Meghan Markle ‘met her match’ after meeting with Mariah Carey, PR expert says

Meghan Markle ‘met her match’ in ‘diva’ popstar Mariah Carey and ‘would have discovered who was the power in the room’ during her interview with the music legend for the second episode of her Archetypes Spotify podcast, a PR guru has told MailOnline today.

The Duchess of Sussex dropped another string of ‘truth-bombs’ in the latest episode released today – including that she was only treated like a ‘black woman’ for the first time when she began dating Prince Harry, and that ‘things really shifted’ for her after she entered royal life. 

But during her interview with Mariah, the former Suits star was branded a ‘diva’ by Ms Carey, before the singer quickly reassured her that she was referring to her posture her clothing and her ‘gorgeous ensembles’ – and not her personality – the duchess claimed.

Speaking to MailOnline today, one PR expert suggested that the duchess would have ‘met her match’ in Mariah – who has her own ‘diva reputation’ – and ‘would have been given a lesson on star power’. Mark Borkowski added: ‘She has met the diva. Meghan would have discovered who was the power in the room. Mariah and her people will have given Meghan a lesson on star power.’ 

Meghan and Mariah talked about the ‘complexities surrounding the word diva’ and the negative connotations associated with it before Ms Carey accused the duchess of being a ‘diva’.

‘I think that’s really important for people to remember that there might be this persona, and yes, the diva thing, we can play into,’ said Meghan during the podcast, before adding: ‘It’s not something I connect to.’ However, Mariah was quick to disagree with the duchess, insisting: ‘You give us diva moments sometimes, Meghan, don’t even act like (you don’t)’.

Meghan then later claimed in her podcast that Mariah was complimenting her by calling her a diva, adding: ‘My fangirling was tempered today. I kind of think she could tell. But that aside, it was all going swimmingly, really well, until that moment happened, which I don’t know about you, but it stopped me in my tracks. When she called me a diva. You couldn’t see me, obviously, but I started to sweat a little bit and started squirming in my chair in this quiet revolt, like ‘wait, no, what, how could you? That’s not true, why would you say that?’

‘My mind was genuinely just spinning with what nonsense she must have read or clicked on to make her say that, and I just kept thinking in that moment was my girl crush coming to a quick demise? Does she actually not see me?

‘So, she must have felt my nervous laughter, and you would’ve all heard it too, and she jumped straight in to make sure I was crystal clear when she said diva, she was talking about the way that I dress, the posture, the clothing, the quote, unquote fabulousness, as she sees it. She meant diva as a compliment, but I heard it as a dig, I heard it as the word diva as I think of it, but in that moment as she explained to me, she meant it as chic, as aspirational, and how one very charged word can mean something different for each of us, it’s mind-blowing to me.’

Meghan continued: ‘It actually made me realise, and in these episodes as I’ve opened the door for conversations surrounding archetypes that try to hold us back, what I hadn’t considered is that for some, reclaiming the words is what they feel will propel us forward.’

Buckingham Palace were braced for more bombshells hurled by Meghan after yesterday’s interview with The Cut threatened to deepen Meghan and Harry’s rift with the Windsors. 

Meghan and Mariah’s discussion about being mixed race came after Meghan claimed she didn’t want her children photographed because of racism.

She said yesterday: ‘Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child? You tell me how that makes sense and then I’ll play that game’. 

In the podcast, Mariah Carey told Meghan about her childhood, saying: ‘I didn’t fit in, it would be more of the black area of town, or then you could be where my mom chose to live, where the more white neighbourhoods and I didn’t fit in anywhere at all.’

Meghan replied: ‘Yeah. I understand that.’

Carey described how she was teased by a boy at school for having only three shirts and wearing them on rotation, adding: ‘It was true.’

The singer added: ‘In a world where you’re the mixed kid of a full-on white neighbourhood that’s what you get.’

The duchess replies: ‘This is part of why when I was putting this conversation together I had to talk to you. Of course I had to talk to you. You were so formative for me. Representation matters so much.’

Mariah Carey and the Duchess of Sussex compared stories about dealing with their hair when younger.

Meghan said on the podcast: ‘Because my hair is so curly and it’s so, so thick, I just remember as a child – because my mom’s black – and so my grandma Jeanette would do my hair, she’d go ‘Just hold onto the sink’.

‘And I would grip my little hands on both sides – so you would have no luxury of being tender-headed because she would take the brush and just go whoosh, whoosh.’

Titled The Duality Of Diva With Mariah Carey, Meghan talks with the pop superstar about the ‘complexities surrounding the ‘diva” and the negative connotations associated with the word.

Carey tells Meghan: ‘I’m MC, you can call me Mimi, you can call me Mariah, whatever you want.’ The duchess began the conversation by asking the name of Carey’s dogs – Cha Cha and Muttley P Gore Jackson.

Last Tuesday she used episode one of Archetypes with Serena to take a veiled swipe at life in the Royal Family. She also recounted her horror at a time a small ‘fire’ broke out in son Archie’s room during a tour of South Africa.

The then-four-month-old was not in the room at the time that a heater began to smoke but it left duchess ‘shaken’ and ‘in tears’, she told her friend. Despite her upset, she said she was forced to continue with the couple’s official engagements.

Yesterday, in a 6,400-word magazine article to promote the podcast, the Duchess of Sussex made a series of apparent swipes at the royals, warning she could ‘say anything’ now that she has left the Firm.

Meghan, 41, even suggested Prince Harry felt he had ‘lost’ his father over his decision to quit his public duties. But in an extraordinary clarification last night, allies of the couple said the duchess had actually been referring to the breakdown of her relationship with her own father.

Meghan told The Cut magazine: ‘Harry said to me, ‘I lost my dad in this process.’ It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that’s his decision.’ Yesterday a source close to Prince Charles said he would be saddened if Harry felt their relationship was lost, adding: ‘The Prince of Wales loves both his sons.’

In further shock claims, Meghan said the couple felt forced to leave Britain because ‘just by existing, we were upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy’, while Harry, 37, made his own jibe at the royals, saying: ‘Most people that I know and many of my family, they aren’t able to work and live together.’

And the duchess also claimed a South African member of the cast of the West End production of The Lion King told her: ‘When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison.’

In addition, the interview saw Meghan:

• Refer to her and Harry as being ‘like salt and pepper’ because they ‘always move together’;
• Say she has ‘never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking’ but she is ‘still healing’; 
• Claim she faced problems in the UK from being an American, not necessarily a black American;
• Say she has made an ‘active effort’ to ‘forgive’ 

The couple have given a series of interviews since starting their new life in California, including the notorious Oprah Winfrey interview in which Harry claimed his father had stopped taking his calls.

In the latest interview with New York magazine The Cut, Meghan was asked if her relationship with the royals and with her own family could be healed.

She replied: ‘It takes a lot of effort to forgive. I’ve really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything.’

But her apparent description of Harry’s relationship with his father Prince Charles threatened to cause fresh hurt.

She told interviewer Allison P Davis: ‘Harry said to me, ‘I lost my dad in this process’. It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that’s his decision.’

Later a source told the New York Post she had meant she did not want Harry to lose his own father.

And journalist Omid Scobie, who co-wrote a flattering biography of the Sussexes and is close to the couple, tweeted: ‘There seems to be confusion in some headlines about this quote in The Cut interview.

‘I understand that Prince Harry is actually referring to Meghan’s loss of her own father, and Meghan is saying she doesn’t want Harry to lose his.’

Asked about the confusion regarding Meghan’s comment, The Cut declined to comment.

A source added: ‘This line is a direct quote from Meghan’s interview with Allison, and as a general rule, we don’t comment or speculate on sources’ intent outside of the text of the story.’ Meghan said she and Harry felt they had to leave Britain because of negative media coverage, including of their £2.4million refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.

‘Meghan, you give us diva moments!’ Duchess ‘laughs nervously’ as Mariah Carey insists she deserves the title in a podcast interview… before clarifying it’s because of her ‘clothes and posture’

Meghan Markle was called a ‘diva’ by Mariah Carey in the second episode of her Archetypes podcast on Spotify.

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, admitted she laughed nervously and was sitting in ‘quiet revolt’, worrying that her ‘girl crush’ on the popstar was ‘coming to a quick demise’ after the 53-year-old claimed Meghan had ‘diva moments’.

Mariah was quick to reassure Meghan that she was referring to her posture, her clothing, her ‘gorgeous ensembles’, according to the Duchess, who confessed she first thought her guest was making a ‘dig’.

The Duchess called on the superstar singer to support her Archetypes show following her friend Serena Williams’ episode last week. This week’s – which was released today – is called The Duality Of Diva With Mariah Carey.

Mother-of-two Meghan and the American singer talk about the ‘complexities surrounding the word diva’ and the negative connotations associated with it.

‘I think that’s really important for people to remember that there might be this persona, and yes, the diva thing, we can play into,’ said Meghan during the podcast, before adding: ‘It’s not something I connect to.’

However, Mariah was quick to disagree with the Duchess, insisting: ‘You give us diva moments sometimes, Meghan, don’t even act like. 

‘What kind of diva moments do I give you?’ a shocked Meghan replied, to which the singer said: ‘Don’t act like…’, before the Duchess questioned: ‘Can you see me right now?’

‘It’s also the visual, it’s the visual,’ Mariah explained. ‘A lot of it is the look, let’s say you, let’s pretend that you weren’t so beautiful and didn’t have the whole thing, and didn’t often have gorgeous ensembles, you wouldn’t maybe get as much diva. 

‘I don’t care, I’m like when I can, I’m going to give you diva,’ she added, while Meghan said: ‘That’s the thing, I associate it differently.’

‘Oh man, I love it, she is so Mariah,’ commented the Duchess following the segment, which the singer also insisted: ‘I was playing with you when I said that,’ seemingly referring to her ‘diva comment’.

Later in her podcast, Meghan admitted that she initially thought Mariah was criticising her by calling her a diva, only to learn that she meant it as a compliment. 

‘My fangirling was tempered today,’ said Meghan. ‘I kind of think she could tell. But that aside, it was all going swimmingly, really well, until that moment happened, which I don’t know about you, but it stopped me in my tracks. When she called me a diva.

‘You couldn’t see me, obviously, but I started to sweat a little bit and started squirming in my chair in this quiet revolt, like ‘wait, no, what, how could you? That’s not true, why would you say that?’ 

‘My mind was genuinely just spinning with what nonsense she must have read or clicked on to make her say that, and I just kept thinking in that moment was my girl crush coming to a quick demise? Does she actually not see me? 

‘So, she must have felt my nervous laughter, and you would’ve all heard it too, and she jumped straight in to make sure I was crystal clear when she said diva, she was talking about the way that I dress, the posture, the clothing, the quote, unquote fabulousness, as she sees it. 

‘She meant diva as a compliment, but I heard it as a dig, I heard it as the word diva as I think of it, but in that moment as she explained to me, she meant it as chic, as aspirational, and how one very charged word can mean something different for each of us, it’s mind-blowing to me.’

Meghan continued: ‘It actually made me realise, and in these episodes as I’ve opened the door for conversations surrounding archetypes that try to hold us back, what I hadn’t considered is that for some, reclaiming the words is what they feel will propel us forward.’

When they were planning their departure, Meghan said they asked the Royal Family if they could be allowed to work on behalf of the monarchy and make their own money, and were willing to live in a Commonwealth country to help the transition. But she told the interviewer: ‘That, for whatever reason, is not something that we were allowed to do, even though several other members of the family do that exact thing.’

In fact, no other working royals are allowed to make their own money at the same time as performing official duties.

There are fears the Sussexes are planning to ramp up media appearances, culminating in the publication of Harry’s highly anticipated memoir. Sources have previously hinted at Harry’s ‘truth bombs’, of which there may be more to come.

In the latest interview, Meghan hinted she had more to say about her life in the Royal Family, but was ‘still healing’.

She said: ‘It’s interesting, I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking… I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to.’ Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

‘My marriage was likened to the release of Nelson Mandela’: From royal jibes to new N-word claims, the Duchess of Sussex lifts the lid on gilded life with Prince Harry

Meghan’s latest interview lifts the lid on her gilded life in the millionaires’ haven of Montecito in California.

Over 6,400 gushing words, American journalist Allison P. Davis describes everything from the Soho House-branded rosewater candles that she burns to the conjoined palm trees at the Sussexes’ home which the loved-up couple compare to themselves.

In New York magazine The Cut, she even quotes Meghan telling her what to write after the duchess answered a question with ‘moaning’ and ‘guttural sounds’. But it was her and Harry’s apparent jibes at the Royal Family that caused jaws to drop on this side of the Atlantic last night.

‘I LOST MY DAD’

The interviewer explains that Meghan discussed how ‘toxic tabloid culture has torn two families apart’, an apparent reference to Meghan’s falling out with her own father, Thomas Markle, and Harry’s fractured relationship with Prince Charles.

She is quoted as saying: ‘Harry said to me, ‘I lost my dad in this process.’ It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that’s his decision.’

Her comment was widely interpreted as meaning that Harry felt he had ‘lost’ his father because of the fallout.

But hours after the piece was published, an ally of the couple came out to suggest that is not what she meant. Royal reporter Omid Scobie, known to be close to them, said: ‘I understand that Prince Harry is actually referring to Meghan’s loss of her own father, and Meghan is saying she doesn’t want Harry to lose his.’

US publication Page Six separately quoted a ‘highly placed royal insider’ as saying: ‘I’m not aware that Harry has broken up with his father. Charles gave Harry and Meghan millions when they left the UK. Right now, the family are all at Balmoral, and I’m sure they are aghast at this interview.’

Meghan’s comment was made after the interviewer asked her about a letter Thomas Markle provided to The Mail on Sunday, and the legal case that followed.

Harry’s relationship with his family became increasingly strained after he and Meghan gave an explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey last year in which he claimed Prince Charles had cut him off financially and stopped taking his calls.

WE UPSET THE HIERARCHY

‘It was bittersweet, you know? Knowing none of it had to be this way,’ Meghan said when talking about the couple’s decision to leave the UK and criticism of their £2.4million taxpayer-funded refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage.

Meghan said the couple wanted to earn their own money so tabloids could no longer attack them under the ‘guise of public interest’ because their lives were taxpayer-funded.

‘Then maybe all the noise would stop,’ she said, adding they were willing to move to any commonwealth country, including Canada, New Zealand or South Africa.

‘Anything to just… because just by existing, we were upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy.’

The couple had proposed a hybrid arrangement, mixing official duties with private commercial work but were told it would not work. Meghan said: ‘That, for whatever reason, is not something that we were allowed to do, even though several other members of the family do that exact thing.’

WEDDING WAS ‘CELEBRATED LIKE MANDELA’S RELEASE’

Meghan recalled an encounter she had at the 2019 London premiere of a live-action version of The Lion King.

She said a cast member from South Africa pulled her aside. ‘He looked at me, and he’s just like light. He said, ‘I just need you to know: When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison,’ she said.

CHILDREN ‘CALLED THE N-WORD’

Among the most shocking claims by Meghan is that her children have been called the highly offensive and racist ‘N-word’. She made the comment while discussing how she was angered by the Royal Family’s arrangement for releasing pictures of her children, which she said needed to be distributed to the media’s accredited royal correspondents, known as the Royal Rota, before she could post them herself.

The interviewer said that this ‘didn’t sit right with Meghan, given her strained relationship with the British tabloids’.

Meghan is quoted as saying: ‘Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child?’ she said. It was unclear who she was accusing of using the racist language. The couple are known to have faced abuse from online trolls.

HARRY: MANY IN MY FAMILY CAN’T WORK TOGETHER

Harry said the couple working together from their shared home office for their company Archewell feels ‘natural and normal’.

But in what will be seen as a swipe at his own family, he added: ‘Most people that I know and many of my family, they aren’t able to work and live together.’

The interviewer said he enunciated family with a ‘vocal eye roll’.

HOUNDED ON THE SCHOOL RUN

The interviewer, who apparently accompanies Meghan to pick son Archie, three, up from pre-school as part of the piece, says Meghan felt she would not be able to do the school run in Britain without being hounded by the paparazzi.

She feared it would have become a ‘royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures’, the interviewer states. Royal experts pointed out strict rules governing the press prevent taking photographs of children in education. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge regularly drop their children off at school most days without note. Any pictures published of their children are ones released to the press with their approval or taken at public events.

I’M SEEN AS ‘REAL-LIFE PRINCESS’

Meghan told the magazine she is still very aware that people see her as a princess. ‘It’s important to be thoughtful about it because – even with the Oprah interview, I was conscious of the fact that there are little girls that I meet and they’re just like, ‘Oh my God, it’s a real-life princess.’

But she said her ambitions for the little girls who look up to her are more than to marry well. ‘I just look at all of them and think, ‘You have the power within you to create a life greater than any fairy tale you’ve ever read’. I don’t mean that in terms of ‘You could marry a prince one day.’ I mean you can find love. You can find happiness.’

‘A MODEL AND A MOM’

A gushing Prince Harry told his wife she could be both model and a ‘mom’. He made an appearance to tell the interviewer how he’d had to reassure his wife after a ‘ten hour’ cover shoot the day before.

Addressing his wife he said: ‘Tell her the first thing you said when you got back last night,’ before turning to the interviewer and saying: ‘She said, ‘I’m not a model’. I was like, ‘No, you are, of course you can be a model’. And she’s like, ‘I’m a mom!’ And it’s like, ‘You can be both’,’ he said.

£11M MONTECITO MANSION

Meghan, who included privacy concerns among her reasons for quitting the UK, welcomed the interviewer into their Californian home, and she in turn described it in detail. ‘The Montecito house is the kind of big that startles you into remembering that unimaginable wealth is actually someone’s daily reality,’ the journalist wrote.

‘WE HAVE TO GET THIS HOUSE’

Meghan said they initially dismissed the property believing it to be too expensive because they ‘didn’t have jobs’. But they later went on to sign multi million-pound deals with Spotify and Netflix. Meghan said: ‘We were looking in this area and this house kept popping up online in searches.’ They did eventually view it and fell ‘almost immediately in love’.

‘One of the first things my husband saw when we walked around the house was those two palm trees,’ she said. ‘See how they’re connected at the bottom? He goes, ‘My love, it’s us’.’

Meghan said she told Harry ‘We have to get this house’ after only touring the grounds.

GUTTERAL SOUNDS

Meghan dictated how the noises she was making should be interpreted by interviewer Miss Davis. The writer said: ‘At one point in our conversation, instead of answering a question, she will suggest how I might transcribe the noises she’s making: ‘She’s making these guttural sounds, and I can’t quite articulate what it is she’s feeling in that moment because she has no word for it; she’s just moaning’.’

NETFLIX LOVE STORY

Meghan hinted that the couple’s upcoming Netflix documentary would be about their ‘love story’. ‘The piece of my life I haven’t been able to share, that people haven’t been able to see, is our love story,’ she said.

The couple are reportedly filming a fly-on-the-wall style documentary and have been spotted accompanied by a camera crew.

TEACHING ARCHIE MANNERS

Harry and Meghan are trying to teach their son manners, she revealed. ‘We always tell him: ‘Manners make the man. Manners, manners, manners, manners, manners.’

She also recalled a saying she’d learned from a friend’s mum: Salt and pepper are always passed together. ‘She said, ‘You never move one without the other.’ That’s me and Harry. We’re like salt and pepper. We always move together.’

GRANOLA BARS FOR HOMELESS

Meghan has made up black back packs containing water, peanut-butter crackers and granola bars to give out to the homeless. In the car on the way back from the pre-school run, they stop to get one from the boot and a member of the security team gives it to an ‘unhoused man on the corner’. She said they were teaching Archie that ‘some people live in big houses, some in small, and that some are in between homes’.

HINTS SHE HAS MORE TO SAY

Meghan says: ‘I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking,’ she said: ‘I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to.’ Asked why she hadn’t, she replied: ‘Still healing’.

Asked if she thinks there is room for forgiveness between her and her royal in-laws and her own family she said: ‘It takes a lot more energy to not forgive,’ she said. ‘But it takes a lot of effort to forgive. I’ve really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything.’

Bizarre, often unintentionally hilarious, but her warblings also have an unmistakable undertone of cool menace: It’s hard to know where to begin to unpick Meghan’s extraordinary statements, writes REBECCA ENGLISH

ByRebecca English Royal Editor For The Daily Mail

Her behaviour ranges from the unintentionally hilarious (likening herself and Harry to entwined palm trees and matching salt and pepper shakers), to the downright bizarre (handing a pre-prepared backpack – unprompted – to a homeless person she comes cross on the school run via her bodyguard).

But there is an undertone of cool menace in the Duchess of Sussex’s latest extraordinary interview with American lifestyle magazine The Cut.

‘It’s interesting, I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking,’ she notes at one point, adding: ‘I’ve really made an active effort [to forgive], especially knowing that I can say anything.’

Even the interviewer notes that her voice is ‘full of meaning’. Meghan goes on: ‘I have a lot to say until I don’t. Do you like that? Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song.’

The language may be strangulated but her message is crystal clear: the Royal Family – her in-laws – had better watch their backs. She makes the not-so-subtle impression that her treatment by the British establishment – which she feels was different to any other member of the Royal Family in history – was because of race.

This observation is followed by a deliberately knowing but ever so slightly wistful look into the distance as if to emphasise her ‘regret’ at all that has been lost – not that any of it was her fault.

It’s hard to know where to begin to unpick Meghan’s extraordinary warblings in the first leg of what promises to be an extensive publicity junket to mark her new commercial endeavours, from her Spotify podcast to a Netflix documentary.

How you read them probably depends on your existing view of the famously divisive Duchess of Sussex. Deluded, narcissistic, manipulative… all words I heard yesterday to describe her musings. Others saw it as a ‘brave, powerful and incisive’.

While Meghan is given plenty of scope to express her opinions on everything from life in The Firm to her plan to get back on Instagram, the interviewer, Allison P Davis, isn’t slavishly flattering.

The point where she describes Meghan’s ‘suggestion’ that she might transcribe the ‘guttural’ moaning noises she is making is laugh-out-loud comedy.

Davis is also astonished at Meghan and Harry’s decision to accept a free stay in a Hollywood mansion from actor and film-maker Tyler Perry, a man they had never met, before deciding to buy a £10million Montecito mansion they hadn’t even seen inside.

She also acknowledges the duchess’s shrewd efforts to turn her apparent ‘hardship’ as a working royal ‘into content’. Ouch. But she fails to pull her up on some of her more, shall we say, surprising claims.

Meghan is perfectly entitled to hold whatever view she wishes about the UK media but perhaps it would be better to base that view on facts.

She suggests that she could never have done the school run in the UK because the British media would have ’40’ photographers stationed in a media pen at the gate daily. Strict regulation in the UK about reporting around children – any children, even royal ones – that the media willingly subscribe to makes that simply impossible in this day and age.

And the proof is in the pudding. Both William and Kate have dropped off and collected their children from school since Prince George, now nine, started nursery when he was two – and not a single photograph has ever appeared in the British press.

The irony of her saying that, while inviting a hand-picked journalist to invade her son’s privacy and join her on the school run is just, well… I have no words. One close friend once told me that, historically at least, William shares many of his brother’s sentiments about the media when it comes to the historical treatment of his mother and the worst excesses of the paparazzi.

The striking difference between the two men, however, is that William has come to accept that 25 years has passed, the media landscape has changed, and there is huge public goodwill for, and interest in, his young family.

And as long as the children’s day-to-day lives are ‘ring-fenced’ (which they absolutely are), he and his wife are happy to share their own images with the public.

‘But that’s the difference between working for two adults as opposed to a couple of stroppy teenagers,’ one who has had experience of working with both couples tells me.

At one point in the interview Meghan refers to people ‘calling my children the N-word’. It’s not 100 per cent clear who she was referring to but if it was the media it was abhorrent and untrue.

The constant references to the couple’s children – and their interaction with the journalist interviewing Meghan – is remarkable given the Sussexes’ repeated demands for privacy. That said, it’s up to the Sussexes how much they share publically of their family.

When those demands are clearly and repeatedly watered down in pursuit of the almighty dollar, it’s unbelievably hypocritical. What’s so clear about this interview – and the stylish photoshoot that accompanies it – is that it’s exactly what Meghan thought she would be able to do when she joined the royal family.

It’s what she grew up with, aspired to and had started to get a tiny taste of when she met Harry. There’s nothing wrong about that whatsoever.

But this glossy, access-all-areas, thrusting a basket of home-grown fruit and vegetables (and a jar of ‘Lili’ jam) into the arms of your interviewer-style of publicity is not what our tweeds in the country and Tupperware boxes in the pantry royal family is about. Instead of accepting that, she – with Harry as a more than willing co-conspirator – decided to take the nuclear option.

For the time being Buckingham Palace have decided to take the line of least resistance – a dignified silence – even in the face of Harry’s repeated digs at his family (including a sarky reference to his family not being able to live or work together, as well as a slightly garbled reference by Meghan to what may or may not be his ‘lost’ relationship with his father).

But Meghan – and Harry – might do well to remember, as they fire their latest salvo, that their perpetually maligned relatives across the pond may be prepared to take only so much.

 

 

Inside Harry and Meghan’s Montecito home: The Cut interview reveals how the Sussexes’ $14.65million mansion is decorated with Soho House candles, a piano from Tyler Perry – and two plush chairs ‘like thrones’ in the office

By Jessica Green for MailOnline 

Meghan Markle has given a glimpse into the $14.65million Montecito mansion she shares with Prince Harry and their two children Archie and Lilibet.

In a new interview published today with The Cut, the Duchess of Sussex, 41, shared how her home in Southern California makes her ‘feel free’ and is ‘calm and healing’.

The magazine revealed various features of the property – including the two connected palm trees in the garden, which the Duke of Sussex, 37, refers to as himself and Meghan – with even their son, three, calling ‘Hi, Momma. Hi, Papa’ whenever he passes them.

Elsewhere, it detailed Harry and Meghan’s shared office and the ‘two plush club chairs placed side by side behind a single desk, facing into the room like thrones.’

The couple’s sitting room is home to a grand piano from actor-director Tyler Perry – whose Beverly Hills mansion they first stayed in following their move from Canada – as well as a Soho House rose-water candle and cosy chairs. 

‘The Montecito house is the kind of big that startles you into remembering that unimaginable wealth is actually someone’s daily reality,’ wrote Allison P. Davis. 

The author compared it to a classic Tuscan villa, a Napa vineyard and a Beverly Hills country club.

Meghan revealed that both she and Prince Harry avoided visiting their current home at first – because affording it wasn’t possible since they didn’t have any jobs.

She explained that the couple didn’t want to ‘window shop’ the property – however, they eventually visited the home and fell in love with the grounds. 

They had only toured the outside – which includes a chicken coop, pool and pool house – when they told the real estate agent that they wanted the home, purchasing it for $14.65 million.

‘We did everything we could to get this house,’ said Meghan. ‘Because you walk in and go… Joy. And exhale. And calm. It’s healing. You feel free.’ 

They have since secured Spotify and Netflix deals estimated to be worth £18million and £75million, respectively. 

One of the first features of the home that Meghan and Harry saw was two palm trees, connected together at the bottom, which the Duke claimed represented the loved-up couple.     

‘And now every day when Archie goes by us, he says, ‘Hi, Momma. Hi, Papa,” explained the Duchess. 

Harry also featured in the magazine interview, and briefly explained that he is in the middle of renovations for the home – fixing pipes, for example. 

Meanwhile, in the couple’s sitting room, a grand piano proudly sits after Tyler Perry gifted it the couple as a housewarming present, while Soho Houses candles also feature.

Meghan explained that the founder, Nick Jones, is a friend. For their first meeting, the Duke and Duchess are said to have been set up on a blind date at Soho House’s Dean Street Townhouse.

It comes amid reports that the couple are very unlikely to visit the Queen at Balmoral when they return to Britain for a brief trip next week, a royal expert said today as he warned the ‘family rift is getting worse, not better’.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have an ongoing row about their security with the Home Office – and tensions with the Royal Family have been deepened by mounting concerns over what will be published in Harry’s upcoming biography, and Meghan making veiled criticisms of the family in her new Spotify podcast released last week.

Royal expert Phil Dampier told MailOnline today that he would be ‘very surprised’ if the Sussexes visit the Queen at Balmoral, where she is likely to remain for the next few weeks as concerns grow over her mobility issues.

He added that there is little ‘goodwill on both sides’ and that the royals will be ‘wary’ of Harry amid what could be in his book. Mr Dampier also said that a ‘visit to Scotland would create awkward family tensions for everyone’.

Meghan Markle reveals extraordinary words from a South African performer at the Lion King film premiere who told her: ‘When you married into the royal family we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison’ 

By Maria Chiorando for MailOnline 

Meghan Markle said a South African cast member of the Lion King film told her ‘they rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison’ when she married Prince Harry. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex attended the star-studded premiere of the Disney remake in July 2019, rubbing shoulders with A-listers including Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

‘I just had Archie. It was such a cruel chapter. I was scared to go out,’ she said in an interview with The Cut magazine, published today. 

A cast member from South Africa pulled her aside. ‘He looked at me, and he’s just like light. He said, ‘I just need you to know: When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison.’ 

The Duchess of Sussex did not name the cast member.  

The comments came as part of a wide-ranging bombshell interview to The Cut – part of New York magazine – in which she claimed that what the couple asked for when they wanted financial freedom was not ‘reinventing the wheel’.

The fashion publication reported today that 41-year-old Meghan listed a ‘handful of princes and princesses and dukes who have the very arrangement they wanted’, although none of these royals are named in the article.

And Meghan, speaking to New York-based features writer Allison P Davis, said: ‘That, for whatever reason, is not something that we were allowed to do, even though several other members of the family do that exact thing.’

Asked ‘Why do you think that is?’, she simply replied: ‘Why do you think that is?’, with the interviewer Ms Davis saying that she said this ‘right back with a side-eye that suggests I should understand without having to be told’.

Meghan also said: ‘I’m getting back … on Instagram’ – with Ms Davies describing ‘her eyes alight and devilish’. It comes after she closed all of her social media accounts ahead of her wedding to Harry in 2018. But further down the article, it says: ‘Later, Meghan would relay she was no longer sure she would actually return to Instagram.’

The article states that Harry and Meghan suggested to ‘The Firm’ that they should be allowed to work on behalf of the monarchy but make their own money, with the Duchess saying: ‘Then maybe all the noise would stop.’

The Duchess, who celebrated her birthday earlier this month, is set to return to the UK with Prince Harry for a brief trip next week.

However, it is thought the couple is unlikely to visit the Queen at Balmoral, with a royal expert saying the ‘family rift is getting worse, not better’.

Tensions have reportedly been deepening by growing concerns over what will be published in Harry’s upcoming biography, and Meghan making veiled criticisms of the family in her new Spotify podcast released last week.

According to royal expert Phil Dampier, there is little ‘goodwill on both sides’ and that the royals will be ‘wary’ of Harry amid what could be in his book. Mr Dampier also said that a ‘visit to Scotland would create awkward family tensions for everyone’.

He told MailOnline today that he would be ‘very surprised’ if the Sussexes visit the Queen at Balmoral, where she is likely to remain for the next few weeks as concerns grow over her mobility issues.  

From Archie’s bouncy castle playdates to glamorous polo matches and dinners with Gloria Steinem, Meghan Markle offers a rare insight into her and Harry’s charmed life in California

By Jo Tweedy for MailOnline

Meghan Markle has offered a glimpse into the Sussexes’ seemingly charming family life in California, saying the couple are ‘building a community’ in the luxury enclave of Montecito. 

Speaking to The Cut – part of New York magazine, the duchess painted a near ambrosial picture of life in California incorporating dinners with ‘safe harbor’ friends, taking Archie to his friends’ birthday parties and polo matches with Harry – although the 41-year-old said the nursery run is impossible to do without being papped by an army of photographers. 

During the exclusive interview with the fashion publication, which took place at the couple’s luxury $14.7m home in the exclusive residential hills near Santa Barbara, Meghan revealed how she enjoys dinners with old ‘safe harbor’ friends, including feminist icon, Gloria Steinem and makeup entrepreneur Victoria Jackson. 

 

Little Archie, who’s described as having a mop of ginger curls, clearly dictates some of the couple’s schedule, with the Sussexes attending toddler parties. 

Meghan regaled during the interview how some residents are hesitant in the couple’s presence, and surprised when they even show up at birthday parties. 

She said: ‘I was in a bouncy castle, and I saw this 1-year-old inside. I was like, ‘Where’s your mom?’ And this mom on the outside goes, ‘Oh, hi! I’m here. I wasn’t sure if I should come in.’ ‘

The 41-year-old reveals she told her: ‘Do you need your child? Of course you can come in.’

The fashion magazine also joins Meghan on a pre-school run to collect Archie, saying that the little boy shouts ‘Momma, Momma, Momma’ when he spots the duchess. 

Meghan told the publication that a legion of paparazzi await their son’s daily arrival, saying that being aggrieved by it ‘doesn’t make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child.’ 

Gloria Steinem, the political activist who has recruited Meghan in her fight to get Congress to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment – a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex, also remains a close friend, and she introduced the couple to 80s makeup entrepreneur Victoria Jackson.

At the beginning of the month, Meghan celebrated her 41st birthday at Jackson’s ranch close to Santa Barbara, where Harry plays polo for Los Padres, and the couple’s children, Archie and Lilibet, have spent time petting the businesswoman’s mini pigs on her sprawling farm.

Jackson appears on an upcoming episode of Meghan’s podcast Archetypes and tells The Cut that the couple are ‘good people’, saying she wants to help them ‘get out of the house because it’s complicated for them to go anywhere’.

Last week, Prince Harry turned out to play polo in a round robin tournament in Aspen, Colorado, and the sport the prince has loved since being a child has clearly also been key to the couple establishing themselves across the Pond.

Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Figueras, 45, an Argentine actor, model, polo player, and longtime friend of Harry’s who competed alongside him at the Sentebale Polo Cup in Colorado on Thursday, is clearly a close confidant.  

Nacho first met the royal, 37, in 2007 at a charity match hosted by Sentebale and the couple decamping to California has only firmed up their friendship.  

Is THIS Meghan’s secret Netflix project? Duchess hints at a documentary about her and Harry’s ‘love story’ and says it’s a ‘piece of her life she hasn’t been able to share’

By Claire Toureille for MailOnline

Meghan Markle has hinted that the documentary she and Prince Harry are currently filming for Netflix could focus on their ‘love story’. 

Speaking in an interview with The Cut, published today, the Duchess of Sussex said her five-year-long romance with Prince Harry is one of the ‘pieces of her life’ that she has not yet been able to share with the public. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s production company, Archewell Productions, signed a reported $100million deal with the streaming giant in 2020 but there has yet to be a release. 

A documentary series about the Invictus Games has been confirmed. Meghan’s planned animated children’s series was scrapped as part of wider Netflix cutbacks.  

It had previously been rumoured that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were planning a fly-on-the-wall documentary series, in the style of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. 

However it appears it might be closer to a look back on the royal romance.  

‘The couple has directly smashed rumors of a reality show, both in statements made to publications and in conversation with me,’ journalist Allison P. Davis notes in the article. 

‘But, Meghan explains, there’s a difference between a historical documentary and a reality docuseries.’

The Duchess continued: ‘The piece of my life I haven’t been able to share, that people haven’t been able to see, is our love story.’

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been filming the Netflix documentary for more than a year after signing a widely reported $100million deal in 2021.

They have been spotted with a film crew at a number of engagements, including the Invictus Games earlier this year. The filming is believed to have taken place for their confirmed docu-series Heart of Invictus.

Multiple sources told Page Six that the streaming platform is hoping to release the Sussex documentary around the same time as The Crown’s new series, which is set to be released in November.

The major streaming service doesn’t want to be ‘scooped’ by the Duke’s memoir, despite claims the Sussexes want the documentary to air next year, sources said. 

Harry’s book is set to be released sometime this fall, and Netflix will be keen to capitalize on the huge buzz that the tell-all tome will likely generate.

‘[Netflix executives] knew the book was coming out, which is why they wanted the series this year,’ a source told Page Six. ‘They don’t want to hold off any longer.’ 

The royal couple, however, reportedly wants the series to hit the small screen next year, according to Page Six. 

DailyMail.com contacted Netflix for comment at the time the reports first emerged.

Meghan Markle previously had an animated series, Pearl, in the works with Netflix but it was scrapped in May as part of a wave of cutbacks prompted by the streaming juggernaut’s drop in subscribers. 

The series, which had Sir Elton John’s husband David Furnish on board as an executive producer, was set to see a young girl inspired by Meghan – whose name means ‘pearl’ in Welsh – take on various social injustices, while highlighting the work of feminist icons. 

A now-removed quote from Meghan about the series read: ‘Like many girls her age, our heroine Pearl is on a journey of self-discovery as she tries to overcome life’s daily challenges.

‘I’m thrilled that Archewell Productions, partnered with the powerhouse platform of Netflix and these incredible producers, will together bring you this new animated series, which celebrates extraordinary women throughout history.’

Director Liz Garbus was involved in the project and is now attached to the Netflix documentary. 

It comes a week after Meghan Markle released the first episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes.