To Serena Williams, Meghan is “selfless”, leads with “empathy and compassion”, and illustrates “what it means to be truly noble”. To Piers Morgan, she is “pious”, “self-pitying”, and “repulsive”.
Before most people in the UK had seen the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, it had been scrutinised and summarised on both sides of the Atlantic – and, as is typically the case with the couple’s every public intervention, the divides were as deep as they were predictable manifestations of a culture war.
Harry and Meghan – and particularly Meghan – drew vitriolic criticism from the ranks of commentators and television panellists who have long viewed their marriage as the worst thing to happen to the monarchy since Magna Carta. On the other side were those voices, many of them belonging to women of colour, who see the decision to raise allegations of racism and mistreatment as necessary and even heroic.
Among the public, too, the split in opinion appeared to align with familiar dividing lines, with 71% of Brexit supporters viewing the interview as inappropriate against 37% of remainers, according to a snap YouGov poll. Younger respondents were also significantly more likely to support the couple.
While the differences of opinion were not merely transatlantic, it was far easier to find voices attacking the couple in the UK, often among those who have previously dismissed them as avocado-loving standard-bearers for the “wokerati”. Inevitably, the most strident was that of Morgan. In a MailOnline column that began with a list of the insults he could think of based on the first 10 minutes of the broadcast “while restricting myself to only using words beginning with the letter ‘s’,” he went on to say that the interview was “an orgy of pious, self-indulgent, score-settling twaddle” and “repulsively disingenuous”.
His stance, if not his creative alphabetical choice, was echoed by the Conservative MP Michael Fabricant, who argued that “the holder of every high position will have personal little secrets they want hidden,” and government minister Zac Goldsmith, who suggested that “Harry is blowing up his family”.
The former Daily Telegraph editor and Margaret Thatcher biographer Charles Moore, dismissed the couple as “self-absorbed and irrelevant” on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. Jenny Bond, the former BBC royal correspondent, said: “We have more to worry about than two very wealthy and privileged individuals complaining about their lot in life.” Ex-Ukip leader Nigel Farage said Prince Harry was responsible for a “public betrayal of his family” and called his actions “despicable”.
Not every public figure in the UK took that view, with Labour’s Nadia Whittome among those suggesting that the claims of racism should be investigated by Buckingham Palace. The singer Alexandra Burke said she viewed Meghan’s experiences as “heartbreaking and very disappointing”, adding: “For me as a black woman hearing that, it made me feel sick to my very core.”
But the couple’s most prominent defenders were in the US, with Williams perhaps the best known of those to take their side. “Meghan Markle, my selfless friend, lives her life – and leads by example – with empathy and compassion,” she wrote on Instagram. “She teaches me every day what is means to be truly noble. Her words illustrate the pain and cruelty she’s experienced.”
Amanda Gorman, the young poet and activist who read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, said on Twitter that Meghan “was the crown’s greatest opportunity for change, regeneration, and reconciliation in a new era. They didn’t just maltreat her light – they missed out on it.”
And if some of the couple’s sternest critics appeared to imply that Meghan had invented her claims of suicidal thoughts and racist treatment, there were many who took her at her word. “Royalty is not a shield from the devastation and despair of racism,” said Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. “I’m grateful that Meghan Markle is still here.”
If there was little the two sides could agree on, it fell to Tina Brown, the British journalist living in New York, to alight on a single point of consensus. “Let’s all bow down to the real queen here: Oprah,” she told CBS. “I think we will be talking about this interview for 20 years.”
