Backlash Over Meghan's Paris Video

0:17Hello listeners and welcome to the show.

0:30And of course, it immediately blew up and created a backlash against her, as is so often the case with Meghan and Harry. Now, this particular piece of footage was just her sat on the backseat of a car. She was being driven alongside the River Seine in Paris past a kind of famous and picturesque bridge called the Pont Alexander III. and it's been suggested that this was what it was within a mile of the Pont de Lauma tunnel which is where Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997. So there was a backlash that blew up first on social media, on Twitter where one person suggested this was kind of insensitive and maybe even intended to trigger Harry, particularly inflammatory allegation there but it wound up on the front page of the Daily Mail which is I think now pretty much if not actually Britain's biggest selling national newspaper and also the tabloid that Harry and Meghan hate more than any other.

1:27So obviously, you know, very clearly huge emotions on both sides here and a very kind of high stakes argument developing between the two sides. Against the backdrop of this argument, there's also a court case which Harry's filed against the mail, which is going to trial in January. But first of all, I just want to tell you a little bit about what the different people involved in this story are saying. So to start with, a source I spoke to said this, the Daily Mail throwing out a line about insensitivity is a bit rich. They have chosen at a complete stretch, I might add, to draw the most tenuous, tenuous link between an Instagram post and the death of Harry's mother.

2:07That, for me, is the insensitive bit. So without putting too fine a point on it, obviously, I think the point being made there is that Diana died while she was being pursued by paparazzi photographers who were trying to get photographs to sell to the British tabloid press. Now, the tabloids, including the Daily Mail, others too, you know, The Sun, News of the World, other newspapers as well, but certainly including the Daily Mail had been paying huge amounts of money for pictures of Diana at the time. And if she had not been trying to escape those photographers, it is very unlikely that she would have lost her life that day.

2:44So this really goes to the heart of a tragedy and an event that hugely shaped Harry's whole life. He was 12 years old when Diana died. And so from his point of view, this is one of the very newspapers that he would blame for his mother's death, now accusing his wife of being insensitive. And bear in mind, Harry has said over the years that he's worried that history will repeat itself, that Meghan having been relentlessly trolled by the British media. You know, she's had suicidal thoughts at points. Back in 2019, she experienced suicidal thoughts while pregnant. And so Harry has said before that, you know, he's worried, he's been worried that newspapers will force Meghan into doing something that will mean her story ends just as tragically as his mother's did.

3:33So you can't really get, you know, Harry and Meghan, they hate the mail anyway. And then this is speaking to perhaps the most kind of traumatic and difficult episode in Harry's entire life. Like I said, it all started on social media. The particular Twitter post was viewed more than half a million times, so huge audience, and it said, let's drive by the Pont de Lauma tunnel just to trigger H, because that's what I do. So that's kind of ventriloquizing for Meghan, imagining that that's her motivation. So that's obviously also particularly controversial. My source says, you know, that's an outrageous and ridiculous thing to say.

4:12The Daily Mail headline read, Meghan Markle savaged for utterly bewildering Instagram video as she's driven past Diana crash tunnel with feet on the seat and royal expert suggests Harry could take a dim view. I'm specifically told that there's a huge objection, basically, to any suggestion that Meghan was involved in some kind of Machiavellian attempt to either upset or trigger Harry or anything else, and that Meghan didn't actually know how close she was to the Pont de Lauma tunnel at the time. And that basically, from her point of view, she'd had a good night, she was being driven in the back seat of a car by some very picturesque Parisian skyline, the night time, the river, the streetlights, it all looked fantastic, so she just poked her phone up to the window, did a little video, posted it on Instagram, then next thing you know it's on the front page of the Daily Mail.

5:09So honestly I kind of do have a little bit of sympathy here with Megan because she is ultimately doing what any tourist might do. You can always have a debate about whether you like Harry and Megan or you don't like Harry and Megan and honestly make your own minds up. I'm not here to tell people what to think. I'm here to provide analysis. I'm here to provide my perspective but I don't have any real desire to control other people's perspectives or opinions. So if you like Harry and Megan then crack on. If you hate Harry and Meghan, then that's your decision. But honestly, if you step back and dispassionately look at what Meghan actually did, it is something that any tourist might have done.

5:47But actually, I think there's also something really interesting going on here, which is that the Daily Mail did this and haven't actually faced a huge backlash in Britain, which shows just how much public opinion I think has changed over the years. So once upon a time, you know, the tabloids were so, so firmly established as the villains of both William and Harry's story that there was no way you could get so much as like a cigarette paper between Harry and William and the British public over, you know, the question of their mother's death and who was to blame for it. You know, the whole country interpreted that it was the paparazzi's fault and it was the fault of the British tabloids for encouraging them.

6:23In fact, you know, I remember back in 2017, so early days of Harry and Meghan's relationship, It was the 20th anniversary of Diana's death. And William and Harry did these big interviews with British TV documentaries. They sat down, they talked about Diana's death for the first time. They talked about their grief. And they talked about the fact that the British press played a part in her death. And it was very, very clear during those documentaries who the villains of the story were. And none of those tabloid newspapers would have dared at that time say anything that kind of picked a fight with Harry and William over the memory of their mother.

6:58Like it would have been inconceivable. And it's a kind of weird thing that's happened. You know, those were blockbuster documentaries seen by everybody massively reported on by the tabloids, front page splashes all around, you know, huge amounts of coverage. and it's like a weird byproduct of the rift between Harry and William that it's enabled the public and therefore the media too to kind of perceive the existence of this position which is them backing William over Harry in relation to their mother Diana. So that was never a thing. Harry and William, back in the days when they were seen as this kind of inseparable unit, you could never have a situation where the media could try to leverage an idea that they're preserving, you know, like the kind of reputation or image of Diana for William against Harry.

7:53Like that would have been completely inconceivable. And so, you know, this through this kind of moment of prestidigation or like kind of illusion, they can kind of conjure this position that like Meghan is the villain, just like ignoring Harry's perspective on it in his view of his own mother and ignoring that, you know, the newspaper's past role in kind of paparazzi chasing Diana because of the breakdown in the relationship between the two brothers. Like if that ultimately is the reason why this story is able to happen without a backlash against Harry, it's because of the fact that his relationship with his brother broke down, sides were taken, the British press sided with William and the British public largely, IW Williams well against Harry and Meghan.

8:42And therefore, in relation to this story that's so, so, so close to the bone for Harry, it's now much harder for him to kind of go out and say, well, you know, the press are being abusive. You know, this newspaper that I hate is being abusive towards my wife. And the reason is because something about the whole Sussex position has crumbled over many, many years. so you know i'm not like i said here to tell people what to think and if you do if you hate harry and megan that's your choice if you love harry and megan that's your choice i'm not here to try and tell people which side of the fence they should be on um but i just think that if the mail had done this back in 2017 it would have been pitchforks at dawn you know the british public would have been genuinely really really angry about it and it's really striking and startling to me to see how far that that has changed um you know once upon a time during the level you're like yeah i suppose that 2017 anniversary it wasn't that long after the leveson inquiry i mean i guess it was a few years 2011 was a big moment in it um but still like it's the world is an unrecognizable place now um so it's easy for me to understand why harry would want to really kind of like double down on that point of view and double down on his you know his perception of the press as being the villains, but it's just crazy to me that he doesn't get that automatic traction anymore.

10:06He doesn't get that kind of automatic direct line to British public opinion, and that the mail can do something that they would never have countenanced years ago. And like I said, there's that lawsuit in the background as well. My source tells me the lens that Harry's camp are basically viewing this through is the lawsuit that Harry filed against the mail so he's got coming up in january a trial where he's going to have to give live evidence against this newspaper that's done this thing that he will consider very upsetting um and you know the perspective and it actually it completely chimes of all the past things that harry has said about all his other lawsuits that he feels that some of these newspapers do this kind of thing to him and write these kinds of stories about him because he sued them that it's a kind It's a strange mixture of perhaps revenge and an effort to silence him, to keep him quiet and stop him attacking them.

11:03So, you know, that court case is about historic allegations of phone hacking and other associated unlawful activity. The newspaper obviously vehemently denies it all and will seek to try to defend itself in court and get it all thrown out. But like I said, you know, the atmosphere in 2017 was totally, totally different. and it's all changed. And it's an example of a point that I think I've tried to make on this podcast before, which is that basically you have the foundations of a public figure's relationship with their audience, with the public, with everybody basically is their popularity. The popularity is the prerequisite that allows everything else to happen.

11:45So if you want to go and you want to be a campaigner, whether it's for social justice or for anything else, you want to go out you need to be able to speak to people you need to have their ear they need to care what you think and once upon a time harry and megan really were hugely influential in the sense that people want you know loved the people that they loved hated the people that they hated and i think you know there probably was a degree of fear among a lot of journalists in the media about what harry and megan might want to say about them or about the publications they worked for and how that they might experience or feel about that but i think a lot of that power that harry and Meghan had has disintegrated because basically they overused that position.

12:27They did too much criticizing, actually, Harry and Meghan, sorry, Harry's family, rather. I don't think it was the criticisms of the media that did it, but the kind of relentless criticisms of Harry's family caused a break, actually, on both sides of the Atlantic with the British public and the American public in their relationship with their audience. And people got to a point where they just didn't feel like they could keep going with it anymore and so if Harry and Meghan want to be in a position where they can kind of take the fight to the mail on stories like this then what they really need to do first is to rebuild that relationship with the public and a lot of what I'm seeing is them taking steps in the right direction so actually Meghan going to Paris Fashion Week I think is a great step in that project and I think she looked fantastic she wore two different outfits um you know she was there for the Balenciaga show one was all in black the other was all in white um I think she looked stunning and so that's all great you know I have absolutely no problem with that and Harry's visit to Britain not that long ago went really well he saw his charities he looked happy he looked positive he looked confident he saw his father that'll stand him in good stead you know so a lot of these things are I think steps in the right direction for them I think that um they probably are not at a point yet where they have enough, they have regained enough public support and public trust to make much inroad in kind of taking the battle to the media.

14:00Which is not me saying that, you know, they shouldn't feel upset about these things or even that they should never say anything about it. I don't necessarily have too much of a problem with them doing it, but I don't, I think they need to know and understand themselves that they probably won't be hugely successful at persuading the public to change their minds probably for years until they've done significant work to just rebuild the foundations of their relationship with the public and with megan you know a lot of what she's been doing recently is her lifestyle show as well as ever is the online shop and with love megan is the netflix show um and i think the shop could actually be a winner for her financially i think that the netflix show is probably a little bit too vanilla and a little too safe for her to get a huge amount of audience out of it so it'll probably wind up being something that she that kind of slips into the annals of history in time um fashion i think is probably a much better bet for her so i think coming to paris fashion week is a great thing she spoke to anna winter they were kind of filmed kind of like having a little chat together that's a good solid connection somebody british as well who isn't allergic to megan so that's useful for them um so you know a lot of the stuff they're doing it's the right thing but they are like the reality the cold hard reality of it is that they're in this position where they are going to have to suck up some really difficult stuff for a period of time at least you know and i spoke last week on the podcast about how um you know harry become angry i think at some of the leaks coming out the palace to the british press which had you know framed him as having been upset that his father's in meeting with his father was too formal and he didn't think that that wasn't how he felt, basically.

15:43He didn't feel that way. The stories weren't true. They weren't correct. But the sad reality from Harry's point of view is he is going to have to suck up some of this stuff, and Meghan too, because once upon a time, they could strike fear into the hearts of British newspapers, but they haven't sufficiently rebuilt their relationship with the public in either Britain or America to do that again. So no matter how difficult some of these experiences might be, really, I think they need to keep their eyes on the prize. And that prize is just continuing to detoxify their image and rebuild. For me, they're still in the rebuild phase where they just have to keep focused on the overarching goal of trying to find new things for people to love about them, to be interested in them for, and particularly cultural spaces that they can occupy that aren't controversial.

16:39And that's the key thing about her going to Paris Fashion Week in the first place, is that it's a non-controversial cultural conversation, or at least it should be. um you know you can that's the goal you know you could a balenciaga obviously hugely controversial brand in recent you know really very recent years but you know the fashion industry seems to have forgiven them so and i saw very little backlash about megan working with balenciaga so i don't think that that is going to that choice of brand is going to do her any harm um but look you know harry now looks ahead to the lawsuit coming in january and all everything i'm hearing on both sides is that it's not going to get settled out of court he sued rupert murdoch's media empire on similar allegations and that did get settled out of court for a huge sum of money everything i'm hearing is that this is heading for trial it's not going to be settled and that means he's going to be giving evidence it's going to be a messy messy lawsuit so it's probably going to be in many ways the most interesting of all of harry's um but it like i could not sitting here I'll honestly tell you who's going to win.

17:44I think Harry has a really good chance of getting some of his allegations over the line. But I think there's an equally good chance that some of the most explosive allegations will not wind up being proven in court. But I think there's a good chance that he'll prove something called blagging, which is a practice that used to be big in journalism in Britain where people would kind of like call. I think one of the examples was they got hold of Kate's mobile number by calling her phone company, no doubt pretending to be her or somebody in her family. And, you know, they managed to trick somebody into giving them the information they were looking for, which was a mobile phone number.

18:23So I suspect that some of that kind of stuff might sneak over the line. But it's anybody's guess from my point of view, whether he wins on the biggest, most high profile allegations that he wants to make. Right. And on that note, I'm going to take a quick break. but just a reminder to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows. And when I'm back, Prince William has done a major interview on what he'll be like as king and he's given it to Eugene Levy.

18:55Hello and welcome back to the show. Prince William has done a big interview with the Canadian actor Eugene Levy for his Apple TV show The Reluctant Traveller. So the idea of the show is basically that Levy is trying to tick stuff off his bucket list. So, you know, he's not much of a traveler, but he's learning to be. And so he wants to go around the world doing incredible, amazing things. And so one of those things is going to Windsor Castle, you know, hanging out with Prince William, getting the guided tour, learning a bit about the monarchy and kind of doing that American tourist thing of going to Windsor to see the castle in, I suppose, the most glamorous way possible by having an actual tour from the future king himself.

19:36I think William came across really well. He often does in these kinds of interviews where it's like a soft interview. There's not going to be a grilling. There's not going to be any hardball questions. It's more about the kind of interpersonal interaction between him and Eugene He's done this kind of stuff with English footballers, soccer players in the past. And he does usually come across as quite kind of like soft-natured and warm and personable and these kinds of things. But he also, in this particular interview, touched on some big picture kind of issues as well. And that's probably the most interesting part of it from a royal reporting perspective.

20:19So he talks about wanting to change the monarchy. I'm going to read you some of his quotes. So he says, change is on my agenda, change for the good. He says, I want to question things more. I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do, a world and a job that actually does impact people's lives for the better. I embrace that and I enjoy that change. I don't fear it. That's the bit that excites me is the idea of being able to bring some change, not overly radical change, but changes that I think that needs to happen. I think it's very important that tradition stays and tradition has a huge part in all of this.

20:57But there's also points where you look at tradition and go, is that still fit for purpose today? Is that still the right thing to do? Are we still doing and having the most impact we could be having? So that's a really interesting run of quotes for a number of reasons. So, one, he talks a little bit about impact and how his children view him, which is fascinating because so this whole thing of the royals wanting to kind of change the world and make the world a better place and pursue social action was started by his father. King Charles got the ball rolling on all of this back in the 1970s when he launched a charity called the King's Trust, which for what it's worth has its 50th anniversary next year.

21:41It has its King's Trust International has its 10th anniversary this year. So Charles at this moment is gearing up for like a really big drive to kind of highlight this as his legacy. and the King's Trust was really the moment when he embarked on this journey towards making the monarchy an institution that could pursue social change in a way that he had never done before. Before that, the monarchy, you know, they cut ribbons and they unveiled plaques and that's what they did. It was all very low risk, but they did a lot of it. So, then Charles came in and he pursued a much more socially conscious agenda and got criticised for it a lot of the time.

22:18You know, He really ate a backlash from the British press like way back when, before Harry and William were even born. And then now he does loads and loads of engagements and he's kind of a mix of these two world views. So he's inherited his mother's desire to just be constantly seen and therefore believed, but also pursuing social action. And William has come along, he's kind of taken the social action bit, but has decided he wants more impact so he's doing far fewer engagements there's much less plaque unveiling and ribbon cutting um but he instead he's pursuing high impact you know high reward projects so a small number of high impact projects so like william doesn't really say what change he wants to bring in um and so i'm kind of torn in a way a little bit about this so So, you know, regular listeners to the podcast will know that I pay a huge amount of attention to polling data because basically all of our instinctive biases just guide us away from reality and towards like inhabiting our fantasy version of what society is really like.

23:34And so, one thing that we've started to show up in the polling is that young people are becoming more hostile towards monarchy. And that realistically is Prince William's problem more than anybody else's because in reality, it's a really slow moving crisis. And it probably won't fully blow up until William's reign, until after Charles' reign has come to an end in many, many years' time. You know, this could be 15, 20 years down the line. and um so the big question in terms of william and change is what change does he want to bring in and will it address any of those issues and the trouble in britain at the moment is that we're going through what's sometimes known as the anti-politics era like people hate politicians they hate like diplomatic language used by politicians they hate the kind of uh the mild world change that they don't see in their day-to-day lives basically and that tendency in the way that the public view the world at the moment is going to make it very difficult for William to have the impact that he's talking about so if you take as a perfect case in point the earthshot prize so this is one of William's biggest projects realistically it'll be a major part of the legacy he's building during this period when he's next in line to the throne And he's giving out grants of a million pounds each year to five different causes for innovative solutions to the climate change, climate crisis, sorry, and, you know, other associated, you know, degradation of the sea and that kind of thing.

25:08And so, you know, what he's trying to do there is he's trying to help people who already have ideas scale up those ideas into being bigger projects that can help us bit by bit chip away at our carbon emissions each year. Now, in terms of impact, he will be able to come away with saying, you know, we helped this project. And, you know, some of it is about stopping using plastic packaging and food and all of these things and say, well, you know, we backed this organization, this business, and they went on to achieve great things. But that's really, in a way, it's actually not so different to the legacy that the King's Trust has.

25:44and William is not going to single-handedly come up with or alight on or even with the help of anybody else find the one single definitive solution to climate change he's just not he will help in an imperceptible way a whole bunch or 50 over the 10-year period that it runs 50 projects that I'm sure are fantastic projects that will do wonders in their own small way and ordinary people will not be able to see it in their day-to-day lives even when even if they are holding a bit of food that they bought from the supermarket that's in a non-plastic packaging because of prince william they still won't necessarily know that they're doing it and so he's going to if he and he hasn't said in the interview that he thinks that you know the change he brings in will save the monarchy's reputation among young people he hasn't said that but if he is or if anyone in the palace is hoping that this pursuit of impact is going to change is going to move the dial with young people i think it's going to be really really hard to for william to to change things in a way that is radical enough for it to register with that younger generation in the social media age now none of this is me saying that he shouldn't have done this interview or that the interview is bad or that he shouldn't change things he has every right to change things he may well change them for the better.

27:12But I'm not seeing anything currently that I think will move the dial on that one crucial issue. But he did come across very well. I thought he came across as very personable in the interview. And in that vein, I want to talk about a couple of the things he said. So he said that he talks about the insatiable appetite of the media when he was growing up. He says they wanted every bit of detail they could absorb, and they were in everything, literally everywhere. they would know things they'd be everywhere and if you let that creep in the damage it can do to your family is something that i vowed would never happen to my family so he's talking a little bit there about the efforts that he's made to try to have a different kind of relationship with the media and he has to some extent been successful he does have a different kind of relationship with the media which is has been built partially through negotiation and he's taken a different approach to harry where he's not trying to kind of take on the media and defeat them and beat them and it's not conflict driven.

28:08So, I got the feeling from what William said that he wanted to land the point that whatever Harry might say about how terrible the media are, he thinks that they're not as bad now as they were when William and Harry were kids, when it was Diana, when it was phone hacking, when it was all of these things. He also said, as he said before, that he said, you know, 2023, 2024 was the hardest year I've ever had. You know, life is sent to test us and being able to overcome that is what makes us who we are so he's talking there predominantly about kate's cancer diagnosis and charles's too so kate is in remission officially at the moment charles is not charles has a managed condition which we're not necessarily expecting to go away anytime soon and he also said he you know he really missed he was asked by eugene do you miss the queen and he said i do actually yeah i do miss my grandmother and grandfather uh it's been um quite a bit of change so you do sort of you think about them not being here anymore and particularly being in Windsor.

29:08For me, Windsor is her, you know, is the Queen. She loved it here. She spent most of her time here. Sharing you around today is very much a case of trying to make sure I'm doing it in the way she'd want you to see it. Okay, so I'm going to take another quick break. But before I do, just a reminder to follow me on X. I'm at Jack underscore Royston. You will find all my latest stories for Newsweek. When I'm back, Queen Camilla pays tribute to Dame Jeriku.

29:37welcome back to the show queen camilla has paid tribute to the author dame jilly cooper after her death was announced on monday she was 88 and for those who don't know jilly cooper is an iconic british fiction writer and her books are just so much fun so obviously dig out a copy of one of them give it a read also you know for those who are less less into literature you can watch her an adaptation of one of them because the Netflix show Rivals was an adaptation of a Jilly Cooper novel and it is a fantastic series for those who would rather have something to watch but here in the meantime is what Camilla said in her statement she said I was so saddened to learn of Dame Jilly's death last night very few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one creating a whole new genre of literature and making it her own through a career that spanned over five decades.

30:29In person, she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many, and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen's Reading Room Festival, where she was, as ever, a star of the show. I joined my husband, the King, in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family, and may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs. And that's it for this episode of The Royal Report. Be sure to join me every week when I visit the latest royal headlines, embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal. Until next time, thanks for listening everyone and a curtsy to you all.

31:08The Royal Report with Jack Royston is a member of The Trust Project.