Meghan Markle Had 'Great Deal Of Control Over PR' Before Royal Exit, Report Claims

Meghan Markle had control over her and Prince Harry's PR when they were still in the U.K., a report claims.

Last month, the Duchess of Sussex detailed the difficulties she experienced after marrying into the royal family in her and Prince Harry's CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey. Markle suggested the palace did not do enough to defend her from the alleged false reports from the British media.

However, The Telegraph editor Camilla Tominey reported, citing unnamed U.K. and U.S. sources, that Markle and Prince Harry "were calling the shots and would be the ones instructing the press office on what line to put out" when they were still working royals.

It was Markle who wrote their Instagram posts and selected the images that went with them as well as planned their announcements, the report claimed.

“Meghan was the one controlling the timing of announcements, and doing a lot of the planning,” an unnamed source said. “She had a grid and was plotting the cadence and order in which all of their plans would come to fruition. There was a sense that Meghan thought she knew what was best for them.”

Buckingham Palace was surprised when the Sussexes announced via Instagram in April 2019 that Prince Harry would be teaming up with Winfrey for a series of documentaries about mental health set to air on Apple TV+, the report said.

Queen Elizabeth II’s private secretary Sir Edward Young and Prince Charles’ counterpart Clive Alderton reportedly had to reach out to Samantha Cohen, Markle and Prince Harry's then-private secretary, for the details, according to the report.

“The Apple TV series was a bit problematic because senior palace staff were given minimal information about it,” an unnamed royal source explained to The Telegraph. “Meghan had insisted it be announced on Instagram because they had just launched the Sussex Royal page and wanted to make all the big announcements on there. But no one had seen the fine print. There was uncertainty over the commercial terms of the deal.”

Markle also left her royal aides in a predicament when she headed to New York for a baby shower with her celebrity pals but didn't take palace staff with her, unnamed insiders claimed. There were concerns about the gifts she received because in London, the freebies should be registered in accordance with the royal family’s strict rules on declaring gifts, the report said.

“That was a bit of a headache, not least because no one from the palace was there to oversee what was happening,” the source told the outlet.

Meanwhile, Markle's childhood boyfriend, Joshua Silverstein, recently defended the duchess from allegations of bullying. He told Us Weekly that he doesn't believe the accusations that Markle bullied palace staffers during her time in the U.K.

"I see her doing whatever it is she feels like she should do in order to be happy and coexist within a system that has probably not been very welcoming to who she is and where she comes from," Silverstein said.

"When you find women of color — particularly Black women — standing up for themselves and speaking out and speaking against what they feel [is] disrespect or oppression, often times whiteness tends to classify that in negative ways because they don’t want that to happen. It’s almost like people are expected to know their place and whenever they don’t fall in line with that, then people say it’s a problem."