Backlash Over Meghan's Recent Magazine Cover Photo

0:01Meghan Markle is accused of impersonating Diana, the police are gathering evidence on Andrew and the King's Trust International celebrates its 10 year anniversary. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Now, Meghan Markle has done a major sit-down interview with Harper's Bazaar in which she talked about authenticity. Obviously, huge buzzword at the moment, especially with young people. And it ties in, interestingly, with a report that they've done. But the bizarre thing about it is, so she did this whole interview, beautiful photos, The outfits looked amazing.

0:39And then obviously it descended into a huge kind of bin fire on social media quite quickly because Meghan was accused of impersonating Princess Diana in some of these photographs. Now, one thing that's interesting about that is that at its core is an allegation of inauthenticity. So she wasn't accused of paying tribute to Princess Diana, where it was kind of like an explicit tribute wearing a piece of her jewelry or something like that. She was accused of kind of secretly recreating past photos from Princess Diana's kind of deep archive. And also there were some other kind of really bizarre moments to the interview, which were kind of very sort of like 1 % energy.

1:19You know, came across as really sort of slightly elite. I think the funniest, because it's genuinely is quite funny, some parts of it. And one of them, she's got this journalist from Harper's Bazaar. She's kind of taking her around. And she takes her to this event where there are some young girls who get a chance to meet Megan. And it's all kind of, I suppose, supposed to be like part of the giving back phase. But then she takes her to this New York house where Megan's staying. And the house manager there announces Megan's arrival to an empty room. Basically, there's nobody in the house. It's deserted.

1:52And this is what the journalist Caitlin Greenidge wrote. She wrote, we're in a grand brownstone on the Upper East Side that belongs to one of Megan's friends. when I enter the house manager announces Megan Duchess of Sussex even though we appear to be the only other two people in the house and then there's another meeting they met at the polo lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel and so Megan kind of you know they had a whole meal and at the end of the meal the staff brought this kind of free cappuccino to Megan which had a photo of Megan printed in the foam so you know how sometimes like when you go to the coffee shop you get like a little heart shape in the foam on your latte.

2:28It's kind of like that, except it was a photorealistic image of Megan's face. So I think this is something you can do now. You can buy like printers that print into the foam. So no doubt they just like they realised who Megan was, got a photo off the internet and just got the machine to do it. But this is what Greenidge wrote about it. Our allotted time at the table is coming to a close. The last of the meal is whisked away and a waiter comes by with an unsolicited cappuccino. In the foam on top, the restaurant has printed a photorealistic image of Megan. Oh, she says, smiling down at it. I recognize this picture is from our trip to South Africa.

3:02It's a lovely and absurd perk of celebrity and Megan is tickled enough to take a photo of it. So this is not the sort of thing you really want to happen when you're giving an interview about the importance of authenticity. And it's tempting to think that Megan threw those references to authenticity into the interview kind of on a whim, but it can't really have been because just after the interview was published, they put on their website this report about how they've been doing basically effectively market research with young people across the world in America, Canada, Britain and other places.

3:37And the big take home from it, the big buzzword to come out of it is that young people are sick of the inauthenticity of the influences they follow and they expect authenticity from real leaders. So it obviously is where they're now pitching themselves. So Megan was talking about how she went to this Balenciaga a show at Paris Fashion Week and she said, I love being able to do both, to play in the sandbox with my kids and to play in the front row at a show. I think the moment you start making all of your personal decisions based on external judgement, then you lose your authenticity. So she's basically doing the classic thing that Harry and Meghan do sometimes, which is when they want to land a point with people, they just go out and simply tell that that's what's happening.

4:19You know, I am authentic, rather than kind of trying to display or show authenticity. which is, you know, it's a real problem because people hate being told what to think. You know, it's show, don't tell. You have to show people what you want them to believe because people hate being told what to think. And this is actually something that the Queen did brilliantly, Queen Elizabeth II. She knew how to kind of create a moment of theatre in which she could perform the message she wanted people to have, whether it was, you know, abiding by COVID restrictions during Prince Philip's funeral or just all the sacrifices that she made during her long royal career.

4:58She was very good at kind of showing people the message rather than telling them. But the real sting in the tale, of course, for Meghan is less the kind of, you know, humour about the bizarre bits of the interview. But really, it's this stuff about Diana, these allegations that the pictures were kind of carbon copies of photos from Diana's archives. It goes back to a Vogue magazine shoot that Diana did in 1994. And there's two images from it, one of which didn't come out until actually after Diana died. And it's her kind of black and white photo. And it's her in black trousers with a white top.

5:34And she's sitting kind of cross legged, but with her knees kind of high in the air and her elbows on her knees. So it's creating these kind of angular triangles between her arms meeting her knees and her legs then going down to the floor. And she kind of looks very like relaxed and at ease in herself. And then the other one is like it was Diana in a red dress. And I think it was that was the actual cover image from the Vogue shoot, I think. And they were both by the same French fashion photographer. So, you know, part of me does feel a little bit sorry for Megan, because obviously we don't know where that artistic direction came from.

6:08It could well be that it came from the stylist because we know that Megan had a stylist and that, you know, she was dressed by someone. The photographer will have had their input, too. You know, there are behind the scenes video clips from the shoot and there's like just this whole sea, you know, there's a clothing rail with like outfit after outfit after outfit. So who knows exactly how they chose and put together each particular outfit? Obviously, it's hypothetically possible. Megan could have come along with some old photos of Diana and said, right, I love this picture. I want to recreate it.

6:38That's possible. It's equally possible that the stylist did some research before the shoot, you know, didn't the first time probably working with royalty. wanted to look back through the kind of archives to see what has been done in the past and what worked well. So we don't know where the artistic direction came from. But obviously, part of the reason why Meghan is being hit over the head with this particular stick is because she has been building for years. It's because of all the other things that have been said about Diana in the past. And there's this feeling, I think, among detractors of Harry and Meghan that they have overused and over leveraged Diana's memory so William did talk about Diana a lot actually back in 2017 when it was the 20th anniversary of her death and William and Harry together did these big documentaries about it but William told a bunch of us a bunch of us journalists who were reporting on it at the time there was like a kind of press conference and he got us all together I was there as well and he said that this was a one time thing and he wasn't going to do it again it was the 20th anniversary of Diana's death this was their moment when they were going to talk about her pay tribute to her, discuss her life and her death and the impact that it had on them.

7:46And then the box was going to close and he wasn't going to go back to it. Whereas Harry and Meghan have taken a slightly different approach. They have talked about Diana a lot. And Harry has talked a lot about saying that he sees history repeating itself in the way that the media treated Meghan. And so he's kind of politicized that memory too. but he's also talked about his own kind of battle with what he calls the establishment, an establishment stitch up when he's been trying to get his police protection detail reinstated and saying, you know, that that mirrors Princess Diana's story. And I think people are perhaps more understanding about it when Harry talks about it because, you know, Diana's his mother and it must have absolutely devastated him when she died.

8:29but there is a huge amount of skepticism floating around about Megan using Diana's memory and trying to leverage you know Diana's fame and Diana's popularity in order there's an idea that she's trying to you know further her own cause and her own gain using Diana's memory and so a kind of malign secret intent is inferred into Megan's actions now Megan gets criticized on social media all the time. So her getting criticised is absolutely nothing new. But the amount of interaction that some of these posts were getting in the millions is something that should kind of be a warning sign to Megan that this is becoming a bit of a difficult subject.

9:13And in fairness, there have been some times in the past when, you know, it has been very uncomfortable the way that Meghan has acted about Diana. I think the bit that I found most difficult was a passage from Harry's book, Spare, where he talks about taking Meghan out to see Diana's grave for the first time. So Diana's grave is on an island at her family's estate in Northamptonshire. And that's precisely because they didn't want there to be a big public grave where everybody, which everybody would be able to constantly turn into a shrine and appropriate, I suppose. And so, you know, you have to sail out on a little rowing boat in order to get to Diana's grave.

9:54And so Harry kind of left her there because he sensed that she needed a moment. And then he got back and she was crouched on the floor with her palms pressed to the surface of the gravestone. And, you know, Harry asked her what she was doing and she said she was seeking clarity and guidance. And that struck me as slightly too much for a woman you've never met. it just struck me as a little over the top to feel like you are in communion with Diana isn't just Harry's mother she's William's mother too and Charles's ex-wife and if I was in William or Charles's position I would genuinely find that extremely uncomfortable I think so I do think that there are times when they come across a little bit too much in relation to Diana.

10:48And that is part of why this whole idea is gathering steam. So that, I think, is a big part of why it's a lightning rod and why it's getting the level of attention it's getting on social media. But also, you know, there's the wider Harry and Meghan inauthenticity crisis. So before I get too far into that, I do actually want to read some passages of this report they've released. So like I said, they spoke to about 100 odd kids from around the world. and just asked them what they wanted from leaders. And the big thing to come out of it is about authenticity. And so the report says, across every geography, young people distinguished between influencers and true leaders.

11:29Influencers, they explained, were performative, inauthentic, and profit-motivated. Real leadership requires authenticity, commitment causes over-profit, and tangible impact beyond follower counts. So that is all really, really important. for understanding what's going on with Harry and Meghan at the moment, because obviously how Harry and Meghan got into this current situation where people do read Meghan in particular as inauthentic, Harry less so. But people see her that way. You know, a big part of it is because they obviously went to war with the monarchy and with Harry's family, which is a big and very difficult decision to take.

12:06But they then did it again and again and again. And when they first did that Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2021. You know, the pitch was really clear. We were all told that they weren't taking a profit from that particular interview. You know, Harry did another thing with the Me You Can't See documentary also with Oprah, with Harpo Productions, the same production company at the same time. And we weren't actually told that in relation to the Harpo, to the Apple TV show. So it could be that some of the kind of payment that they got was channeled through that other project but needless to say we were told the oprah winfrey interview they were not getting paid for it they were not making a profit from it so um then they did the me you can't see and then they did a podcast this was in may right after prince philip died a podcast um called the armchair expert in which harry you know went after his family again made further criticisms and then it bubbled away for a while and then Netflix came out at the tail end of 2022 right after the Queen died and that obviously just, it was a rerun of Oprah and it just really felt like they were now kind of hammering the nail a little too many times and it felt then, you know, we know that they did turn a profit from Netflix and the sums for$100 million for the contract was always said to be a little bit too high but they clearly got a fair bit of cash out of it, let's be honest.

13:31And then Harry's book came out January 2023, and we know that he made millions from that too. So in other words, they did make millions trashing Harry's family. You know, you might think that they were right to trash Harry's family, perfectly legitimate opinion, if that's your view. I'm not telling anybody what to think, but they did make a substantial amount of money out of doing it. And so to go back to what those young people told the market research that Archwell Foundation did, conducted, you know, they said that influencers are performative, inauthentic, and profit-motivated. And so people started from a point where they actually did believe Harry and Meghan were authentic.

14:13They believed the things that Harry and Meghan said. Then Oprah came out. Then they kind of partially tried to row back some of the Oprah claims. So Harry, for example, said that Meghan had never accused the royal family of racism, and people found that incredibly difficult to believe because everybody read Meghan's comments as an allegation of racism and Harry and Meghan did nothing to correct that for about 18 months. So in other words they lost their authenticity they had it and then they lost it and now they're trying to get it back that's the trajectory and so the way you get that back something that you no longer have something that you lost through your own actions you know it's a it's a long hard uphill slog and it doesn't come from being announced when you walk into an empty house and it doesn't come from having a photo realistic image of your face printed on the foam of a cappuccino and I don't obviously know exactly where the artistic direction for the photo shoot came from who knows maybe it wasn't from Megan but they probably should take away from this that they do just need to cool it a little bit with Diana because maybe they or Megan at the very least needs to call it a little bit with Diana because you know at the end of the day she never met Diana and she's also done the same thing with Queen Elizabeth II you know she has they have both really tried to hammer home this idea that the Queen loves Meghan Meghan loves the Queen everything was quite great with the Queen and Meghan it was just the rest of the family that was the problem and it was slightly difficult and uncomfortable because everybody knows that if the Queen didn't agree there is nothing she would be able to say to convey that to the public without causing a massive, you know, bin fire that would damage the monarchy.

15:58So it's something that they do do a little bit and they need to be very careful about it. But the underlying question obviously remains, what should they be doing? You know, if there are some problems with the messaging at the moment, namely, don't just tell people you're authentic, you have to show them. And authenticity comes from not leaning really hard into being part of the 1%. But the other thing is what do you do instead so what they should be doing is um hands-on charity work on the ground and i think in megan's defense i think she did try to get a little bit that of that into this harper's bazaar um cover interview because you know there was this whole section where the journalist was brought to i think it was like a museum or a gallery to meet these girls who were going to see uh this who were visiting this attraction and she had you know she had a chat with them seemingly but there was just so little about it in the copy it seemed almost as though the journalist didn't totally know why that had happened or why she was brought along to it there was nothing conveyed to kind of give us a clear idea of whether the girls really cared that they'd met Megan or you know whether they liked her like maybe they did maybe they didn't but you know if that was a that was an old school royal engagement you know there'd be quotes from some of the girls there would be like a few snippets of what Megan said to them you'd try to convey a general sense of like the atmosphere in the room but also the purpose behind the whole thing and it's just all a little too vague and flat and didn't really land.

17:23And I think a lot of the charity work that is happening through Archwell falls into the same kind of category, possibly with the exception of the parent network, but just going through their website, there's stuff there about food insecurity. But what have Harry and Meghan been doing on the ground about it? The royals, this is a difficult thing for them. They're constantly going to be compared to the royals and to William and Kate. and William and Kate and the royal family, you know, William and Kate get accused of being lazy even when they're turning out once a week to do these charity jobs. And Harry and Meghan are going to be compared to that.

17:58And they're doing stuff like a few times a year. So they're doing way, way less than the working royals, that they're going to be compared using the same benchmark. And people don't really have a proper fixed idea in their minds of the fact that the royals do this charity work, partly because it's their full-time job. You know, charity work for most ordinary people is something you do on the weekend or outside of your working hours, unless you literally are an employee at the charity. You know, if you're a volunteer, it's outside of your work. And I don't think there's any understanding or expectation from the public that, you know, the charity work would simply stop once you have a different full-time job.

18:36You know, I think, you know, the public think volunteering is volunteering. And if you have a full-time job, you should still be volunteering in your spare time on your weekend. So the way that you rebuild authenticity is not to do the really high profile charity events that Harry and Meghan have sometimes done in the past, you know, your wildfires and, you know, mass shooting incidents, which are incredibly tragic. And I do actually think it was good that Harry and Meghan tried to help, I think, you know, in Texas. But, you know, the whole idea of royalty is that the royals bring the spotlight to a cause that isn't getting enough attention.

19:12And if Harry and Meghan wait until the spotlight falls on a cause and then try to jump into the middle of the spotlight, then that's the wrong way round. And people will read that as inauthentic. It has to be like a standard Sunday, you know, in a forgettable, missable warehouse, you know, outside LA, packaging food parcels for kids who have had their food stamps taken away, you know? And like that, But I think a lot of what Meghan has tried to do is still geared towards the logic of the social justice era. You know, it's about feminism and women's rights, which are great. You know, absolutely no problem with that as a cause.

19:55But there also needs to be some understanding that we've shifted out of one social era and cultural era and into another. And the current social cultural era is defined by high inflation and a really widening gap between rich and poor. and you know Harry and Meghan are on the side of the one percent you know they are they are millionaires they crashed out of the monarchy and their ordinary lives that they built on the other side are the lives of millionaires living in a massive mansion in Montecito and so they need to have some awareness of that and the authenticity is going to come from giving up their free time to help people who are in need and you know I like some of what they're doing particularly the parents network, but I think they could really do with focusing that food insecurity issue is one that they could do a lot more on, on the ground, you know, in forgettable places, helping people who are really, really struggling.

20:51And I think that would go a long, long way to rebuilding some of that authenticity that they clearly realise is the key to the modern world. And one thing I would just end on, I think, is that actually the crazy thing about it is that Harry and Meghan were so much the royals of the social justice era. And it was like the perfect moment for Meghan to walk into the royal family at the absolute height of that era. But actually, in the long march of history, you know, if you want to talk about authenticity, actually, William and Kate do scan as authentic. Like if you leave aside the kind of royal bombshells and the royal soap opera and the kind of internecine family arguments, they charge against William and Kate is that they're boring.

21:30Like this sometimes does get said in the British press. Like they are the kind of vanilla long game royals who, you know, are focused on the 10, 20 year plan, not like kind of capturing attention in the moment. But actually, you know, they're authentic. Like people, they scan as authentic when they're in the room with people. They read as entirely themselves. And if William had found himself in a position where he'd walked into a room and his presence had been announced to an empty house, he would have tried to make a joke about it and puncture. He would have been aware, I think, of the absurdity of it and would probably have tried to make light of it.

22:06And I think Harry and Meghan could do with maybe understanding that the more you push, you know, the more you drive at something, the less authentic you seem, because that is the charge that those young people leveled at the influencers, is that they're grifters who are motivated by profit and are trying too hard to get something. and that's the luxury of monarchy. William and Kate don't need to try hard and they're not chasing a prophet because they're not allowed to and that enables them to come across as more authentic. Right, on that note, I'm going to take one more 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 obviously if you're watching the YouTube channel, please hit subscribe.

22:50And when I'm back, police and detectives have been digging out old notepads and emails about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

23:01Hello and welcome back to the show. Now, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor told a former Palace press secretary back in 2011 that he had asked an on-duty Metropolitan Police officer to basically effectively dig up dirt on his accuser, Virginia Jeffery. Now, the police are reviewing those reports in newspapers. That's slightly different to an investigation. They haven't formally launched an investigation yet, but they're reviewing the material available to decide whether to open a new investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, which if happened, it's hypothetically possible it could lead to him winding up in court after all.

23:41But not probably on the basis of Virginia Jeffries' actual allegations against him, that she was trafficked as a 17-year-old Jeffrey Epstein victim to have sex with him in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands in 2001. Andrew, of course, denies those allegations. He sued Virginia back in 2021. He settled out of court in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, said to be in the millions, but while denying liability. So that's the background. But essentially what happened was, as the House Oversight Committee has been making all of these emails published, one email in particular got leaked to a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday.

24:20And in it, Andrew said this, it would seem she, as in Virginia, has a criminal record in the States. I have given her DOB, i.e. date of birth, and social security number for investigation with, redacted, the name of the police officer. And he says that's the on-duty PPO, PPO as in police protection officer. So a source has told The Sun that as part of the initial examination of the case, officers are trying to establish what material is available. They are actively seeking to find emails and communications from Andrew's royalty protection team, as well as their notebooks. So that is reassuring to see that work is being done, that something is actually happening on that case.

25:02And of course, the implications for the monarchy are that if that does get reopened, if Andrew winds up in court, then that could be massive. I mean, it could go either way, like it really could. I'm completely on the fence. It could either be devastating to the monarchy because people will think you shielded this guy for so long, if indeed he is convicted, or if there's an attempt to prosecute Andrew and he's acquitted, what does that mean for faith in the criminal justice system? And what does it mean for the monarchy? But also, actually, if Andrew were to be hauled into court, you know, he would, I'm sure, protest his innocence.

25:36It would likely not be on sex trafficking charges. It would likely be for an offence called misconduct in a public office or potentially conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office, much lesser offense. It would be a much lesser time in jail. But if he was convicted and if the monarchy had supplied evidence, emails, maybe even testimony to the case, then it could actually help the monarchy's reputation because it could be an opportunity for the palace to show that they're not shielding Andrew from justice, because that has always been the most damaging part for the palace. So obviously the most damaging part for Andrew is the central allegation that Virginia was trafficked and forced to have sex with him and feared for her life if she refused, and by Epstein and Maxwell.

26:24Now, it's not clear whether any prosecution will happen. It might well not. But interestingly, the law in this area has actually been fine-tuned recently. There was a point when it was actually very vague, but then a whole load of prosecutions were brought against journalists, and those journalists wound up being acquitted, often through appeals to the high court. So there's a body of case law from high court judges who ruled on high-profile cases about misconduct in a public office. So there's a much greater understanding now in the police and the Crown Prosecution Service about what that offence is.

27:01Now, the worst case scenario for the monarchy is probably that a police officer gets prosecuted and Andrew doesn't. And under those circumstances, irrespective of whether that police officer were convicted or acquitted, it would be devastating to the reputation of the monarchy because it would look like basically the establishment was still protecting Andrew as a member of the royal family, but throwing a rank and file police officer under the bus in order to do so. So it is going to be really interesting to see what side of the fence the Crown Prosecution Service fall on. It will likely be their decision.

27:36If there is an investigation, it will be a Crown Prosecution Service, which is like, for American listeners, it's the equivalent of kind of the district attorney or the US attorney. It's the prosecuting authority. So, you know, whereas in the American press, they refer to the government as the prosecution in britain we we you know it's the cps so it'd be their decision if a charge is brought or the police may decide to just not investigate it in which case potential reputational damage for the police and for the monarchy because again it looks like an establishment cover-up and the big question will be you know if the police are going through the emails of police officers do they have access to andrew's emails have the palace provided the police with access to Andrew's emails.

28:22If they have, not only have we not been told about that at all, but we haven't been told how it was done because that's a complicated and difficult task. Ordinarily, an institution in a similar position would call an outside legal counsel to review emails and decide which ones needed to be handed over to the police and which ones not in order to wash their hands of the moral responsibility for doing it. And we have certainly not been told that that has happened in this case. so if no investigation materializes and the palace didn't cooperate you know it didn't help the police to kind of review material then there could be really serious consequences for the reputation of the monarchy and also interestingly you know my understanding is the um the press officer involved who was emailed has absolutely no recollection of this happening so it may well be that the police officers too you know it happened so long ago at a time that was so frenzied and busy that they also cannot remember what, if anything, was done after Andrew made this request.