I’ve now been around for the original hysteria around then-Meghan Markle’s October 2017 Vanity Fair cover interview, the five-years-later reimagined hysteria about that 2017 cover, and now this, a seven-years-later rewrite on the whole episode. You might wonder… why the hell is the Daily Mail still obsessing over something that happened in 2017, when Meghan was a private citizen? You forget that these people are vile morons. I think we might even consider this another piece in what I refer to as “The Mail Remembers” series, like “remember when Meghan told off Harry’s bigoted friends?” and “remember when the Middletons were insecure about Meghan?”

So, to recap, throughout much of 2017, Meghan was living and working in Canada, on what would be her final season of Suits. Once she wrapped on that season, she packed up her Canadian home and moved to England in October/November. Harry had already established with his Kensington Palace team that Meghan was “the one” and preparations were already underway. When Meghan appeared on the October cover of Vanity Fair, it was widely believed that the whole thing was palace approved. There was zero outrage from the palace at the time, and Meghan didn’t say anything in the interview which had to be cleaned up or clarified by the palace. The royal reporters said, at the time, that the whole thing was done with palace approval. In the years since, that VF cover has rarely been cited as one of Meghan’s many transgressions in the UK. Then in 2022, that rancid old coot Tom Bower tried to make “the palace was mad about it and Meghan was hysterical” into a thing. No one believed him. But will you believe Richard Eden at the Daily Mail?

The allegations in the excoriating Vanity Fair article about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex this week have been dismissed by the couple and described as ‘distressing’, sources ‘close to’ them have claimed.

I can disclose, however, that it was not this Vanity Fair article but a previous interview in the magazine that truly alarmed Buckingham Palace. Back in 2017, the then Meghan Markle was thrilled when she learned she would be on the cover of the respected US magazine. It was an ambition that she had long held, but one of which she could only dream while still a minor actress on the TV legal drama Suits.

The cover of Vanity Fair was reserved for genuine stars, so when she was approached by the magazine, after news broke of her romance with Prince Harry the previous October, Meghan couldn’t contain her excitement.

‘She’s just wild about Harry!’ gushed the headline that September. Inside, the magazine declared: ‘As Markle tells Vanity Fair about her bi-racial background, her romance, and her hit series, Suits, it seems that this 36-year-old American may be just the woman for Britain’s iconoclastic royal.’

While Meghan was jubilant at the prospect of her double-whammy – bagging a prince and a Vanity Fair cover – royal officials were perturbed by the article when it was published.

‘It was like a punch to the solar plexus,’ a royal source told me this week. ‘We do not expect friends of members of the Royal Family to give such interviews.’

The source pointed out that Kate Middleton and Lady Diana Spencer, for example, waited until after their engagements had been announced before they gave an interview. And, in both cases, it was organised by Palace officials for the TV cameras under the strictest of conditions. Harry and Meghan’s engagement was not announced until two months after the Vanity Fair article was published.

‘While people were pleased that Harry had found a serious girlfriend, the article did set alarm bells ringing,’ the source told me. ‘It made people worry that Miss Markle was seeking to use the relationship for publicity purposes.’

A source close to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex insisted this week that Kensington Palace had ‘signed off’ Meghan’s interview in 2017. However, while Palace officials may have reluctantly agreed to the idea of an article, they did not know what it would contain.

[From The Daily Mail]

“However, while Palace officials may have reluctantly agreed to the idea of an article, they did not know what it would contain” – what are we doing here? Was it a punch to the solar plexus or did they sign off on it? Were they shocked and appalled or did they know exactly what was happening because they were already stage-managing Meghan? Consider, at this time, that the palace was also trying to control the Suits scripts and Meghan’s dialogue. They were micromanaging her life even then, when she was a “royal girlfriend.” (I’m still mad that Harry didn’t shut that sh-t down.) But the funniest line here is “It made people worry that Miss Markle was seeking to use the relationship for publicity purposes” – the Windsors and the Middletons have been clout-chasing Meghan from the start, and seven years later, they’re still chasing after that Markle Sparkle.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of VF.