Prince Harry, not Meghan Markle, was supposed to dominate recent media coverage of the rogue royal couple. Harry visited New York City last week, stopped in London this week and was headed to Africa, speaking on behalf of causes he supports in order to prove that he can carry himself in the world as a statesman-like philanthropist and thought leader.
But a political insider at the United Nations, where Harry spoke, told Page Six that his good-will tour had been “hijacked” by his American wife. Meghan had her employees speak on her behalf in a big, splashy magazine cover to fight back against a new series of workplace bullying allegations, which first emerged in a scathing Sept. 12 article in The Hollywood Reporter.
Instead of the focus being on Harry’s New York engagements, royal observers and P.R. experts were left to ponder whether his wife faces a reputational reckoning that could leave her permanently branded “a terrible boss,” and a not “kind” person — similar to her friend and Montecito neighbor Ellen DeGeneres.
FILE – In this March 21, 2015, file photo, Ellen DeGeneres arrives at the 26th Annual GLAAD Media Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, Calif. DeGeneres is receiving a humanitarian award, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is reaping the benefits. Producers of the People’s Choice Awards announced Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, that DeGeneres will be recognized as the Favorite Humanitarian at the Wednesday, Jan. 6, ceremony. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
The comedian experienced a stunning fall from grace in 2020 when she became the focus of toxic workplace allegations at her day-time talk show. In her new Netflix comedy special, “For Your Approval,” DeGeneres has bemoaned being canceled, said she’s been “kicked out of Hollywood” and has been making the case that she deserves to be treated with affection again, Rolling Stone reported.
“We saw Ellen DeGeneres get eviscerated because new allegations continued to drop,” Eric Schiffer, chair of Reputation Management Consultants, said in interviews with Newsweek and with this news organization. Now, Meghan is seeing allegations dropping against her in two recent news reports. If it’s any consolation to the former “Suits” star, Schiffer said the cases differ somewhat because DeGeneres built a brand on being the “be kind lady.”
“Brand Meghan is not standing from the tops of buildings proclaiming her niceness,” Schiffer said. Then again, Schiffer also said that the Duchess of Sussex wants to be seen kind, empathetic person who would treat anyone who works for her with respect.
Schiffer agreed that the “terrible boss” and “Duchess difficult” allegations could hurt Meghan and her effort to forge future brand deals. In a report that came out last week in the Daily Beast, former employees described her as “a demon” who had “psycho moments” — images that wouldn’t compliment her anticipated Netflix cooking show, which is supposed to feature her celebrating “the joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining, and friendship.”
Meghan has been periodically dogged by allegations of being “difficult” since she married into the British royal family in May 2018. Several days before she and Harry sat down with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 to air their grievances against royal life in a globally televised interview, the Times in London published a report which quoted several current and former royal aides who said they were bullied by Meghan.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visits the Hubb Community Kitchen in London on November 21, 2018 to celebrate the success of their cookbook. – The kitchen was set up by women affected by the Grenfell tower fire and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex wrote a foreword to the cookbook to help raise funds for the victims. (Photo by Chris Jackson / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS JACKSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
One former employee, who was not identified in the story, told the Times they had been personally “humiliated” by Meghan, while another aide said her behavior was “more like emotional cruelty and manipulation, which I guess could also be called bullying.”
At the time, Meghan dismissed the Times report as a “calculated smear campaign,” hatched by a royal establishment and tabloid press that had grown hostile to her. When Buckingham Palace said in 2022 that it would not release the findings of its investigation into Meghan’s alleged bullying, a source close to her proclaimed to Us Weekly that she had been “cleared.”
However, Meghan has never been able to entirely silence accusations that she’s attention-seeking and demanding. She and her supporters have shrugged off such criticism by saying that she’s simply an ambitious woman who expects excellence, while it’s sexist to ascribe negative connotations to these qualities.
But The Hollywood Reporter story has revived the controversy. Schiffer and others said the story has made it difficult for her to dismiss the palace bullying allegations as an isolated, unfounded, U.K.-based “smear campaign.” The Hollywood Reporter story suggests a possible pattern of behavior that has continued since she and Harry stepped away from royal duties in 2020 and moved to California.
“She denied (the bullying) had happened in Britain, and now we have a whole other set of accusations that make her seem out of touch and hypocritical,” said Schiffer, who noted that the Hollywood Reporter is a respected news organization in American’s entertainment industry.
In its bombshell story, the Hollywood Reporter addressed Meghan and Harry’s high staff turnover by interviewing some dozen current and former employees, as the publication’s editor in chief Maer Roshan explained. One source told the publication that Meghan “belittles people,” doesn’t take advice and is a “dictator in high heels” who fumes, barks out orders and bombards her staff with 5 a.m. emails. Both she and Harry are “poor decision-makers,” a source also said. While Harry can be charming, he also enables his wife.
“Everyone’s terrified of Meghan,” a current senior staffer told the Hollywood Reporter.
Meghan’s camp responded to the report by staging what the Daily Beast called “a fightback,” which involved a “carefully curated” set of current and former employees speaking to Us Weekly and describing her as “the best boss ever” — a thoughtful employer who gives her staff bundles of freshly cut flowers and home-produced eggs.
Gobal press secretary Ashley Hansen said Meghan couldn’t have been more supportive when she had to take some extended time off for a serious surgery. Another source used even more florid language to describe the couple’s management style: “Harry and Meghan picked the best of the best from every field and watered the seeds for them to flourish.”
Schiffer said it’s understandable and even necessary for Meghan’s camp to refute the bullying allegations — if they are untrue. Then again, the Us Weekly story prompted more ex-employees to talk to the Daily Beast and say more unflattering things.
A former palace courtier, who worked for Meghan and Harry when they were still living in the UK, said she was part of a tradition of “difficult royals over the years.” The courtier said, “There definitely were bad, very bad, even psycho moments. I witnessed people being chewed up in person and over the phone and made to feel like (expletive).”
Another person who worked with Meghan in the run-up to her wedding told The Daily Beast: “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.” The person also said, “She is lovely when it is all going her way but a demon when the worm turns.”
Schiffer said it’s too soon to say whether Meghan is poised for an Ellen DeGeneres-style fall from grace.
It depends on whether the back and forth in the U.S. media will prompt other news and entertainment organizations to do some digging, or other current and former employees to speak out, for or against the American duchess. He also wonders if Meghan and Harry are at risk of litigation.
“Are there more things that will come out?” Schiffer told Newsweek. “The question is, what is the life of the set of allegations? If it can stay alive it becomes additional stories that start to solidify a serious image hit.”
Meanwhile, Schiffer noted that DeGeneres hasn’t exactly been canceled, given that she’s the star of her own Netflix comedy special. However, the special has faced criticism, including from people who worked on her talk show. They told Rolling Stone that she’s using this platform to misrepresent “the narrative” about her being a bully and “to invalidate and deny our experiences.”
In its review of DeGeneres’s special, Slate writer June Thomas said the comedian had done nothing to win back the public’s approval. “We’re at that stage in the culture wars when comedians exposed for abuse, exploitation, or just being terrible bosses don’t even need to mumble a mea culpa when they tape their Netflix specials,” Thomas wrote. “Apology tours have become explanation tours, venues for misunderstood multimillionaires to broadcast their side of the story, blithely ignoring any facts that don’t fit their version of events.”