Meghan Markle, The Cut interview: Karl Stefanovic slams ‘tone-deaf’ duchess

Today host Karl Stefanovic mocked Meghan Markle on Tuesday after the Duchess of Sussex herself to Nelson Mandela in her new interview with The Cut magazine.

The former Suits actress, 41, claimed she was told by a cast member of the Lion King in 2019 that South Africans had ‘danced in the street’ when she married Prince Harry – just like they did when ‘Mandela was freed from prison’.

Stefanovic, 48, who has never been shy to criticise Meghan, scoffed incredulously at Markle’s claims while speaking to Nine’s London correspondent Tracy Vo.

‘It’s hard to see how that would sit with [the royal family], especially the Mandela references,’ he remarked, as his co-host Ally Langdon added: ‘That one, I feel, is tone deaf’. 

Mandela spent 27 years in prison for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system.

After he was released, he helped negotiate an end to apartheid and became the first democratically elected president of South Africa. 

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, claimed to The Cut she was told by a cast member of the Lion King in 2019 that South Africans ‘danced in the street’ like when ‘Mandela was freed from prison’ when she married the Duke of Sussex

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex is pictured at his wedding to Meghan Markle, May 2018

Feigning compassion, Stefanovic later joked: ‘I think [Meghan is] probably a little misunderstood, don’t you reckon?’ 

Langdon, whose distaste for the Sussexes is well documented, smirked: ‘Oh, you’re changing your tune, are you Karl?’ 

‘Yeah, I think it’s time to support her, especially after the Mandela comments. Anyone who compares themselves to Mandela, I think, is fair enough’, he said, before breaking into laughter. 

‘It’s hard to see how that would sit with [the royal family], especially the Mandela references,’ Stefanovic remarked, as Langdon added: ‘That one, I feel, is tone deaf’  

‘Even if it was said… to share that. Anyway, they’re living their ‘quiet life’ as they wished,’ Ally replied, rolling her eyes. 

It comes as Meghan’s interview with The Cut – part of New York magazine – continues to spark backlash. 

In it, she claimed that she and Prince Harry were ‘happy’ to leave Britain and were ‘upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy… just by existing’ before they stepped down as frontline royals and moved to North America.

Nelson Mandela, accompanied by his wife Winnie, raises his hand in celebration as he walks out of the Victor Verster prison, near Cape Town, on February 11, 1990, after spending 27 years in apartheid jails 

Her interview with The Cut was published just days after Meghan used her new Spotify podcast to complain how she had to continue engagements on a royal tour in South Africa after a fire in son Archie’s bedroom

She also claimed that what the couple asked for when they wanted financial freedom was not ‘reinventing the wheel’.

The Cut reported that 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.

The interview was released after it was claimed Harry and Meghan will not visit the Queen at Balmoral when they visit Britain next week amid an ongoing security row. 

It was also published just days after Meghan used her new Spotify podcast to complain how she had to continue engagements on a royal tour in South Africa after a fire in son Archie’s bedroom.

The Duchess also hit out at those who criticised her for being ‘ambitious’ when she started dating Harry, in a chat with tennis legend Serena Williams.

Meghan (pictured with husband Prince Harry and son Archie) said she was left shaken after her then-newborn son’s nursery caught on fire during the Sussexes’ tour of South Africa in 2019. The baby wasn’t in the room at the time, but Meghan said she was so rattled that she struggled to attend a royal engagement later that day