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Newsweek
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Brooke Shields' Swipe at Meghan Markle Deleted
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. 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, 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, 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. Do you have a question about Charles and Queen Camilla, Prince William and Princess Kate, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@ We'd love to hear from you.
Newsweek
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
How Prince Harry and Meghan Mirrored Rise and Fall of Social Justice
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's initial rise, chaotic royal exit, U.S. second dawn and more recent reputational crisis mirror the rise and fall of social justice. Debates about the royal family frequently echo wider social trends as audiences project onto palace dramas their own identities and personal struggles. And Meghan and Harry have been no exception as conservative culture warriors have piled in on the "Duke and Duchess of Woke" while progressives connected their experiences to debates about colonialism. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend The Endeavour Fund Awards at Mansion House in London on March 5, 2020. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend The Endeavour Fund Awards at Mansion House in London on March 5, 2020. Samir Hussein/WireImage Meghan And Harry As Social Justice Royals Meghan was viewed through a social justice lens almost as soon as her relationship with Harry was revealed on the front page of the Sunday Express in 2016. Days later, then-Kensington Palace press secretary Jason Knauf released a statement calling out the "the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments." It was not all bad, though. In fact, much of the narrative was about how, as a woman of color, she might modernize the royal family. At the time of the couple's wedding, this was celebrated in newspapers as having the potential for radical social change. The Wall Street Journal suggested that her arrival might "mark a giant step in the modernization of the British monarchy," while historian Ted Powell, quoted in The Guardian, said: "It is difficult to overstate how important it is to have a member of the royal family ... who is mixed race and embracing her heritage and stating that is very much part of her." It was not just race, though. Meghan has over the years repeatedly leveraged that as a child she wrote to Proctor & Gamble to oppose an ad that suggested "women are fighting greasy pots and pans with Ivory Clear." She was also described not only as a feminist but as an "activist," dating to before she met Prince Harry. And before they even married, she told royal fans in Cardiff, Wales, that Prince Harry was "a feminist too." The 'Duke And Duchess Of Woke' But, as with many digital age political movements, they eventually encountered backlash from the conservative media, initially in Britain and later in America too. In 2019, Meghan was mocked for writing inspiring messages on the side of bananas that were being given to sex workers and also because of an edition of U.K. Vogue magazine she guest edited. Piers Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail: "Me-Me-Meghan Markle's shamelessly hypocritical super-woke Vogue stunt proves she cares more about promoting herself than the Royal Family or Britain. "Here is Meghan being about as political as any royal has ever been. She's chosen 15 female 'trailblazers' and 'changemakers' for the special 'Forces for Change' issue, all picked because they promote 'equality, kindness and open-mindedness.' "The women she's selected represent the greatest hits of virtue-signalling—with a nod to everything from 'body positivity,' female empowerment, mental health, disability and race to transgender rights, climate change, diversity and privilege. "The last one made me laugh out loud. I'm sure the one thing we all need most in the world right now is a fabulously rich and entitled Princess lecturing us on privilege from her servant-laden royal quarters." Meanwhile, neo-conservative U.K. political commentator and author Douglas Murray gave her a nickname that would stick in an article for Unherd: "Meghan and Harry are playing a dangerous game—The Duke and Duchess of Woke shouldn't raise the subject of 'unearned privilege.'" Prince Harry And Meghan As Culture War Battlefield Initially, the debate about Harry and Meghan's politically conscious world view was a battle the progressive side fought with vigor. Meghan and Harry's 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview was perhaps the most impactful of their social justice interventions, starting a global debate about racism, colonialism and the monarchy. The duchess said her son Prince Archie was not going to be treated like other royal family members: "So we have in tandem the conversation of 'He won't be given security, he's not going to be given a title' and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he's born." Meghan's words were still resonating when Prince William and Princess Kate visited the Caribbean in March 2022 for what would become known as their "disaster tour." Bert Samuels, a Jamaican attorney and reparations advocate, at the time told Newsweek: "Jamaicans were very torn up to hear about Harry and Meghan's issue, and Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah Winfrey, and that has torn us. "That's William's brother, that's his nephew, and for Harry to have been treated the way he was, and worse yet Meghan. "The Jamaicans are very hurt by the treatment of an African American woman in that family. William needs to speak to that when he comes and as it were, he should come here with an apology, not only for slavery but for the treatment of a black woman who had to run out of the palace with her husband. That's a strong issue and that's a fresh wound." Harry and Meghan's Progressive Status Is Complicated However, Prince Harry appeared to downgrade the force of Meghan's allegations during interviews around the release of his book, Spare. The duke said: "The British press said that, right? Did Meghan ever mention 'they're racists?'" In the same interview, he also backed Lady Susan Hussey, Queen Elizabeth II's former lady-in-waiting, who quit the palace over a racially charged exchange in which she repeatedly asked a Black charity boss where she was from, despite having been told she was British. "I'm very happy for Ngozi Fulani to be invited into the Palace to sit down with Lady Susan Hussey, and to reconcile, because Meghan and I love Susan Hussey," Harry said. "She thinks she's great." The comment was jarring because many of the very progressive voices who had publicly supported Meghan's comments on race after Oprah were the same ones condemning Lady Susan Hussey at the time. According to the 2023 biography Endgame, by Omid Scobie, Charles wrote to Meghan following Oprah to say that the motivation for the comment about Archie's skin tone had been benign curiosity rather than concern. Shortly after Spare, Harry and Meghan's team indicated they were wrapping up look-back projects focusing on their royal strife and pivoting to look forward at their futures. Harry and Meghan still pursue projects with a social purpose, but even these have at times been fraught, such as Meghan's investment in fashion brand Cesta Collective. The company makes much of the wages it pays to its Rwandan bag makers but has also been slammed for "poverty porn" over awkward publicity images with some criticism of past comments by the Italian founders. Meghan has, however, reinvented herself in the image of Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow with her cooking show With Love, Meghan and her Goop-style online shop, As Ever. Some compared her to "trad wife" influencers on social media. Whether that is fair or not, the move was certainly a long way from the early-career Meghan who raged against the homely image of women in the kitchen of the Ivory Clear commercial. Harry, Meghan And The 2024 Presidential Election Perhaps the final decisive moment when the Sussexes had to choose which version of themselves to step into came with the recent U.S. presidential election. In 2020, they spoke out in veiled terms against Donald Trump, with Meghan calling for the "change we all need and deserve." They earned a clapback from Trump that September, when he said he was "not a fan" of Meghan, while a Republican politician wrote to the British Embassy in Washington calling for Queen Elizabeth II to strip them of their titles. By 2024, Trump was attempting to win back the White House by beating Kamala Harris, whom Meghan praised in 2020 on the basis of what she could achieve for women of color: "I'm so excited to see that kind of representation," the duchess said at the time. In 2024, though, Harry was facing the potential threat of Trump revoking his U.S. visa over comments in his book about taking drugs. Ultimately, the couple stayed quiet during the election, taking a back seat as Harris lost despite endorsements from the likes of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. The decision may have been the correct one, after all polling for Newsweek showed an endorsement by them would have dissuaded as many people as it persuaded. Early Trump policies will have proved difficult for the couple to watch, such as the rollback of diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and cuts to USAID, a funding source that some of Harry's charities have accessed in the past. 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. Do you have a question about Charles and Queen Camilla, Prince William and Princess Kate, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@ We'd love to hear from you.
