- Prince Harry said Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton were treated very differently by the British press.
- The couple said Meghan was condemned for the very same things that Kate was praised for.
- Prince Harry said it was clear that the headlines attacking Meghan had racist undertones.
In the newest installment of their docuseries “Harry & Meghan,” Prince Harry took aim at how British tabloids covered Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton in very different ways.
The fourth episode of the Netflix show explored how tabloid coverage of Markle began to change shortly after the couple’s 2018 royal wedding.
James Holt, the couple’s former spokesperson, said this shift occurred after Meghan and Prince Harry’s very successful tour in Australia.
“When some people in the institution around the family started to see that this new couple could destabilize the power dynamics, whether actively talked about or not, the aim was to put them in a box or make them irrelevant,” he said.
Holt added: “All of a sudden, these tabloid stories started to appear criticizing Meghan for every little thing.”
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But it didn’t go unnoticed by Meghan and Prince Harry that she was being condemned for the very same things that Kate had been praised for — whether it was her fashion choices or love of avocados.
The docuseries showed that after Meghan wore wedges during her Australia tour, InStyle reported that she broke royal protocol. Months later, the outlet praised Kate for wearing wedges, saying they were “the most versatile shoes of the summer.”
Kate also received glowing headlines when she was photographed cradling her pregnant belly, while a headline in The Sun called Meghan “Baby Bump Barbie.”
“You had the bump. The avocados,” Harry said. “It’s bizarre, and there were maybe like 25 examples. It’s literally the same thing. It’s the off-the-shoulder dress. It’s the same fruit.”
Harry also said it was clear that the headlines attacking Meghan had racist undertones.
“If you don’t see the difference and understand why it’s being reported that way, then I can’t help you,” he said. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
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Meghan previously discussed how she and Kate were pitted against each other by the British press during her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey. The Duchess of Sussex made headlines when she revealed it was actually Kate who had made her cry over a flower-girl dress for her wedding — not the other way around.
Meghan told Winfrey that “everyone in the institution” knew the story in the papers wasn’t true, but they never refuted the rumors. The Duchess of Sussex described it as the “beginning of a character assassination.”
In the docuseries, Meghan said the tabloid headlines didn’t bother her until she realized people actually thought they were true.
“I had still been under the delusion that if it was in a tabloid no one believed it,” she said. “And then we had a walkabout in Liverpool, there was a group of women, and one of them said to me, ‘What you’re doing to your father is not right.'”
Meghan added: “It was the first time that I went, ‘Oh my God, people actually believe this stuff.’ And then my entire center was rocked to its core.”
