Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were frequent targets of the British press as working royals, but it was only after several years in the United States that they began to face controversy across the pond as well.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have experienced successes since moving to California, but have also faced their fair share of crises.
Meghan’s mock curtsy, Harry’s frostbite, and allegations of staff mistreatment have been just some of the moments fans of the couple might prefer to forget.
Meghan’s Curtsy to Queen Elizabeth II
The duchess used the couple’s December 2022 Netflix show, Harry & Meghan, to describe her first-ever curtsy to Queen Elizabeth, but it provoked a backlash for allegedly disrespecting British culture.
Meghan re-created the curtsy she said she performed, bowing at the waist and spreading her arms wide in either direction.
“I mean, Americans would understand this,” she said. “We have Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament…it was like that.”
She had previously described the meeting to Oprah Winfrey in 2021 without mentioning any issues with her curtsy, and Harry went on to say it was “flawless” in his memoir, Spare.
Many came away feeling the mock curtsy had disrespected a long-standing British tradition, and the fact that the queen had died three months earlier no doubt did not help.
Samir Hussein/WireImage
Prince Harry Mocked Over Frostbite
Harry’s book, Spare, was released a month later and led to ridicule after he described in detail applying his mother’s favorite Elizabeth Arden lip cream to his frost-bitten private parts.
“My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized,” he wrote. “The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan.
“I’d been trying some home remedies, including one recommended by a friend. She’d urged me to apply Elizabeth Arden cream. My mum used that on her lips. ‘You want me to put that on my todger?’
“‘It works, Harry. Trust me.’ I found a tube, and the minute I opened it, the smell transported me through time. I felt as if my mother was right there in the room.
“Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there. ‘Weird’ doesn’t really do the feeling justice.”
Suffice it to say, the passage attracted the attention of quite a few late-night U.S. comedy shows.
‘F****** Grifters’ and the Collapse of Spotify
Just months later, the Sussexes’ Spotify deal collapsed, and just as their team was reassuring journalists the two had parted ways by mutual consent, up popped an executive at the streaming giant to derail the PR strategy.
Bill Simmons used his own podcast to fire a parting shot at the couple: “I wish I had been involved in the Meghan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation. ‘The F****** Grifters,’ that’s the podcast we should have launched with them.
“I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry, trying to help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.”
Meghan a ‘Dictator in High Heels’
Meghan had long been fending off allegations that she bullied staff at Kensington Palace as a working royal. The scandal migrated to America in September 2024 with an article from The Hollywood Reporter headlined: “Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan.”
The article quoted a source who said the couple’s U.S. staff were terrified of Meghan and that the royal belittled people. Another source said Meghan marched around “like a dictator in high heels,” and has reduced grown men to tears.
Meghan’s team launched a PR counterattack in the pages of Us Weekly, where several past and present staffers praised her. She has consistently denied the allegations of bullying.
Prince Harry’s ESPY Award
In 2024, Prince Harry was awarded the ESPY’s Pat Tillman Award for Service, sparking a major backlash from sports fans.
At its peak, Mary Tillman, Pat’s mother, told The Mail on Sunday: “I am shocked as to why they would select such a controversial and divisive individual to receive the award. There are recipients that are far more fitting.”
‘South Park’ and the ‘Worldwide Privacy Tour’
Harry’s memoir sparked a collapse in the couple’s U.S. approval rating, and in the same way that a picture can tell a thousand words, an episode of South Park ridiculing the duke and duchess appeared to tell the story of a shift in American perceptions.
The episode, titled “The Worldwide Privacy Tour,” depicted the “Prince and Princess of Canada” campaigning for their privacy in the aftermath of the death of the “Queen of Canada.”
In one scene, the couple appears on a fictional Canadian morning show, holding “We Want Privacy” placards.
The anchor asks the prince: “Let me start with you, sir. You lived a life with the royal family, you had everything handed to you but you say your life has been hard and now you’ve written all about it in your new book: Waaagh.”
The princess said: “I was totally like, ‘You should write a book ’cause your family’s, like, stupid and then so are, like, journalists.”
The interviewer says, “So you hate journalists? And now you wrote a book that reports on the lives of the royal family? So, you’re a journalist.”
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.
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