Meghan Markle New Bullying Allegations Are a Major Crisis

Meghan Markle behaved like a teenager in the movie Mean Girls to staff who fell out of favor with her and left one person needing therapy, according to a bombshell report in Vanity Fair.

Accusations of bullying leveled at the Duchess of Sussex date back to 2018, when U.K. broadsheet The Times said palace staff were said to have been left in tears by her behavior.

However, Meghan and Prince Harry have long dismissed the allegations, at one point calling them a smear campaign.

Now though, Vanity Fair has become the latest title to report similar strife between Meghan and junior staff in their American operation, heaping pressure not only on the duchess but also the wider narrative that the couple were forced out of the monarchy.

It comes months after similar bombshells in The Hollywood Reporter, a PR crisis that prompted Meghan’s team to stage a fightback in the pages of Us Weekly.

Vanity Fair‘s coverage is, however, far more awkward for Meghan partly because it is a far longer piece but also significantly because it demonstrates just how ineffective the Us Weekly counter attack actually was.

Vanity Fair’s Allegations Against Meghan

One source told the magazine Meghan’s treatment of staff was “really, really, really awful” because those being frozen out could be “thrown to the wolves” at any given moment.

It was “very painful” with staff being undermined, according to one staff member who, described “talking behind your back” and “gnawing at your sense of self” in a manner reminiscent of teenagers in the movie Mean Girls.

Vanity Fair contributing editor Anna Peele described allegations relating to Meghan’s Archetypes podcast made with support from Gimlet, Spotify’s in-house production company.

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

One source worked in media projects with the couple and had initially been skeptical about the suggestion Meghan bullied palace staff but came to believe “any given Tuesday this happened.”

The account suggests it is possible to be yelled at without somebody raising their voice and the article suggests Harry was not aware of how Meghan treated staff because she did not literally shout.

The allegations are difficult for Meghan in and of themselves but in Peele there is also not so much as a whiff of the couple’s usual British tabloid enemies and nor does she fit within the U.S. conservative milieu that has become increasingly hostile to the Sussexes.

She lives in Manhattan and before Vanity Fair wrote for the New York Times and New York Magazine. In other words, it appears this is not simply the usual suspects trying to tear down Harry and Meghan.

Meghan Markle’s Team Clapback to The Hollywood Reporter

Meghan and Harry have of course been here before after The Hollywood Reporter quoted a source saying Meghan was like “a dictator in high heels.”

The account was notable because the allegations die not come from the British tabloids and related to the Sussexes U.S. operation, not their time at the palace.

That posed a problem for them, namely that they could not simply dismiss the story as a hit piece by the monarchy or members of Harry’s family who they had fallen out with.

Instead, they fought back in the pages of a different publication, with then-Archewell press secretary Ashley Hansen leading the charge.

She told Us Weekly: “When I told them [about needing major surgery]I was met with the kind of concern and care a parent would express if it were their own child.”

“Two things can be equally true: you can be a great leader and still have turnover. No boss or company is immune to that,” she added.

Hansen announced less than a month later that she was leaving her post and Meghan issued a glowing endorsement while the pair suggested they would continue working together in future.

Analysis

Meghan should now know a PR comeback similar to the one staged in the pages of Us Weekly will not solve this problem for her.

The simple existence of the latest report in Vanity Fair is evidence the strategy failed last time around.

Meghan therefore has two plausible options ahead of her, one of which is to try to simply ignore it and hope she still has enough support to make a success of her commercial projects such as her Netflix cooking show With Love, Meghan.

The other option, though, is to look for an opportunity to acknowledge the negative experiences of the staff who have worked for her on both sides of the Atlantic without dismissing them.

The Sussex position has historically been diametrically opposed to the staff who criticize her, with Harry insisting Meghan spread nothing but sweetness and light through the corridors of Kensington Palace.

In his book, Sparehe acknowledged that “more than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept” but when Prince William blamed Meghan, Harry replied that his brother “was out of line.”

“Meg managed to remain calm,” he continued. “Despite what certain people were saying about her, I never heard her speak a bad word about anybody, or to anybody.”

Outside observers have therefore been left to choose between two radically different narratives, that Meghan is either an angel or a demon.

The former held more water when the allegations were confined to the palace and Harry’s family or the British media, all the villains of their own narrative.

However, now the scandal has spread out of Britain to U.S. staff and American publications, the pro-Meghan narrative no longer contains a baked in explanation for the existence of the anti-Meghan perspective.

And with each new chapter it appears increasingly unlikely that the former is the full and only accurate story, meaning it may be time for Meghan to pivot and offer a third option—that she is a flawed but well-meaning person who is capable of changing.

Even if she cannot bring herself to issue a full apology or mea culpa, she could look for an opportunity, perhaps in passing during an interview or TV appearance, to reference the fact some people have found her a tough boss but to say she is actively trying to be better.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweekbased 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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