How Meghan lost America

The killer line comes right at the end of the Duchess of Sussex’s 6,500-word interview with The Cut magazine.

After likening herself and Prince Harry to entwined palm trees and matching salt and pepper shakers and saying that a South African Lion King cast member told her that people rejoiced and danced in the streets when she married into the Royal Family, like they did to celebrate the release of Nelson Mandela, Meghan finally comes out with it.

“I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking,” she declares, as she ushers journalist Allison P. Davis toward the door of her “marshmallowy” multi-million dollar Montecito mansion.

“I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to.”

As the curtain falls on yet another extraordinary outpouring from the mother of two, 41, it is abundantly clear what choice Meghan has made.

“I’m, like, so excited to talk,” she gushes at the start of the interview.

Yet is Meghan giving these increasingly outspoken interviews because she wants to – or because she has to?

With a podcast to promote amid talk of her star “waning” in the US, there is a growing sense that the only way the Duchess can get noticed these days is by continuing to wage war against the Windsors.

Even the left-leaning Washington Post recently published an editorial headlined: “To succeed in media, Meghan Markle needs to leave royal trauma behind.”

In it, the author points to Harry and Meghan being “trapped in [a] trauma plot, fixated on what led them to flee across the pond to the exclusion of what they’re going to do now that they’re here.”

Meghan’s much-anticipated new podcast has also been criticised on both sides of the Atlantic as yet another vehicle for her to tell another unhappy story about her life with the Royals.

In her review, the US writer Nicole LaPorte suggested the Sussexes’ production company, Archewell, has produced little content because Meghan “now finds herself trying to define what her post-royal, post-working-actress brand actually is.”

Little wonder, then, that the Duchess is feeling the need to garner yet more column inches.

From her unsubstantiated claim that the British media called her children the “n-word”, to her suggestion that the couple’s mere “existence” upset the Royal hierarchy, as with Oprah Winfrey, the outbursts appear designed to generate maximum publicity in the UK. That way, the story is guaranteed to get picked up by the all-important US breakfast shows – even if there is little to say about the interview beyond Meghan’s criticisms of The Firm.

On Tuesday morning, Good Morning America (GMA), the country’s most watched morning TV programme, captioned its cover story: “Meghan Markle’s Royal Revelations,” dedicating a two-and-a-half minute segment to what she said about her in-laws – and little else.

But as one US TV insider explained: “Meghan is sort of regarded as tabloid fodder these days. I wouldn’t say her popularity has waned but her star draw has. She was riding on the cusp of being the Duchess, but a lot of their projects have failed and some of the lustre has gone. It would be unfair to say she’s not popular but we are doing less on her. We are more likely to do something on William and Kate now.”

Others say that taking aim at the Queen and the Royal family was always a risky move.

According to another source who works for one of the big American networks: “People get the US wrong. They think they are obsessed with Meghan and Diana but it’s the Queen they are really obsessed with.

“When it touches on criticising the monarchy – that has been quite damaging. People here have sort of been asking themselves: ‘Would you do that to your in-laws?’”

The rhetoric is supported by recent polling which shows that Meghan’s approval rating has tanked since she and Harry appeared on Oprah in March 2021.

A week after the interview, an Economist Survey by YouGov of 1,500 adults in the US found Meghan had a net favourability of just +15, down from +28 a year earlier, while negative ratings of her rose ten points to 33 per cent.

Less than half (48 per cent) had a “favourable or somewhat favourable” view of Meghan, with a third having a “very or somewhat unfavourable” view of her.

In May, a YouGov poll of 1,000 adults in the US found this had plunged further, with just 45 per cent now having a “favourable or somewhat favourable” view of the Duchess. Those with a “very or somewhat unfavourable” view of her rose by 13 to 46 per cent.

There are increasing signs of fatigue over stories about the Sussexes’ time in Britain. In July, another survey found that just a quarter (25 per cent) of Americans were “very or fairly interested” in reading Harry’s forthcoming autobiography, compared to 14 per cent of Britons who said the same.

The poll found that more than half of Americans (51 per cent) had no interest at all, compared to two thirds of Brits.

“There’s actually a bit of snobbery about Meghan now in the US because she’s become a celebrity story rather than a news one,” said one journalist who works for an American media company. She recalls the Duchess’s campaign for paid parental leave, where she wrote letters to senior US politicians, prompting speculation she was pursuing a career in politics.

“We rang (US Speaker) Nancy Pelosi’s office to see if they wanted to respond and they just laughed.

“She’s not being taken seriously by Washington at all. She’s not Michelle Obama – she doesn’t have that pedigree so where does she fit in?”

Commentators stress that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are still hugely admired in the US. The couple recently appointed Lee Thompson, who climbed the ranks at US mass media empire NBC, as their new PR chief, proving their interest in maintaining strong relations with the American public.

“Kate is flying in America in the same way she’s flying in Britain, because she’s modelling herself on the Queen,” says the journalist.

The Sussexes are due to fly to the UK next week to attend the One World Summit in Manchester and WellChild Awards. They are unlikely to see the Queen, however, because she is staying in Balmoral next week to receive the next Prime Minister.

The fact that the couple have not felt able to completely turn their backs on Britain – despite their continual criticism of its media and an ongoing row over their Home Office security – further supports the theory that their US profile is still largely dictated by their UK coverage. And it’s the profile that pays the bills.

As a recent article in Forbes magazine pointed out, the couple have a great many outgoings – and not quite the income stream they might have hoped for.

Although they have signed lucrative deals with the likes of Spotify and Netflix, the streaming giant is facing intense problems of its own and has ended up cancelling Meghan’s one show, Pearl, an animated film that had been nearing production.

As such, a great deal is riding on the ongoing fly-on-the-wall documentary series taking viewers behind the scenes of the couple’s various charitable endeavours, as well as Harry’s forthcoming autobiography, to be published by Penguin Random House in the coming months.

Harry and Meghan are thus under more pressure than ever to produce something “impactful” enough to justify the multi millions that have been spent on them.

And then there is the pressure coming from their Royal rivals.

Next month, just a few weeks after Harry and Meghan’s visit to England, Prince William will be visiting New York for a summit for his Earthshot Prize – followed in December by a trip to Boston to present it.

It is yet to be confirmed whether he will be accompanied by Kate or their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

But such a Stateside outing is likely to pose a significant challenge to Harry and Meghan’s faltering status as the self-styled King and Queen of America.