Duchess

The Duchess of Sussex gave people a lot to consume this week. The new season of With Love, Meghan came out on Tuesday, as did a new As Ever product drop. A new interview with Meghan also came out on Tuesday: a great piece with Bloomberg’s The Circuit with Emily Chang. Meghan came across really well (imo) and she seemed pretty loose as she chatted and joked around. At one point, Chang asked Meghan about relatability, and Meghan’s answer has caused a lot of fury in the British press. I can’t help it, I’m laughing my ass off at everyone over there freaking out because Meghan basically rolled her eyes at royal pantyhose protocols! From The Sun:

Meghan Markle has made yet another dig at the Royal Family as she claimed she “couldn’t be as vocal” when in the UK. The Duchess of Sussex, 44, opened up about how her life felt “inauthentic…several years ago” in an interview with Bloomberg Originals.

The mum-of-two, who lives in a £12million Montecito mansion and spends her evenings learning French on Duo Lingo, was asked if it’s hard to appear “relatable”.

She replied: “No, I’m just being myself. I think it was probably different several years ago where I couldn’t be as vocal and I had to wear nude pantyhose all the time. Let’s be honest, that’s not very myself, I hadn’t seen pantyhose since movies in the eighties when they came in that little egg. That felt a little bit inauthentic, but that’s a silly example, but it is an example of when you’re able to dress the way you wanna dress and you’re able to say the things that are true and you’re able to show up in the space really organically that’s being comfortable in your own skin.”

[From The Sun]

The Sun’s Matt Wilkinson referred to this as a “veiled dig.” It’s the pantyhose story which brought down the British empire! Meghan’s pantyhose is a slap in the face to the dead queen! Queen Elizabeth told all of her friends how furious she was about Meghan’s pantyhose!! Would you like to see someone else freak out about the pantyhose story? Behold, Tom Sykes’ Royalist Substack, where he threw a full-on tantrum about Meghan DARING to mention the royal pantyhose protocol!

Meghan Markle promoted the second season of her Netflix lifestyle series today by accusing the British royal family of making her wear “nude pantyhose” in yet another retread of her signature theme of portraying palace life as an unbearable system of micro-aggression and control.

Instead of taking a prime sofa on Today or GMA, which she could book with a text message, she chose Bloomberg Originals’ The Circuit. The interview dropped this morning on Bloomberg’s YouTube lineup and, at last check, had drawn 14,000 views—a respectable tally for a business-news franchise but hardly the roar of mainstream morning television. The Circuit, to be fair, is no minnow. Emmy-nominated, running across Bloomberg’s many platforms, and with the company touting 62 million monthly video viewers in 2024, it carries weight in financial circles. But it is still not network TV. That feels deliberate. Meghan long ago stopped doing the obvious media rounds, preferring niche settings where the conversation can be guided gently around anything inconvenient.

So here she was with Emily Chang, whose opening order of an oatmeal chai latte set the tone for what followed: a string of friendly prompts that allowed Meghan to sketch, once again, her favored self-portrait—conscious founder, authentic businesswoman, victim of stifling royal dress codes. Chang’s best question—whether there’s a tension between being relatable and being a duchess—produced the line that has gone viral: “No, I don’t find— I’m just being myself. So I think, probably, it was different several years ago where I couldn’t be as vocal… I had to wear nude pantyhose all the time… That felt a little bit inauthentic.”

I can’t be alone in finding Meghan’s habit of painting the British royal family as an oppressive straitjacket deeply hypocritical, when every ounce of her fame, wealth, and celebrity springs from her membership of it. Without “Duchess of Sussex” stitched into her bio, there would be no Netflix deal, no glossy rosé launch, and certainly no Bloomberg chair. The very institution she dismisses as repressive is the foundation of her brand!

This hosiery detail is a retread of her biggest selling product to date: grievance.

It would be incredibly refreshing if, just once, Meghan could simply acknowledge the obvious. She was not well known before she married Prince Harry, and that marriage made her world-famous. She could also do herself a favor and clarify afresh that Queen Elizabeth, whatever Meghan’s personal disagreements with the institution she ran, embodied duty and service in a way that commanded global respect.

Meghan does not have to endorse everything the monarchy did to concede that the late Queen was an extraordinary example of showing up in the world and doing good work. Instead, she continues to present herself as if the family spent all its energy controlling her passport, her wardrobe, and now her underwear. The claims feel unconvincing and aimed at reheating the grievance cycle that keeps her in the headlines.

[From The Royalist]

It would be incredibly refreshing if, just once, these royalists would acknowledge that they’re going to throw screeching tantrums about every single little thing Meghan says, does, sells, wears and cooks. She was, at the time, a Californian in her 30s who was not used to wearing pantyhose, but she did it because there was a whole-ass royal pantyhose protocol about it. Now, years later, she can use the pantyhose protocol as an example of how asinine and controlling those people are. “Instead, she continues to present herself as if the family spent all its energy controlling her passport, her wardrobe, and now her underwear.” The family actually DID spend a lot of energy controlling her, smearing her, defaming her, and abusing her. Don’t just shrug off the fact that those f–kers TOOK HER PASSPORT. Don’t shrug off the fact that they refused to allow her to access mental health counseling. Don’t shrug off the fact that to this very day, Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace still brief royal reporters on the Sussexes’ activities, even when those activities have nothing to do with the left-behinds.

Also: all of the bitching about Meghan not going on network TV is bizarre? She was literally on the Drew Barrymore Show this spring. If Meghan went on the Today Show, Sykes (and all of the royal reporters) would have thrown hissy fits about that too.

Screengrabs courtesy of Bloomberg’s The Circuit.