Meghan Markle has the ‘worst judgement’ and Prince Harry is ‘naive’ says magazine editor, Tina Brown …. Continue Reading

The journalist recently spoke about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on a podcast, calling Meghan a ‘perfectionist about getting it all wrong’

It is true that Meghan Markle has a fair few detractors on both sides of the Atlantic – and now she can add Tina Brown, the well-known magazine editor, to that list. On a recent episode of The Ankler podcast, Brown described Prince Harry as being easily led by his wife, and criticised the Duchess of Sussex for her media strategy and judgement.

The thing about Harry is he’s very good at being Prince Harry,’ said Brown, who edited this very magazine from 1979-1982, before moving to Vanity Fair. ‘And that’s the tragedy of all of this. He is the most talented member of the royal family, without doubt, in terms of being a prince, which is all he does know how to do. He’s really sort of flawless at it.’

Brown has an intimate knowledge of the royal family: while editor of Tatler, she was one of the first to spot the rising star of Lady Diana Spencer, and published a biography of her in 2007 which made the New York Times bestseller list. Her follow-up book, The Palace Papers, was published in 2022 and also topped the charts for its insider reportage on the period between the deaths of Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth II.

The trouble with Meghan is that she has the worst judgement of anyone in the entire world. She’s flawless about getting it all wrong, she really is,’ continued Brown. ‘Her issue is that she doesn’t listen. She has all these people, asks them their opinion, and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do. And all of her ideas are total crap, unfortunately.’

Brown went on to joke that Meghan Markle is a ‘perfectionist about getting it all wrong’ and say that the Duke of Sussex is ‘so naive and really unschooled in the ways of the world. Being Prince Harry means that I doubt if he has ever booked a table in a restaurant. The army was great for him and he was extremely good and competent in there. That helped turn him into a real person.’

However, when the Prince met Meghan in 2016, he became, as Brown puts it, ‘a lamb to the slaughter. He was terribly impressed by Meghan. He thought that she knew all. She persuaded him that she was the savvy Hollywood wheeler-dealer who could come in and make them stars and all the rest of it. And he just sort of blindly followed her like a child, really.’

Harry and Meghan have been in the headlines already this week, as it was reported that the pair are eyeing up a home in Portugal, near Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank. The Sussexes are said to be buying a house in Alentejo, just over an hour’s drive from the coastal town of Melides, where the Brooksbanks have a pad in the grounds of the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club.

Eugenie is one of the few members of the royal family to have maintained a close relationship with Harry and Meghan, after they made the decision to step back as working royals and decamp to Montecito. It’s understood that Eugenie has always been close to Harry, and even met Meghan before he did – through a mutual friend, the fashion designer Misha Nonoo. Eugenie appeared in the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary, which showed her accompanying Prince Harry to the Super Bowl, and playing with a young Prince Archie on the beach. To this day, she is thought to have been the only royal to have flown out to see the pair in Montecito.

Some have speculated that Harry and Meghan are keen to have a base in Europe in the hope that they might conduct more tours – their recent trips to Nigeria and Colombia have widely considered to be PR triumphs. A home closer to the UK would also enable Harry to continue his charity work in Britain, an ambition which, over the last few weeks, he has made clear that he wants to fulfil. It is telling that the Sussexes, who have more-or-less vowed never to return to the UK, appear to have chosen a home so near their closest royal allies.

Speaking to MailOnline, royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said that the Sussexes’ decision to purchase in the area ‘emphasises that they still have goodwill’ with a few select members of The Firm, and ‘makes clear that they are connected closely to part of the royal family’. Harry and Meghan may have their critics – Brown now among them – but some, like the Brooksbanks, remain distinctly and steadfastly loyal to this most polarising couple.