Vanity Fair podcast

[Atlasvue]

Carrying on.

Employee feels Harry is happy doing charity work and is happy for meghan to do all the work to make money so he doesn’t need to

Maggie wrote back to me btw and it's that letter I have somewhere!

She had no one to sit next to so she joined and chaired clubs.

It is unlikely she was unpopular if she chaired clubs. Clubs at school are normally done by peer vote for things like that, and whereas the winner may not be the most popular person there (although it often is), people are unlikely to vote in someone who they actively don't like.

I have received letters from both Mrs T and Bill Clinton and I have no idea where they are! I do think M is the type of person who would have framed something like that.

The Meghan being lonely at school story seems a little at odds with her childhood best friend's (Ninaki Priddy's) account of her being beautiful and popular and someone who loved being the centre of attention; and the pictures of her as "Homecoming Queen", an honour that would have been bestowed by her peers by a vote (ie, by popularity).

Yes her story doesn't quite add up. But being popular in your role in a club isn't the same as being the person people like hanging out with at lunch. It's a different type of relationship. At lunch you just have to be yourself in the club you can act a role efficient/ keen/ network etc.

Also though don't they vote for Prom Queen? So she'd have to be 'popular' for that.
But I think there can be 'popular' girls meaning the girl with the social power but actually no one really likes her.

So what is the truth? Was she popular or not? Depends on what popular means.

You were a keen precocious letter writer!
What change did you bring about?
Where you instrumental in the groundwork for the Good Friday agreement?

I do think it was said that when Meghan wasn't happy about the original VF article being about her philanthropy etc the VF fact checkers could not find evidence to back this up and I have read the editor of VF at the time said - she is on the cover of VF because she is Prince Harry's serious girlfriend. I am not sure why she would have thought any differently . I don't think VF would have put pre Harry MM on the front cover.

Some thought provoking posts @StrawberryWasp

I can't help but feel that this has got Buckingham Palace's finger prints all over it. I felt that about the Hollywood reporter article as well. That one was a bit simpler as it just dealt with the bullying and claimed that Harry was nice but an enabler, which basically concurs with the bit in Spare when William confronts Harry who defends Meghan:- so I think the Hollywood reporter were presenting a quite simple message: William = right = good, Harry = enabler = misguided= charming = sort of good, Meghan = bad.

This VF article again keeps stressing how nice how Harry is and that he wants to do charity work and not do paid work but get paid somehow. How very like a life as a senior royal that sounds! I feel that this is being set up pave the way to bring him back to the Royal Family.

As for the bit about the divorce book, again that is I feel like a shot across the bows "don't even think about writing a book."

Please note that I'm not a fan of Meghan and Harry, but I do think he has been given an easy ride. I have often thought that if it wasn't for the lies she has told ( the one I particularly detest is the one about the wedding being three days before) I would have thought all the problems lay with Harry: not preparing her, not supporting her etc. I did think when I read exerpts of Finding Freedom that there was a lot about Harry being angry: Harry being furious, Harry in a rage etc; I thought from then he was being set up to be shown to have anger issues but now with this recent stuff they just all say how charming and nice he is. They don't talk about him being angry but I have read here reports by former staff members that talked about both of them shouting at people, not just Meghan so to me it's fishy that now the focus is only on her behaviour and not his.

@BalloonSlayer Ooh, interesting. The RF never turn on their own (publicly), it’s always the married-ins who are hung out to dry. I would sign up to this conspiracy newsletter!

You do realize these are American publications, right? Just like The Cut, Daily Beast, and Hollywood Reporter. Stories about her bullying Spotify employees or their own staff couldn’t have come from Buckingham Palace—they weren’t there.

If multiple sources across different continents and companies are saying the same thing, maybe it’s time to stop blaming others and recognize that it’s Harry and Meghan’s own behavior causing the issue.

Why would BP refer to themselves as treating Meghan badly, being imperialists or the ‘Queen of England’?

This properly made me laugh. I do love MN at times.

(As an aside, anyone interested in Thatcher and the pre-Good Friday situation, specifically the Brighton Bombing, might enjoy Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll. Top notch stuff.)

There is absolutely no way Buckingham Palace have had any influence on these reports, none whatsoever. The article wasn't particularly positive about Meghans experience of the RF during her short stint there.

I think the portrayal of Harry is probably very accurate, it comes across to me as if he is a fish out of water, a bumbling aristocrat with amazing manners but nothing much else, never really having to put much thought into a career, funding himself, planning for his future etc. You can totally see how Meghan has to run their show.

I'd be interested to be a fly on the wall in Montecito right now. Harry has made much of the dreadful "British" press ruining his reputation over the years (citing articles from abroad at times). Who will he blame for this, which is almost entirely U.S. based?

OUCH.... about an unknown publishing house being sounded out for a post divorce book 😮

Anyone think M&H comment on the Vaniety Fair article?

OOH, just bought that book this afternoon for DD (studying politics)! I remember that bombing vividly. First and last time I ever felt sorry for the Tory party.

'I can't help but feel that this has got Buckingham Palace's finger prints all over it.'

What nonsense.

That's where I think it falls down (or it's deliberate so as not to come across as a complete hit piece. There is no substance to the mistreatment/racism allegations, yet the article reads as if this is established fact. They are also dismissive of Catherine's Early Years work as producing nothing, when it appears that she's immersed herself in the project, actually studied and consulted with experts, produced a very well regarded report and has started implementing on the ground initiatives. In other words, instead of diving in head first, she's gone in methodically, thoughtfully and from a place of knowledge gathered from experts, rather than kneejerk "I know what's best" reaction and self aggrandising photo ops.

I wonder if they will try a retort this time, doubt if they will do an official comment. After the HR bullying report it looked like no one would do a clap back on their behalf, so they resorted to US weekly, it was a real pathetic attempt though, that just made them look ever worse, (if that was possible)

To be fair to VF, it is an analysis of the five years since they left, so I don't think they were delving into the time prior to that or the reasons for why they decided to leave the UK.

Yes, me too. I also developed some respect for some of Thatcher's personal qualities after reading it. Her conference speech referring to them all being there 'shocked, but composed' I think is pretty impressive. Totally ghastly on the whole, but a woman of backbone, nonetheless. That should be acknowledged.

Is this the latest ? BP gets the American press to write bad things about Meghan and Harry? That idea is ludicrous.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/18/reporting-duchess-sussex-seven-years-ago-relevant-as-ever/

Notice the similar patterns :

‘Suffice to say, this is not the first time I have heard that both Meghan and Harry, 40, were tricky to work for. As palace staff had taken to nicknaming them “Duchess Difficult” and “The Hostage”.
As an aide warned me at the time in no uncertain terms: “She’s not just difficult, she’s dangerous”.
It was in the autumn of 2018 – around six months after Harry and Meghan’s fairytale wedding – when I first got wind of the happy couple’s diva-ish behaviour.
By then we had discovered that around the time I wrote the bridesmaid dress tears story, Jason Knauf, then the couple’s communications secretary, had lodged a bullying complaint claiming Meghan had driven two personal assistants out of the household and was undermining the confidence of a third staff member.
A spokesman for the Sussexes claimed they were the victims of a calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful misinformation. Meghan’s lawyer, Jenny Afia, later claimed the word “bullying” had been used “too casually”. She added: “What bullying actually means is improperly using power repeatedly and deliberately to hurt someone, physically or emotionally. The Duchess of Sussex absolutely denies ever doing that.”
Yet as multiple sources have told me, Meghan wasn’t someone who screamed and shouted. It was much more subtle than that. As the Vanity Fair piece suggests: “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice”.
One former employee told me: “Meghan has a habit of using a whisper shout, so when Harry is in the room, he just hears her talking normally and doesn’t understand why people describe her as aggressive.
“His default response is always ‘Meghan is misunderstood’.
“She’d throw around phrases like ‘lack of accountability’, ‘disappointment’ or ‘we know what you did, and yet we still decided to support you’. But when staff tried to get clarity, asking what exactly they had done wrong, she’d dismiss them with lines like, ‘I think it’s best we keep it to ourselves and not advertise it in front of the team’, ‘We’re here to protect you, not throw you under the bus’.”
I was branded a “racist”, a “liar” and even received deaths threats for challenging Meghans truth but it seems other people’s truth may finally be catching up with Meghan.’

@BalloonSlayer Interesting theory. Although it takes as fact that they treated her badly and were racist towards her and that Catherine is an intellectual lightweight.

So my take on it is that Harry isn’t meant to come across as better. In the US at least someone who is vacuous and refuses to work is considered lesser than someone ambitious but a hustler even if they come across as a try hard (aka Meghan). So there might be a transatlantic difference here in how the piece is received.
With my American hat on I thought the piece was not as critical of Meghan as some have suggested and really dismissive of Harry.