DUCHESS’S CLOSEST CONFIDANTE ‘TRIED TO FIX PRESS ARTICLE’
ONE of Meghan’s best friends once intervened to try to fix a ‘favourable’ press article for the Duchess of Sussex, it has been claimed.
Canadian fashion stylist Jessica Mulroney tried to ‘influence’ an interview that former Meghan adviser Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne had granted the Mail on Sunday. The claim is part of the newspaper’s case that the duchess was well versed in the art of attempting to manipulate what was written about her.
She has complained about her father allowing parts of a letter she wrote to him to be published in the Mail on Sunday. But the paper says Thomas Markle only did so after Meghan had colluded in an article with People magazine. Mrs Mulroney’s intervention was given as an example of Meghan using friends to influence what was written about her.
The duchess and her style guru are said to have been in touch after Kensington Palace was informed by the Mail on Sunday about its interview with Mrs Nelthorpe-Cowne, a former friend and adviser.
The court papers say Meghan ‘caused or permitted a close friend to seek to influence what is published about her in the media’. They said Mrs Mulroney tried to intervene in relation to the interview.
A Mail on Sunday journalist had notified the Palace about the contents of the story. The paper’s lawyers suggest Meghan then passed this message on to Mrs Mulroney ‘with a request that she intervene to
try to ensure that a more favourable article was published’.
Later that day – April 7, 2018 – Mrs Mulroney wrote to Mrs NelthorpeCowne ‘putting pressure on her to withdraw or change statements’, it was claimed. Defence lawyers stated they would seek ‘disclosure’ of all of Meghan’s communications relating to this intervention and any other occasions in which she had permitted her friends to provide information to the media to influence what is published about her.
Mrs Mulroney, the daughter-in-law of former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney, met Meghan while working on the TV drama Suits. Known as ‘Toronto’s answer to Gwyneth Paltrow’, she is a social media star and is married to a friend of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.