AMANDA PLATELL: Why I don’t buy self-appointed victim Meghan’s ‘compassion’

She appeared, dewy-eyed, in a joint interview with Prince Harry on the U.S. network CBS on Sunday, to announce the launch of their Parents’ Support group, for those whose children had been harmed or even taken their own life as a result of poisonous content on social media.

Meghan, who revealed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey three years ago that she thought of taking her own life while a working royal, said she hoped by speaking out she could help others.

‘I just didn’t – I didn’t want to be alive any more,’ she told CBS News host Jane Pauley.

Meghan has shunned her seriously ill father Thomas, who paid for her private education and cared for her when her mother disappeared for years during her childhood, writes Amanda Platell

‘When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey – certainly part of mine – is being able to be really open about it.

‘I would never want someone else to feel that way,’ and ‘if voicing what I have overcome will save someone, I’ll take a hit for that,’ she added nobly.

I’m no stranger to the devastating impact of suicide. My beloved grandfather killed himself on his third attempt. I’ve seen how it rips the heart out of families. So all due sympathy for Meghan having suffered such thoughts.

Happily, the Duchess seems to have recovered, even if it is, as she says, an ongoing journey.

But how brazen of Meghan to use this interview as an opportunity to promote herself as the ‘compassionate Duchess’, when she has, on other occasions, shown so little respect or empathy to others.

Like most self-appointed victims, Meghan is often seeking to blame others. The dream she had of life beyond luxury and wealth as a duchess, she believes, was undone by the Queen, supported by her seriously ill husband Prince Philip, Prince William and his father King Charles. She and Harry believed they had no choice but to betray the Queen and Charles, William and Kate, in their bitter Oprah interview, their Netflix documentary and then Harry’s unforgivable memoir Spare.

But let’s start with that private dossier investigating reported accusations of systematic ‘bullying’ towards her staff when she was a working Royal – vehemently denied by Meghan – which the Firm loyally buried before it could appear. I’d love to hear what those staff members who made allegations had to say about Meghan’s ‘compassion’.

And then there is her disrespect for the Windsors – who welcomed her in before she slandered them. Not just as being cruel to her and unsupportive of her mental health struggles – but branding some of them as racists, telling Oprah that members of the Royal Family had expressed ‘concerns and conversations about how dark [her baby’s] skin might be’. In dropping this bombshell in such a cryptic fashion, Meghan surely knew she was cruelly firing the starting gun for a royal witch-hunt.

Then in December 2023, only months before Kate revealed her devastating cancer diagnosis, Meghan’s mouthpiece, ‘royal correspondent’ Omid Scobie — who collaborated with the Duchess on his first book about the Sussexes, Finding Freedom – ‘accidentally’ revealed the alleged ‘royal racists’ to be King Charles and Kate via the Dutch-language version of the book. The constant attacks from Montecito and the couple’s supporters cannot have been good for the Princess of Wales’s health in recent years.

Let’s not forget Meghan’s continued estrangement from her frail father Thomas, who paid for her private education and cared for her for years during her childhood. She has turned her back on him, denying him the right to meet not only her husband Prince Harry but his grandchildren Archie and Lilibet. I’m sure Thomas wouldn’t describe his daughter as ‘compassionate’.

Meghan’s tearful interview with friend of her and Harry, ITV presenter Tom Bradby, on a trip to Africa when he asked how she was doing

The impression of kindness Meghan gave during the CBS interview was worlds away from the often indignant Duchess portrayed in royal expert Robert Jobson’s new biography of the Princess of Wales and serialised in the Mail recently. He revealed, among other things, that Meghan was ‘taken aback’ at the disparity between William and Kate’s lavish apartment in Kensington Palace and the Sussexes’ humble two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage.

As I said, Meghan seems to want to be seen as a victim at all times. Remember her tearful interview with ITV presenter Tom Bradby (a friend of Harry’s), on a trip to Africa in 2019 when he asked how she was doing. Meghan replied: ‘Look, any woman especially when they are pregnant, you’re really vulnerable and so that was made really challenging.

‘And then when you have a newborn – you know. And especially as a woman, it’s a lot. And, also thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK.’

Forgive mothers around the world for failing to sympathise with the whinges from Meghan – who enjoyed success, wealth and privilege beyond most women’s imagination. It didn’t wash then and it doesn’t wash now.

As Jobson wrote in his book, not just we Brits but Americans, too, have grown weary of the privileged Sussexes dishing the dirt on the Royals. The couple’s biggest pay cheques – from Netflix and that memoir – are now behind them. So how will they fund their lifestyle while their popularity here and abroad is tanking?

One thing is for sure, Meghan’s father-in-law King Charles won’t be coming to the rescue. As People magazine revealed last week, the bank of Dad isn’t taking Harry’s calls or answering his letters.

Just possibly, like the rest of us, the King is fed up with the veneer of compassion which the Sussexes keep forcing on the world.