This week, five of Meghan Markle’s “best friends” gave an interview to People magazine where they refuted a lot of the nastiest rumours about the Duchess of Sussex.
The anonymous friends debunked many of the “lies and untruths” reported about the former actress, from her rumoured reputation as a “diva” to her freezing out of her father and half-siblings.
While Meghan is super lucky to have such loyal friends, this somehow appears to be more than that.
As royal watchers, including those at California newspaper The Mercury News, have theorised: this interview could be part of a strategy by Meghan and her camp to refute the rumours running rampant about her. And we happen to agree.
It makes so much sense that Meghan, and probably her husband Prince Harry, would have played a part in this People interview.
At the moment, Meghan cannot stand up for herself.
She cannot hit back at all the unsourced slurs.
She can’t come out with public statements responding to each and every insistence from an unnamed “insider” who claims that she’s a diva, who’s fighting with her family, and whose “rift” with her sister-in-law Kate is causing a “feud” between her husband and his brother William.
It’s simply not the royal way.
Instead, she has to stay silent, and smile for the cameras at her public appearances while the latest barb from her sister Samantha Markle is thrown from across the Atlantic.
Samantha Markle got called out for her attacks by Piers Morgan ahead of the royal wedding.
So what do you do when you can’t speak for yourself? You find someone to speak for you.
That’s what Meghan appears to have done. And if it’s the strategy we think it is, it’s a smart one.
By enlisting her friends to share their perspective of Meghan, she has the opportunity to get her side of the story out, without any of the backlash that those same words from her own mouth might have incurred.
This way it’s not Meghan defending herself – something in it’s very act that would provide fuel to her critics and invite a tit-for-tat from her detractors that could only ever escalate and muddy her reputation further in the process.
The narrative instead is that Meghan’s friends are coming to her defence, which manages to avoid all of the negative consequences and yet still get the Duchess’ message out clearly.
It’s also unlikely that Meghan’s closest friends would have given an interview about her without first consulting her at the very least, lest they risk losing her trust.
We don’t think for a second that Meghan’s friends didn’t genuinely believe each and every sentence they spoke, or that they weren’t using their own words, but just that Meghan’s camp may have played a part in guiding their overall message.
With this all in mind, here’s what Meghan’s friends had to say:
Meghan is not ignoring her father Thomas.
“He knows how to get in touch with her. He’s never called; he’s never texted. It’s super-painful.”
Meghan didn’t start ignoring her siblings when she started dating Prince Harry.
“[Samantha and Thomas Jr] have been made to appear as siblings who had this falling out, and that’s not the truth at all. They were not a part of her life.”
Meghan is not fake or ‘acting’.
“When you see her at walkabouts, when she crouches down to talk to the kids and genuinely has real conversations with people, that’s Meg. That’s how she engages with people and how she always has.”
Meghan is not a diva.
According to the journalist who spoke to the friends, Meghan didn’t throw a fit about a tiara ahead of her wedding day. She does her own hair, makeup and nails. She cooks for herself and Harry.
Sounds exactly like the kind of image Meghan would like painted of herself, doesn’t it?
What do you think? Is this interview Meghan’s way of defending herself?
Top Comments
Yes, you could very well be right about how she should handle this.
One of the reasons I comment about the Royal Family and Meghan is this - SECURITY.
Her white family show such disrespect in their scramble to financially clean up that they also seem unaware of the security threat their comments could create.
Meghan has joined probably the most targeted family in Europe at least - that's something she now has to bear and is probably weighing on her mind every time she sets foot outside her door.
Their careless comments enforce the notion that "she probably deserves it" such is the palatable hatred that underlies their nagging criticisms.
In addition I get the vibe that what drives their behavior is jealousy and racism.
She was "never supposed to do well" let alone become a TV star AND a Duchess married to a Prince.
Samantha Markle is barely able to contain her seething rage at her half-sister's good fortune and demands a piece of the action every time she forces herself onto the public stage.
There are unscrupulous hacks in the media who just make shit up because there's no mileage or sales in harmony .
The bastards who got at Diana are still there.
So are the terrorists who see great value in harming a royal and their admiring public.
If you take a step back for a moment, and look at the situation without the pro-Meghan filter, you'll see a lot of inconsistencies here. Meghan had a very close relationship with her Dad throughout her childhood and adulthood. He paid for her schooling (including university), and his side of the family were also the ones who pulled the strings to get her the six-week long overseas internship that is so often alluded to as her "work" in the "diplomatic" corp. There are loving letters Meghan wrote her Dad up until the time she hooked up with Harry.
The narrative that the "white side" of her family suddenly turned on her as soon as she started seeing Harry is incongruous, when it seems they have supported her all the way through her life. There doesn't seem to have been any attempt to ride on her coat-tails when she had moderate success as a cable actress. Whilst a lot of the stuff in the tabloids that the Markles have been up to indeed looks desperate and angry, I actually wonder what's prompted that behaviour. I daresay a lot of us would react without grace if someone in our own family simply edited us out.
I read Samantha would call Doria "The maid" when Thomas was married to her, and Meghan as "The maid's daughter".
Strange, I read the exact opposite, that Meghan had barely any relationship with her father growing up or as a teenager and she was not in contact with him nor wrote letters to him. Sounds more like all those are lies concocted by Samantha's side to create a narrative. A false narrative, but a narrative nontheless.
Yes, I read that too. It appears that side of the family was quite racist to Doria and Meghan, a lot of it fuelled by Samantha, and excused/aided and abetted by her father. It is no surprise that Meghan has had basically no relationship with her father since she was born. It is clear Samantha was/is a racist bully who had dad wrapped around her fingers thus he turned a blind eye to Samantha's racist bullying of Meghan. Clearly that would hurt any child that their own father would not stop racist bullying attacks against them, and clearly create a wedge which we are seeing now.
People have been saying terrible things about members of the royal family for years. Meghan hasn't been a member of the family for even a year yet, but we're thinking a special rule should apply to her so she can respond to criticism she's coping in the tabloids? Why? She's a minor player, and will never sit on the throne - so why the need to control her narrative above that of all the others?