The Meghan Markle who bitched and moaned about every last slight, who took to multiple media platforms to insinuate the royals were racists and didn’t care that she was suicidal and that Kate Middleton made her cry — that Meghan is gone. Poof! Forget she ever existed.
In her place is Meghan Markle 2.0: easy, breezy, laissez-faire. Cool as ice.
What — you find this hard to believe? Well, just look at her on Monday, in her first speaking appearance this year, introducing a TED talk — in all her soft-focus glory via video, greiges and pinks and glossy hair, smiling away.
Not enough? She and Harry were spotted later that night snuggling at an NBA playoff game, the LA Lakers versus the Memphis Grizzlies, a kiss cam catching them laughing, laughing, laughing — even if Meghan’s well-placed arm kept Harry from leaning in and getting an actual kiss.
See! New Meghan is carefree, joyous, living her best life out loud, nothing at all stilted about it.
Nothing upsets this Meghan, not even a nation of Brits who, in anticipation of King Charles’s coronation, clearly think what the late Queen allegedly said before Prince Philip’s funeral: ‘Thank goodness Meghan is not coming.’
Yes, our one-time Duchess Difficult would have us believe that she has chosen — despite weeks of negotiations with Buckingham Palace over what roles she, Prince Harry and their two children would play at the coronation — simply to not attend. To take the path of least resistance. To make it easier on the players who matter. To not pull focus.
This despite multiple published reports that Harry and Meghan were threatening not to go unless they had a place on the Buckingham Palace balcony. You know, with the royals who actually work without complaint. Who forgo reality shows and book deals in which they spill all manner of secrets and spite.
That is the brand, isn’t it? Resentful, vengeful, petty and profit-seeking. Yelling ‘racism!’ everywhere. Seeking out the spotlight like a special-ops team on the hunt for a high-value target, then demanding everyone leave her and Harry alone, as South Park’s ‘Worldwide Privacy Tour’ perfectly lampooned.
So, when news broke on Friday claiming that Meghan wasn’t attending the coronation over an unsatisfactory exchange with Charles – personal letters she had written expressing upset over ‘unconscious bias’ within the royal family – who among us didn’t think: Yep, that sounds about right?
Not so, says Meghan. Never, ever, ever. In no universe would she dare.
Indeed not after she sat across from Oprah Winfrey in 2021, that smug Cheshire grin firmly in place, asserting that a senior royal had made inappropriate comments about the skin color of her unborn child.
It’s just not like Meghan to harp on things, you know? She would never perseverate over all the wrongs done to her — nay, to accept an award from the Kennedys, America’s own would-be royal family, for standing up to ‘structural racism’ within the royal family, only to have her husband walk back that claim weeks later.
She and Harry have so much integrity. Their stories are totally consistent. When they say something, we can really believe them.
And so over the weekend, Meghan’s mouthpiece Omid Scobie — Scooby Doobie-Doo to us faithful rubberneckers — released a strongly worded denial from a spokesperson. Care to guess how it began?
‘The Duchess of Sussex,’ — we are never, ever giving up that royal title, it seems — ‘is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago. Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous.’
Let’s take this statement apart, shall we? Break out the scalpels. Let’s slice it and dice it and dispose of it as the grade-A medical waste it is.
