Meghan Markle pulled off becoming a 'victim' while living in a castle: comedian
The 43-year-old Duchess of Sussex has frequently been the subject of Dillon's rants on his podcast, "The Tim Dillon Show," which the 40-year-old launched in 2019.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Dillon explained why the former "Suits" actress has become one of his favorite comedic targets.
"I think it's just that she came to prominence at a time when there was a real cultural cachet to being a victim," Dillon said. "And I thought it was a very funny way to be a victim, and she found a way to be a victim while living in a castle.
"And I always found that very funny," he continued. "I think she's a great comedic actress. I think that there was real currency in being a victim when she rose to prominence, and she became a victim living in a castle married to a prince with the royal wedding, and I thought that was very funny.
"It's hard to pull it off," Dillon added. "She did it, to her credit. You know, most people that you know were putting out that they were victims during that era were, to their credit, not members of the royal family."
Dillon also shared his thoughts on Markle's influence over her husband, Prince Harry.
"Harry seems like he's kind of been led around and he kind of doesn't know what's going on," he said. "It's probably all an adventure for him, right?
Representatives for Markle and Harry declined to comment on Dillon's remarks.
WATCH: Meghan Markle pulled off becoming a 'victim' while living in a castle: comedian Tim Dillon
Markle and Harry, who married in 2018, announced they were stepping down as working members of the British royal family in January 2020. At the time, the pair also revealed plans to leave the United Kingdom and move to Canada, though they eventually settled in Montecito, California, where they are raising their two young children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
The couple initially claimed their decision to step away from royal life stemmed from their desire to become financially independent. The couple were said to be frustrated Buckingham Palace prevented them from developing their "Sussex Royal" brand, the BBC reported. However, during a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the two said intense media scrutiny on Markle and the lack of support from the royal family were major factors in their exit.
Markle revealed that the hounding by the press and online abuse led her to have suicidal thoughts. While speaking with Winfrey, the couple also leveled explosive allegations of racism against an unnamed member of the royal family.
According to the BBC, when they stepped down as senior royals, Harry's father, King Charles III, gave them "a substantial sum" to help establish a new life. They set up the Archewell foundation and took on several commercial deals, including one with Netflix.
In 2022, Markle and Harry further aired their grievances about the treatment they said they had received from the royal family and the media in their Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan." They alleged that members of the royal family, including King Charles, his brother Prince William and his sister-in-law Kate Middleton were jealous of Markle's popularity.
The pair claimed they suffered "abuse" when they broke from royal tradition and opted not to take a photo in front of the hospital after the birth of Archie in 2019. Harry also alleged that William and other royals worked to undermine him and Markle in the press and that his older brother flew into a rage when he announced the couple's intentions of stepping down from their roles.
In March 2024, Markle launched her lifestyle brand, which was originally named American Riviera Orchard. Due to trademark woes, it was renamed "As Ever" in February. The gourmet products, including teas, baking mixes and jams, sold out in under an hour. The $28 wildflower honey sold out in less than five minutes, Vanity Fair reported. Markle's latest Netflix show, "With Love, Meghan," which showcased her love of cooking and entertaining, premiered March 4.
The eight-episode series was mercilessly torn apart by royal watchers and less-than-impressed viewers on social media for appearing inauthentic. The show also received poor reviews in the U.S. and U.K. However, the show made it into Netflix's Top 10 within a week of its release, and it will return for a second season this fall.
In May, Markle's popularity in the U.K. hit an all-time low, according to a YouGov poll. The poll found that only 20% of U.K. adults had a favorable view of Markle, while 65% of respondents had a negative view of the duchess. YouGov reported that only 27% of U.K. adults had a positive opinion of Harry, while 63% viewed the prince unfavorably.
During a recent appearance on the "We Might Be Drunk" podcast, Dillon argued the public's approval ratings most likely mattered little to Markle.
"Right now, I think part of it is just being famous whether you're liked or hated," he said. "I don't know if it matters if people like or hate you. It's like, obviously, you don't want to be hated. I guess some people don't want to, but I don't think she really cares. She doesn't seem to care."
The comedian went on to say that Markle would probably be unbothered if she were to view one of his podcast videos in which he criticized her.
"If somebody showed her a clip of me probably, and she goes, 'Who cares? F------ fat idiots," he said.
Dillon shared his opinion that Markle was enthusiastic about being a member of the royal family at the beginning of her marriage to Harry.
"She was so into it," he said. "She was like doing the appearances and everything like that."
Dillon said he believed Markle was aware that there was a trade-off involved when it came to enjoying the fame and fortune of being a royal.
"The deal with the British royal family is that the people pay for their lifestyles," he said. "Their taxes allow these people to live like Disney characters.
"But the payment for that is that they get to know everything about your life," Dillon added. "Meaning, like, it's the ultimate reality show to them. They don't have the Kardashians. They have the royal family.
"They're into it because that's their entertainment, and then Meghan Markle came in and goes, 'What do you mean you want a picture of my kid?'
"And you go, 'It's our kid. We pay for all of this s---, and you people belong to us.' She had to know that. You can't not know that going in."
Dillon joked that he had come to appreciate Markle's apparent disregard for whether she was liked or disliked by the public.
"I like her now. I think she's won me over," he said. "To me, the best thing in the world is somebody who goes, 'Oh, you hate me? Good. You'll really hate this.'
"It gives you nowhere to go," he said. "Yeah, you just have nowhere to go now."
WATCH: Comedian Tim Dillon weighs in on the biggest challenge of starting his podcast
In addition to poking fun at Markle, Dillon's podcast features the comedian sharing personal stories and his thoughts on news topics, including cultural issues in America, the entertainment industry and politics.
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Dillon recalled that his friend Louis Gomez, who hosts the popular podcast "Legion of Skanks," inspired him to start his own podcast.
"He told me he thought I would do a good job doing a podcast," Dillon said. "So I tried it."
Dillon told Fox News Digital he found podcasting challenging at first, though "The Tim Dillon Show" now draws 1 million viewers per week, according to Deadline.
"It's difficult, so it took a long time to get good at it," he said. "I think when I first started, I was trying to figure out how to make the things I was interested in interesting to other people and entertaining to other people. And that takes a minute."
In April, Dillon's second comedy special, "I'm Your Mother," was released on Netflix. The special was Dillon's second for the streaming platform after 2022's "This Is Your Country." The comedian has performed stand-up at both national and international venues and has dabbled in acting with appearances in the 2023 horror film "Thanksgiving" and the 2024 "Joker" sequel "Joker: Folie à Deux."
During his interview with Fox News Digital, Dillon weighed in on what's next for him.
"A defamation suit from Meghan Markle, perhaps," he joked. "No, I don't know. More podcasting, more stand-up, more talking, more hot air. What's next for any of us?"
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How Microschools Became the Latest Tech Mogul Obsession
Aug 18, 2025 6:00 AM Between homeschool provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill and Trump's attempts to gut the Department of Education, teaching kids looks different now. Silicon Valley's answer? Microschools. ILLUSTRATION: VIVIENNE SHAO Elon Musk had a question: 'Does anybody have any experience with first principles analysis?' He was speaking to a room full of kids, many of whom knew Musk as the CEO of companies that made rockets and cool-looking cars—and as the founder of Ad Astra, the microschool they attended in his Bel Air mansion, per a video posted by the YouTube channel Newsthink. To five of them, he was simply 'Dad.' In 2014, Musk reportedly pulled his children out of the elite Mirman School in Los Angeles and recruited one of their teachers to help him build an alternative school unbound by conventional curriculum standards. Students at Ad Astra studied nuclear chemistry in middle school, completed independent engineering projects, and listened to lectures from successful tech executives between classes. Kierra Wang, who says she attended Ad Astra's middle school at the same time as Musk's triplets, recalls entering college-level hackathons by eighth grade. She credited Ad Astra with giving her not just the knowledge to compete with kids much older than her but also the 'gall and confidence' to lie about her age to get in. With Ad Astra, Musk became an early pioneer in the emerging microschooling movement. Loosely defined as schools with fewer than 150 students, microschools often operate for profit, and outside the regulatory frameworks that govern traditional public schools. According to a 2024 RAND estimate, somewhere between 750,000 and 2.1 million students in the US are being educated in some form of microschool. Silicon Valley is playing an integral role. As he has had more children, Musk has expanded his educational footprint, funding a venture led by a California-based company called Xplor Education to create a Montessori-style school in Bastrop, Texas, where several of Musk's companies are based. His efforts have helped inspire other members of the tech elite to follow suit. Xplor also helped open a Montessori preschool on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which is largely owned by Larry Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle. One Lanai local said that Ellison's own children are enrolled there. In 2023 the investors Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel reportedly took to the stage at the exclusive Sun Valley conference in Idaho to urge fellow tech heavyweights to homeschool their children. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AngelList cofounder Naval Ravikant have helped fund alternative education companies. Even billionaires on the more liberal end of the political spectrum, like Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, have established themselves as major donors in the school-choice movement, which aims to redirect tax dollars toward options beyond traditional public schools. (They would be wise to try to learn from other moguls' efforts, like Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million attempt to reform the public school system in Newark, New Jersey, or the upcoming shuttering of the two San Francisco Bay Area schools he helped open for low-income families.) The push for education alternatives appeals to Silicon Valley parents on a number of levels. Many are autodidacts who struggled with the social expectations of a traditional school environment. Others looked over their kids' shoulders during Covid-era Zoom schooling and didn't like what they saw. Tech elites who grew increasingly alienated from so-called 'woke' culture began seeking fresh options that felt more politically and culturally aligned. Silicon Valley parents are looking at traditional educational institutions and thinking, 'This is ridiculous. Why would we do things the old fashioned way?' says Michael Strong, the founder of the alternative education program The Socratic Experience. He explains that many believe their high-achieving children are being held back by rigid curricula that don't allow for accelerated learning. 'The idea is, if kids can learn faster in two hours, why not?' says Strong. As generative AI grows increasingly integrated into our daily lives, these trends are likely to spread. Microschools are already leaning on AI tutors to provide onscreen, individualized lessons for each student, while reserving classroom time for hands-on activities and socialization. According to the consulting firm Precedence Research, the global market for AI in education is expected to grow from $7.05 billion in 2025 to $112.3 billion by 2034. These visions are also deeply entwined with the techno-libertarian philosophy of the 'exit,' which consists of opting out of broken systems and building parallel alternatives in the private sector. It's the same logic that has given rise to cryptocurrency, charter cities, and other decentralization movements. Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and author of The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers , calls school voucher programs, which allow parents to access public funds to pay for private schools, 'the Bitcoin of the education world.' Cowen is now running for Congress in his home state of Michigan on an anti-privatization platform. He believes that the broader public will pay the cost as elites continue to fence themselves off from the rest of society. 'You remove yourself from these big structural systems, whether it's banking or health care or schools, and you just say, 'You're on your own,'' he says. 'It works well for some people, but it doesn't work for most people.' In some ways, today's microschools are an evolution of the 'pandemic pods' that exploded in popularity among wealthy families in 2020. In others, they're part of a much older political project. Critics of the school choice movement often argue it was born in the 1950s in direct response to Brown v. Board of Education , allowing white families to avoid desegregated public schools. Today it is framed as a way to improve efficiency in education and empower parents across the socioeconomic spectrum to make choices according to their children's unique needs. In practice, it enables wealthy families who are already more likely to choose private education to take public education dollars with them. The broader push to privatize education logged some big wins this summer. A provision in President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill introduced the first-ever federal tax credit for those who donate to educational scholarships and expanded a tax-advantage account program to include homeschooling expenses. The legislation was passed this July. Just days later, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to dismantle the Department of Education entirely—a move the current Secretary of Education, the World Wrestling Entertainment magnate Linda McMahon, has made central to her agenda. To date, 33 states offer some form of private school choice program, which can be used for a variety of expenses that include software and online education. Dozens more bills are making their way through state legislatures to continue expanding these options. A growing edtech industry has emerged to capitalize on these opportunities, attracting the interest of Silicon Valley investors—and further incentivizing them to take an interest in education policy. 'Technology is the backbone of the education choice movement,' Katherine Boyle, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute this winter. Boyle cofounded the firm's American Dynamism fund, which focuses on defense tech, education, and other sectors it considers to be in the national interest. 'We must continue to fund education innovation in the private sector to ensure that technology reaches parents faster,' she said. Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio includes alternative education platforms like Wonderschool and Altitude, as well as Odyssey, a platform that helps families access state funding for alternative schooling. Other companies in this space like Primer, Prenda, and Outschool have also raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital. Meanwhile, Musk's own influence continues to expand beyond his small circle of billionaire friends. Ad Astra has splintered into several for-profit companies offering online education alternatives, including Astra Nova and Synthesis. Alpha School, a microschool known for its use of personalized AI tutors, has opened locations in tech hubs like Austin, Miami, and Brownsville, Texas—home of SpaceX's Starbase headquarters—and has plans to expand to a dozen other cities this year. As for the types of graduates these schools churn out, there's little doubt about what types of careers they'll end up in. Wang has already raised funding for her AI dermatology startup, Remedy. She said that just about all of her Ad Astra classmates have opted to study some combination of business and computer science in college. She paused, remembering some exceptions: an alumna who is going to ballet school, and 'one person is doing UX as opposed to coding.'
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The changes would penalize people asking for money verbally or through gestures in more city areas, including the Haywood Road corridor, Patton Avenue and Tunnel Road. The police department argues the stricter rules would reduce pedestrian crashes. Some critics aren't so sure. 'The executive order is just another in a long line of punitive reactions to a problem that we would say just needs more resources and support, not punishment, which doesn't really address the root cause,' said Ben Williamson, executive director of Asheville Poverty Initiative. The nonprofit runs 12 Baskets Café in West Asheville, serving free meals six days a week. He has seen need greatly increase since Helene. The post-storm wave has stayed consistent, he said. 'It's been a 10-month surge, and we don't expect it to dissipate or lessen.' Of the order, Kenion, with the Alliance, said there cannot be a 'law and order' response to social and systemic problems. 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