The magazine that once gave Meghan Markle a glossy cover to proclaim her love for Prince Harry has now branded the pair “American hustlers.”
Just days after Harry and Meghan were slammed as “disaster tourists” for turning Los Angeles wildfire relief into a photo-op, Vanity Fair published a scathing cover story that cites dozens of people who worked with or lived alongside the pair and paints an unflattering picture of the former royals.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Piers Morgan, host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, to discuss the bombshell piece and what it reveals about Prince Harry and Markle.
The Vanity Fair Cover
The Vanity Fair cover story by Anna Peele dives into what has happened to Harry and Meghan in the five years since they left the royal family. The cover line snipes they “are trying their damnedest to just be normal moguls.”
Inside, Peele briefly recounts the January 2020 “Sandringham Summit” in which the couple unsuccessfully tried to cut ties with the monarchy on their own terms. It is now “five years since that failed parley,” Peele writes and “leaving the royal family has brought tests for the couple—legal, financial, reputational, personal, and practical.”
The lengthy piece explores the impact Harry and Meghan have had on their adopted hometown of Montecito, California, the “challenges of enacting the ambitions of two first-time CEOs,” and how the drama of Megxit – as it came to be known – “foreshadowed some of their current difficulties.”
Needless to say, Prince Harry and Markle declined to participate in the piece, but dozens of people in their orbit did – albeit mostly anonymously. Two sources told Vanity Fair a colleague with ties to Markle’s Archetypes podcast took a leave of absence after working on three episodes before leaving Spotify’s studio Gimlet altogether. Peele reports that “several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan.”
“I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better,” a person who interacted with her professionally said.
As it relates to Prince Harry, a source who worked with the couple suggested childhood trauma is still a factor. “I can picture him meeting Meghan and being just a deep breath of, like, ‘I’ve been so exhausted, and you make everything so easy,'” the person said. “I don’t want to be like, oh, it’s an Oedipus thing or whatever, but it kind of feels like she’s reparenting him in a way.”
In Montecito, Peele reports the pair are referred to as “the prince and the starlet” and are seen as “local villains” by neighbors. “I still think they’re the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet,” a resident said. “They moved away from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, and all they do is try and get in the press in the United States.”
‘Utter Delusion’
The exposé marks yet another fall from grace for the couple given that Markle once rushed to Vanity Fair for her first interview as Prince Harry’s girlfriend back in September 2017. Morgan said that feature – which Markle later criticized for being racist and focusing too much on her relationship – “went down very badly with the palace at the time.”
In some ways, the story has “rather comically” come full circle. “On their website, it says that they’re all about compassion… They’re also all about mental health,” Morgan noted. “And yet, here we are with Vanity Fair – the Hollywood Bible, the thing that Meghan was most thrilled about getting the cover of a few years ago… reveal[ing] that actually she, in particular, is a nasty little bully who sends staff into therapy. Think about that for a moment.”
“They are a pair of hypocrites… as the Spotify guy called them, a pair of effing grifters, and they’re desperately trying to maintain some kind of future as a renegade couple when they’re no longer part of the royal family,” Morgan explained. “The royals don’t talk to them… They are total pariahs in the family because the only currency they have is trashing the royal family and the monarchy.”
Much as the article suggests, Morgan said the “dirt” is the only thing keeping them relevant. “Every time they try to do something else, nobody cares. No one cared about their podcast series. Nobody cared about the polo series,” he noted. “All they want to hear is the dirt, and these two, for five years, have reveled and wallowed in royal dirt for vast amounts of money.”
Ultimately, Morgan said the revelations are but the latest examples of the couple’s “utter delusion” and “shocking hypocrisy.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Morgan by tuning in to episode 991 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.