I guess we have to do this every six months or so. We have to hear about how Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is a bully, a Mean Girl, a woman who yells without raising her voice, a boss who “undermines” her staff, whatever that means. Those are the latest claims in Vanity Fair’s February cover story. The only throughline of all of the “Meghan is a bully” claims is that no one has been able to come up with a specific accusation of exactly what Meghan said or did. Hearing from a secondary source, six years later, that Meghan “screamed at a florist” does not count in my book (because why the hell would she scream at a florist?). Last September was the last time we went through a “Meghan/bully” cycle and that’s when Meghan and her Archewell team finally clapped back. They organized an Us Weekly cover story in which people went on the record about what Meghan is like as a boss, and quelle surprise, she’s lovely and warm.
Well, the Us Weekly story had “royalist sources” mad as hell. They were incandescent with rage that people went on the record with nice things to say about Meghan. The Daily Beast’s Royalist quoted one courtier who insisted that Meghan had “psycho moments” where Meghan “chewed people out” and made them feel like sh-t. Unsurprisingly, those same courtiers are piggybacking on the Vanity Fair story, telling the Daily Beast: “I am surprised that people spoke out, but I am not surprised by the content of their allegations. It seems like nothing has changed. There is not really much more to say.” Actually, there’s a lot more to say? Like specifics of what Meghan supposedly did which was so demonic, so sociopathic? But that’s not all. The Royalist also posted this story, tying the VF piece with Camilla Tominey and her racist reporting at the Telegraph.
Meghan Markle used a “whisper shout” to aggressively berate employees so Harry wouldn’t realize what was going on, according to a new claim by one of the first British journalists to report Meghan bullied her staff. Camilla Tominey, a senior editor at the Daily Telegraph, who was formerly that paper’s royal correspondent, also posted a gloating message to X saying that her reporting had been vindicated by the report in Vanity Fair, which alleged that her treatment of staff has been so poor since relocating to America that at least one ended up in “long-term therapy.”
Tominey first reported that Meghan and Kate fell out over a bridesmaid dress fitting for Kate’s daughter, Princess Charlotte.
This weekend, citing “multiple sources,” Tominey concurred with a line in the Vanity Fair piece in which a former staffer said: “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice.”
Tominey said a former employee had told her: “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’.”
Tominey quips that “other people’s truth may finally be catching up with Meghan.”
The VF article says that one person “took a leave of absence” after working on three episodes of Meghan’s podcast and adds that “several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, exiting their job, or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan.”
Meanwhile, former employees of Meghan’s—the so-called “Sussex Survivors Club,”— who told The Daily Beast in September that Meghan was a boss who had “psycho moments” and could be a “demon” have told The Royalist that they feel “vindicated” by the astonishing claims in Vanity Fair. One source told The Daily Beast in September: “I always thought she was a classic narcissist and getting her staff to tell a magazine how amazing she is only confirms that in my mind. She is lovely when it is all going her way but a demon when the worm turns.”
The Daily Beast touched base this weekend with some of the sources we spoke to back in September to garner their views in the wake of the VF piece. One said: “I feel desperately sorry for the people affected, because I have been there, but I also feel vindicated. All those people saying she is the world’s greatest boss should be ashamed of themselves. It’s obviously very tempting to work for her when you are being wooed and love-bombed, but people should be in no doubt; she is a nightmare. I would think the atmosphere will be particularly hellish now everything is going to s**t. She doesn’t do disappointment well.”
“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.” What are we doing here? A whisper-shout? This is the long-awaited specificity on Meghan’s bullying behavior? According to Tominey, Meghan used to “whisper-shout” at staff? What is whisper-shouting? Is it a racist-dog-whistle for Meghan speaking in her soft voice and saying “please complete this task?” And this: “But when staff tried to get clarity, asking what exactly they had done wrong, she’d dismiss them…” Imagine that – trying to get clarity on what, exactly, was so offensive in one’s behavior. It’s almost like Meghan has been victimized for seven f–king years by the vaguest, cloudiest accusations ever.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
