Samantha Cohen was a senior aide to Queen Elizabeth II. Buckingham Palace basically asked Cohen to step in as private secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018, to help them launch their own separate royal office. It was supposed to be a temporary job, with Cohen as a placeholder until the Sussexes hired their own hand-picked team. Cohen ended up staying with the Sussexes for 18 months and she exited their office just a couple of months before the Sussexes exited the UK as well. Well, Samantha – who is Australian – gave an interview to the Herald Sun in which she discussed her memories of QEII. Of course she was asked about the Sussexes and, obviously, the fakakta “bullying” claims. Cohen had every opportunity to shut it down and say that the whole thing was a harebrained scheme cooked up by the clownshow in Prince William’s office. She did not.
The former royal aide dubbed ‘Samantha the Panther’ who worked as Harry and Meghan’s private secretary has claimed that her replacement quit during the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s trip to Africa. Samantha Cohen served as Queen Elizabeth’s press secretary for 17 years and then as her assistant and private secretary.
She stepped away from working for the Royal household in 2019 after a stint as the private secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – a job she took on at the request of the Queen. Ms Cohen resigned after being ‘treated harshly’ and likening the job to ‘working with teenagers’, according to historian Valentine Low in his book Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown.
In an interview with Australian outlet the Herald Sun, she claimed that she stayed in her role three times as long as she had originally planned because officials struggled to find a replacement for her. When a new private secretary was found, they quit during Harry and Meghan’s tour of Africa in 2019, Ms Cohen claimed.
She said: ‘I was only supposed to stay for six months but stayed for 18 – we couldn’t find a replacement for me and when we did we took them on tour to Africa with Harry and Meghan to show them the ropes but they left as well while in Africa.’
Harry and Meghan’s ten-day tour with their son Archie began in Cape Town, South Africa. They also visited Botswana, Angola and Malawai in what was their last official trip before they quit as working royals. In an ITV documentary filmed during the trip, Meghan claimed to broadcaster Tom Bradby that courtiers failed to ever ask if ‘I’m okay’ and said she struggled to cope with intense media scrutiny, saying she was ‘existing not living’.
Ms Cohen confirmed in the interview with the Herald Sun that she was one of 10 courtiers who were interviewed over claims the duchess ‘bullied’ Palace staff. It came after a bullying complaint was raised by Harry and Meghan’s communications secretary, Jason Knauf, in 2018. However, Ms Cohen refused to make any further comment about the complaint, which was strenuously denied by the Duchess of Sussex’s legal team.
So they hired a new private secretary in the early fall of 2019, brought the new person on the Africa tour and the person quit midway through the tour? The same tour where there was a fire in Archie’s government-provided nursery? The same tour when Meghan was visibly upset by the lack of support through a months-long racist hate campaign? The same tour where Harry decided to launch his lawsuits against several British media outlets? I would be curious to know the actual rationale behind that private secretary leaving mid-tour. I’ve always thought that the Sussexes were basically just trying to get through that African tour before they officially made up their minds about whether or not they would leave. That tour plus their Remembrance events in November 2019 were the last big things they did before they went to Canada.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.