What Will Become of Royal Exiles Harry and Meghan?
LONDON — British Chancellor Rishi Sunak laid out his spring budget earlier this week, but the good news about the country’s economic future, post-pandemic, was nearly eclipsed by a statement that Buckingham Palace plans to investigate allegations of bullying by Meghan Markle when she was still a working royal.
The following day, the tabloids were torn: Some opted for a “battle of the Windsors”-style front page, while others expressed joy over Sunak’s economic recovery plan.
Barring any major world events, however, there’s no doubt who will be dominating the tabloids’ front pages in the days to come.
Tensions are rocketing on this side of the Atlantic, and not just because those bullying allegations have resurfaced after more than a year. In response, Markle said she was “saddened” by the attack on her character and believes she’s the object of a smear campaign.
Anxiety levels are also building ahead of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, set for Sunday. Many here are wondering whether they’re about to witness yet another cringe-making royal TV moment.
Will it be a Prince Andrew-style disaster, where the arrogant blue blood discussed his relationship with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein — and almost immediately lost his job as a working royal?
Or will it be more like Princess Diana’s 1995 landmark sit-down with the BBC’s Panorama show where she revealed the painful and intimate details of her marriage, something no royal had done before and uttered the famed line “there were three of us in this marriage”?
The question remains whether the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex will end up embarrassing Queen Elizabeth, or themselves, or both?
The Queen has witnessed a groundswell of public support over the past 12 months for boosting morale during the COVID-19 pandemic, and because her 99-year-old husband, Prince Philip, has been in the hospital for the past two weeks, suffering from heart problems.
Or maybe the interview will simply just clear the air.
People are undoubtedly curious to hear what Harry and Meghan’s perceived grievances are about Britain’s most famous family, the country’s notoriously nasty press, and why they wanted to start a new life as celebrity Californians.
“It certainly looks like it might be on a par with the major, disastrous interviews of the past,” Penny Junor, who has written biographies and books on myriad members of Britain’s current royal family, including Princes William and Harry, Prince Charles, Princess Diana and the Duchess of Cornwall, said of the Sussex’s upcoming interview with Oprah.
“My guess is that they’ll say some pretty tough things about the family, and about the courtiers working for the family. And I’m sure they will say some terrible things about the media,” added Junor, one of four British royal biographers and writers whom WWD interviewed.
Junor also pointed to a question that’s been playing on many peoples’ minds.
She noted that the couple had repeatedly cited a desire for media privacy as their primary reason for leaving England, “but now, having left, they’ve gone and done this Oprah interview. It’s not exactly seeking privacy.”
But not all media is created equal in the eyes of the young royals. Referring to Harry’s interview with James Corden, Junor said she was “astonished” by the prince’s benign reaction to the ugly portrayal of his family in Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Crown.”
Last year, Harry and Meghan inked a multiyear Netflix deal worth a reported $100 million, so it’s no wonder he didn’t make too much fuss. “He was speaking like a bought man,” said Junor.
Anne de Courcy, who has written about 20th-century society figures, including Coco Chanel, and who penned a biography of Princess Margaret’s ex-husband Antony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon, is expecting a mix of platitudes, psychobabble — and pontificating — in the upcoming interview.
“What makes us rather laugh over here is, suddenly, they’re talking ‘Californian,’ but most of us don’t speak woke,” said de Courcy.
“Then you read what they call their ‘mission statement.’ It’s as if they’ve cut a lot of words out of a newspaper — ‘compassion,’ ‘empathy,’ ‘my journey,’ ‘systemic change’ and ‘creative activism’ — mixed them up together, thrown them in the air, and just read them out where they landed,” she added.
Like Junor, de Courcy pointed to the hypocrisy and utter lack of self-awareness to be running away from the press one minute, and then sitting down to chat with Corden and Oprah the next, or taking a photographer along to a private moment in a cemetery, as the couple did back in November.
“The one thing the British people have always hated, historically, is any form of hypocrisy. They instantly mock it. And here you have Harry and Meghan talking about privacy and then instantly going on the show of someone with the biggest global audience,” de Courcy said.
She would argue that the couple’s hypocrisy stretches farther than their lovehate relationship with the press.
“Being told to be compassionate by someone who lives in an $11 million house, who’s wearing a $4,000 dress — it doesn’t play very well,” said de Courcy, referring to a clip of the Oprah interview in which Meghan is wearing a long black Armani wrap dress, and one of Princess Diana’s diamond bracelets.
She also believes the interview should be postponed, given Prince Philip’s illness. Earlier this week, British media reported that the prince had a successful procedure for a preexisting heart condition, although he remains in the hospital.
“It’s a very bad time to have this interview go out, with the Duke of Edinburgh being in hospital. If his health should continue to deteriorate, it would rebound very unhappily on Harry,” said ►
Royal biographers and writers share their thoughts about the California royals ahead of a much-hyped interview with Oprah Winfrey to be aired on March 7.