By Richard Kay Why I fear Meghan may be playing with fire like Di did
EVER since he went public – just before Christmas – to complain about his ‘controlling’ daughter and how she had ‘ghosted’ him while also begging Queen Elizabeth to help heal their rift, Thomas Markle has remained uncharacteristically silent.
Which is why no-one expected that the next move in this desperately sad story would come from Meghan herself rather than the retired Hollywood lighting director who has repeatedly claimed she has cut him adrift.
And it is why there was such consternation in royal circles yesterday at what the expectant mother was said to have done by allowing a group of friends to speak out on her behalf through the pages of an American celebrity magazine.
Far from pouring water on the volatile situation, the intervention appears to have stoked it up. On top of that, by leaking such carefully chosen and detailed remarks about their homely life, Meghan also seems to have emasculated Harry.
Many will have nothing but sympathy for the American-born former actress, whose life has changed utterly since her marriage to the Queen’s grandson last May. Not least because the now heavily pregnant Meghan has had to endure the very public breakdown of her relationship with her father as well as personal attacks from other members of her family.
But many others will be uneasy at attempts to address separate worrying issues such as Meghan’s relationship with her staff.
At the very least, is there not something hypocritical about someone pleading with her father not to conduct family business through TV and other interviews, while allowing a group of handpicked and trusted friends – each speaking anonymously, of course – to do just that themselves?
For courtiers with long memories, such actions inevitably have uncomfortable parallels with another royal figure who felt misrepresented by the media.
That, of course, was Princess Diana who became so alienated from her royal in-laws that she believed she had no alternative but to take matters into her own hands. But whereas Diana was married to the heir to the throne, Meghan is unlikely to be queen.
And in one other strategic difference, Meghan enjoys the support and indeed affection of Harry’s family.
But bypassing the official media operatives at the palace for a cack-handed freelance operation involving friends, is certainly a tactic straight out of the Diana playbook. Unlike Meghan – and despite her friends’ claims that since her marriage she’s suffered ‘global bullying’ – Diana was rarely out of the harsh media limelight.
Sometimes Diana went too far, stretching the loyalty of those closest to her. Her decision to give that extraordinary BBC Panorama interview in 1995, for example, led to a string of unforeseen and devastating consequences. Not only did she lose her private secretary and press secretary, who resigned after being kept in the dark about her interview plans, it also motivated the Queen into forcing her and Charles to divorce.
DIANA came to regret her candour in the interview, particularly when 22.8million viewers in Britain and countless more worldwide heard her speak about what she thought was Charles’s lack of suitability to be king.
The princess had similar misgivings after she had briefed close friends a few years earlier to tell author Andrew Morton about the extent of her unhappy marriage. In the uproar that followed the publication of Morton’s book, Diana: Her True Story, several of those friends found their telephone calls were not returned and their letters unanswered as Diana sought to shore up her public image by attempting to distance herself from the fall-out.
No-one is suggesting Meghan’s situation is anything like that Diana found herself in the early 1990s, but, at the very least, using an intimate circle to disseminate such personal views as Meghan’s friends have, does suggest something is wrong at the palace.
But while Meghan is a novice royal, as an ex-actress in a leading US TV soap she is experienced at using the media.
She became familiar with the business of public relations – but there is a world of difference between promoting a TV show such as Suits and managing the profile of members of the royal family. Letting her friends reveal how she writes her and Harry’s speeches was simply naïve.
‘They do it together,’ as one friend unhelpfully put it.
The impression it gives is that poor Harry, born royal and whose entire life has been spent in the spotlight, cannot even put down a few words for public consumption. A man neutered by his wife.
That said, I suspect that Harry was a willing participant in the whole episode. Often, royal articles based on anonymous sources are officially denied but there was no such denial from Kensington Palace when details emerged on Wednesday evening.
Insiders were apparently struck by two things: the reference to an ice cream and sorbet stand which she has provided for staff, and Meghan doing her own make-up while sitting next to a heater at her Kensington Palace home, Nottingham Cottage.
THESE, they concluded, indicated that whoever spoke to the magazine had, at the very least, been a guest at the palace. At times, the picture the magazine paints of Meghan is almost one of loneliness, as well as frustration. She seems to feel that she is not liked by the public – a myth, of course, but based, I would suggest, on the hateful remarks penned online by trolls.
They certainly do not represent the views of the public generally, who have welcomed this remarkable young woman into their heart. So who are the friends who spoke out?
People magazine uses a particular shorthand to describe each of them – ‘a long-time friend, a former co-star, a friend from LA, a one-time colleague, and a close confidante’.
These could be Benita Litt, whose daughters Rylan and Remi were bridesmaids at Meghan and Harry’s wedding; Sarah Rafferty, a Suits co-star, and Lindsay Roth, a film producer and author who’s been friends with Meghan since university. Fashion designer Misha Nonoo could be another.
Despite the existence of a well-policed royal PR machine, there have been times when royals have adopted a more direct approach about media reports.
In 1985, there were so many stories circulating about their private life, that Charles and Diana made a two-part documentary with ITN.
In it, Charles denied claims that he used an ouija board to contact the spirit of his murdered greatuncle Louis Mountbatten, while Diana said she was ‘horrified’ to read herself described as a ‘determined, domineering woman’. She was so hurt by the suggestion that she confessed she found it difficult to carry out her public engagements, thinking no-one would want to see her.
How similar this sounds to Meghan’s anonymous friends talking about her habit of sending 5am emails to staff and about the unexpected departures of some of her staff.
She is, they said, an ‘incredibly organised, diligent, focused, hardworking person’, while the turnover of staff in the couple’s office is explained away as ‘all natural courses of employment’.
The problem, however, of Meghan’s estranged father remains.
In many ways, this has been a dilemma of the royal family’s making. Why on earth no proper effort was made to ensure Thomas Markle was given his rightful place in the Meghan story from the time of her engagement to Harry is a mystery.
It is all the more baffling given her yoga teacher mother, Doria Ragland, has been so warmly embraced by them.
But from the moment her father collaborated with the paparazzi for those infamous posed pictures of him at home in Mexico, to his decision not to attend the wedding, the Markle debacle has become more and more intractable, aided and abetted by stubbornness and family pride.
After such a public gamble by his daughter this week, the question now is how her sorely hurt and capricious father will respond.