Brooke Shields' Swipe at Meghan Markle Deleted

Newsweek

a day ago

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Brooke Shields describing on a podcast how she interrupted Meghan Markle's famous childhood story has been mysteriously deleted.
Shields was a guest on An Unexpected Journey, a podcast by India Hicks, King Charles III's goddaughter.
The episode, released on May 31 and titled "Brooke Shields is sixty, sexy and just getting started," has since disappeared off Hicks' website. Newsweek contacted Hicks for comment via email.
Meghan Markle walks on stage during the SXSW Conference and Festival, at Austin Convention Center, Texas, on March 8, 2024.
Meghan Markle walks on stage during the SXSW Conference and Festival, at Austin Convention Center, Texas, on March 8, 2024.What Brooke Shields Said About Meghan Markle
Brooke Shields and Meghan were guests on the same panel at SXSW, in Texas, in March 2024 when the Duchess of Sussex told a well-known story about writing to Procter & Gamble to ask them to change an ad that said: "Women are fighting greasy pots and pans with Ivory Clear."
"She starts telling a story about how when she was 11," Shields told Hicks, according to The Independent, "and she keeps saying, 'Well, when I was 11, I saw this commercial and they were talking about how washing dishes was for women.
"And she said, 'I didn't think only women wash dishes. It wasn't fair. So I wrote to the company.'"
"She kept saying she was 11," Shields continued. "She wrote to the company, they changed the text; they changed the commercial.
"It was just too precious, and I was like, they're not going to want to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to anybody be precious or serious."
Errin Haines, Meghan Markle, Katie Couric, Brooke Shields and Nancy Wang Yuen made up the panel at SXSW Conference and Festival, at Austin Convention Center, Texas, on March 8, 2024.
Errin Haines, Meghan Markle, Katie Couric, Brooke Shields and Nancy Wang Yuen made up the panel at SXSW Conference and Festival, at Austin Convention Center, Texas, on March 8, 2024.So Shields said she interrupted Meghan to liven up the panel discussion: "I go, 'Excuse me, I'm so sorry, I've got to interrupt you there for one minute.' I was trying not to be rude, but I wanted to be funny because it was so serious."
And she told the audience: "I just want to give everybody here a context as to how we're different. When I was 11, I was playing a prostitute."
The reference was to Pretty Baby, a 1978 movie about a 12-year-old girl raised in a New Orleans brothel by her mother, who is a sex worker.
Hicks said her interjection went down well with the crowd: "The place went insane."
Meghan Markle's Ivory Clear Dish Soap Story
When Meghan was 11 she wrote to Procter & Gamble to ask for a change to the wording of an ad, in which the voice over said: "The gloves are coming off. Women are fighting greasy pots and pans with Ivory Clear."
In 2022, Meghan said in her podcast Archetypes: "I was furious. Women? Did I really just hear that guy say 'women?' As in only women? Only women."
The story has been around since the early days of Meghan and Harry's relationship, since before their 2018 wedding, and some have started to question whether she may have told it too many times.
After Meghan repeated it on Archetypes, the Daily Mail ran the headline: "'I was ready to turn off when I heard the soap ad story YET AGAIN': Meghan Markle listeners 'yawn' as she wheels out well-worn anecdote about campaigning against sexist soap advert when she was eleven for podcast."
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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