U.S. Magazines That Burst Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Bubble

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s U.S. empire has been under mounting pressure in recent years after a series of high profile articles in American magazines.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have long hated the British media and framed their declining popularity in the U.K. as a product of tabloids poisoning the well of public opinion.

However, more recently U.S. magazines have been the outlets throwing the Sussexes into crisis mode, starting in 2022.

The Cut: ‘Meghan of Montecito’

Meghan and Harry were still highly popular in America in 2022 but the first sign the bubble might burst came that August when New York Magazine‘s The Cut dispatched Allison P. Davis to Montecito to interview the duchess.

The result was a far cry from the brash hit pieces in U.K. newspapers like The Sun and the Daily Mail but there was a strong sense Davis had chosen not to drink the Kool-Aid.

“She has been media trained and then royal-media trained and sometimes converses like she has a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain directing what she says,” Davis wrote. “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.’

“At this stage, post-royal, there’s no need for her to hold back. She’s flinging open the proverbial doors to her life; as any millennial woman whose feminism was forged in the girlboss era would understand, she has taken a hardship and turned it into content.”

Another passage read: “Meghan, silenced no more, looks around, making sure nobody (who would be?) is listening in. Then the top-secret drop: ‘I’m getting back … on Instagram,’ she says, her eyes alight and devilish.

“This could have been a troll: Delivering a nothing with such gravitas feels as if Meghan, who has been so trolled by the media, is serving it back, just a little. But, as I quickly realize, it is actually news.”

The mismatch between interviewer and interviewee is an interesting one because it speaks to a symptom of Meghan and Harry’s wider malaise.

At times, they have pushed themselves out of the spaces that normally fawn over the royals but without necessarily working out how to appeal to other audiences.

The revelation she was returning to Instagram was indeed a big story for precisely the tabloids Meghan and Harry have been trying to avoid but she perhaps should have known The Cut would expect something of greater substance from a woman who once said she reads The Economist.

Variety: ‘It’s Well Past Time for Harry and Meghan 2.0′

Months later, Meghan and Harry released their first Netflix project, a biopic charting their messy exit from the palace.

It soared to the top of the Netflix rankings globally but again there was a canary in the mine shaft moment when Variety gave it a scathing review.

Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst of its Intelligence Platform, wrote: “There can only be so many revelations left to share with the public now that the couple have exiled themselves away from their fractious coexistence with the monarchy.

“Given that they’ve beaten this horse to death, perhaps this one-trick pony is due for the glue factory.

“Of course, Harry and Meghan would have you believe they are about so much more than their own story.

“The brand they believe they are building through their media company, Archewell Productions, is meant to be about all the social causes and charities they support.

“Their game plan has always been, Come for the sob story, stay for the high-minded uplift. But that’s a shaky strategy for keeping an audience around that probably doesn’t care about anything either of them has to say that isn’t royal gossip.”

Newsweek: ‘The More Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Say, the Less Americans Like Them’

Around this time, Newsweek began regularly polling U.S. public opinion on the British monarchy with partner Redfield & Wilton, capturing data reflecting a dramatic slump in the couple’s popularity.

Harry dropped 45 points in his net approval rating while Meghan dropped 36 points from December 5, 2022, pre-Netflix, to January 16, 2023, after the prince’s book Spare was released.

The duke was liked by 31 percent and disliked by 38 percent giving him a net approval rating of minus 7 in the later polling, down from plus 38 six weeks earlier.

And the duchess was liked by 26 percent and disliked by 39 percent in January 2023, putting her on minus 13, down from plus 36 on December 5.

The crash may have been fueled in part by passages in which he described using his mother’s favored Elizabeth Arden lip cream to treat frost bite on his “todger.” Late night comedy shows gave significant airtime to ridiculing the anecdote.

The Hollywood Reporter: ‘Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan’

In September 2024, one of Meghan’s biggest scandals went stateside with a piece in The Hollywood Reporter suggesting the couple had a high “churn” rate because staff thought Meghan was a “dictator in high heels.”

“Why’d they all leave?” the article read. “What explains the churn? ‘Everyone’s terrified of Meghan,’ claims a source close to the couple.

“‘She belittles people, she doesn’t take advice. They’re both poor decision-makers, they change their minds frequently. Harry is a very, very charming person—no airs at all—but he’s very much an enabler. And she’s just terrible.'”

Another source told the publication Meghan was relentless, “marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders,” and “reduces grown men to tears.”

Meghan had previously been accused of bullying staff at Kensington Palace but initially dismissed the allegations as a smear campaign designed to undermine her March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview just days before it was broadcast.

The fact the saga had reached U.S. magazines via U.S. sources threatened to undermine the wider Sussex narrative that she was torn down out of jealousy.

Vanity Fair: ‘Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit’

Most recently, Vanity Fair thrashed out a series of similar claims from Sussex insiders who compared Meghan to a “Mean Girl teenager.”

A cover story said staff at Gimlet, Spotify’s in house production arm, needed therapy or quit after working with Meghan.

“Two sources say a colleague with ties to Archetypes took a leave of absence after working on three episodes, then left Gimlet altogether,” journalist Anna Peele wrote. “Several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, exiting their job, or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan.”

One staff member described “talking behind your back” and “gnawing at your sense of self.”

The accounts make it increasingly difficult for Meghan and Harry and their team and supporters to suggest the bullying allegations from her time at Kensington Palace were a fiction.

And that is a major problem because of the nature of the narrative they put forward about why they left the monarchy.

“My father, my brother, Kate and all the rest of the family, they were really welcoming,” Harry told Oprah. “But it really changed after the Australia tour, after our South Pacific tour.”

“It was also the first time that the family got to see how incredible she is at the job,” he added.

The narrative that the relationship between the monarchy and the Sussexes deteriorated because of jealousy is somewhat undermined, however, by the revelation Meghan was accused of bullying, which serves as a possible alternative explanation for the rift that formed.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.

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