising clients about public relations and communications, senses a ‘scaled-back approach’ that ‘feels like a deliberate shift, but maybe not one she has decided on.’

And, Trice says, that’s a bit of a shame.

‘Right now, look at what’s happening to women’s voices, and the voices of minorities,’ she added. ‘Meghan could use her voice not just for Hollywood visibility, but for impact, to amplify others, shape conversations and challenge the status quo.’

Indeed, it’s not that the 44-year-old has disappeared in the last 18 months – far from it.

Asked in August whether there were any issues she was ‘dying’ to weigh in on but couldn’t, Meghan told Bloomberg: ‘No. I just make a choice of what matters to me, and what is important to me.’

She added: ‘If there was anything I wanted to say or felt necessary to say then I’d say it.’

Meghan relaunched her Instagram account in January and has been busily documenting date nights with her husband Prince Harry and idyllic scenes from their picture-perfect garden. Even their two children – six-year-old Archie and Lilibet, four – feature in the glossy montages: something that was once an anathema to the privacy-obsessed pair.

When the Los Angeles wildfires broke out earlier this year, the couple visited an evacuation center and helped hand out emergency food parcels.

She tried again with a podcast.

Her 12-part Archetypes series had been dropped by Spotify in June 2023 and Confessions of a Female Founder debuted in April with much fanfare, but as of today there have only been nine episodes, with the last released in June. And last month the second season of her critically panned Netflix lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan, made its debut.

Trice said that Meghan’s apparent pivot from meaty issues to soft-focus Instagram photos could be orchestrated by Netflix, which signed a deal to promote both her shows and her lifestyle brand, As Ever. 

Both the Duchess and Netflix were approached by the Daily Mail for comment, but declined to do so. 

Trice said it was a delicate decision.

‘Meghan is walking a communications tightrope,’ Trice said. ‘Say too much, she’s criticized. Say nothing, and she’s accused of being performative. It’s a classic case of “damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t”.’

Eden Gillott, a PR specializing in crisis communications, agrees.

‘She has a business brand to protect and a show built around friendship and joy that doesn’t align with political hot takes,’ he claimed. ‘By holding back, she is repositioning her voice to be more intentional, closer to the Michelle Obama model, where people lean in when she does choose to speak.’

‘Holding back’ is not a trait that many may associate with Meghan.

She often tells the story of her childhood activism, describing how at the age of 11 she wrote to a dishwasher liquid company and demanded they change their advertisements that appealed to only women to ones that targeted all consumers.

In May 2016, she said on a Comedy Central late-night show that Donald Trump was ‘misogynistic’ and ‘divisive’. He, in return, called her ‘nasty.’ She prided herself on ‘speaking her truth’, claiming to the world that there was racism inside the British royal family and championing political causes such as paid family leave and voting rights.

Meghan declared in Glamour magazine in 2017 that her heroines included Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, and trailblazing environmentalist Jane Goodall. On moving to California in March 2020, she contacted Gloria Steinem to ask her to work on a voter-registration drive.

‘She reminds me that when you have anger, you have to channel that energy into something that makes a difference,’ said Meghan at the time. ‘That’s what activism is. It’s about how we show up.’

Only years later, in 2021, the Duchess told a summit why she was so passionate about paid parental leave, insisting: ‘Even before I had any sort of privilege in my life – when my life and my lifestyle were very, very different – I always stood up for what was right.’

For a moment, Meghan even took up the mantle of gun-control activist.

She visited the Texas town of Uvalde in May 2022 following one of the worst school shootings in US history and sent a letter of support to members of the Moms Demand Action movement, founded after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. She returned with Harry in March 2024 to visit the family of teacher, Irma Garcia, who was among the 21 Uvalde victims.

But that crusading activity, too, seems to have faded: she had nothing to say about last month’s Minneapolis church shooting, during which two young students were killed and nearly two dozen adults were injured.

Once, her name was even tossed around as a possible political candidate, with Meghan and Harry reportedly meeting Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, in October 2020 via Zoom to discuss her replacing then-Senator Kamala Harris.

The rumors surged once more in 2023 when Senator Dianne Feinstein died, with speculation that Meghan might seek the seat.

Now she is adamant that the idea does not appeal.

‘No,’ Meghan said in April, when asked if she would ever consider running for office. ‘Never. Oh, God. I mean, you could say, “Never say never.” No, I’m not interested in that. No.’

Mark Borkowski, a crisis PR consultant, said: ‘Meghan has learned, the hard way, that volume isn’t the same as influence. The early phase of “finding her voice” became a cacophony – every speech, every podcast clip, every political nudge was amplified and often weaponized against her. The result? Fatigue. The media got bored of the sermon, the public got tired of the tone, and her commercial partners got nervous.’

Borkowski said she was likely being warned to steer clear of controversy, in a bid to maintain a broad appeal.

‘Netflix and her other backers don’t want noise – they want focus,’ he said. ‘A glossy docuseries or lifestyle brand can’t thrive if the headlines are dominated by political spats or stray comments about the royals. Silence, in this case, is a strategy: it keeps the attention on the product, not the controversy.’

Which leaves her, well… chatting to her friends on her podcast and TV show, and making jam?