Meghan's Palace Swipes Show Strong Feelings Persist as Harry's Memoir Looms

Meghan Markle acknowledged in a wide-ranging interview that "it takes a lot of effort to forgive" and dropped a cryptic hint there are stories from her royal life that she still has not told.

The Duchess of Sussex told The Cut with just weeks to go before husband Prince Harry's memoir is published, that "I've never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking" and added: "I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to."

Meghan was asked during the sit-down interview why she hasn't shared more and replied: "Still healing."

"I think forgiveness is really important. It takes a lot more energy to not forgive," she said. "But it takes a lot of effort to forgive. I've really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything."

At this point, interviewer Allison P. Davis wrote that her voice was "full of meaning."

Meghan added: "I have a lot to say until I don't. Do you like that? Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song."

The Duchess has not been completely silent about her experience of royal life, of course. In the first episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes, which dropped last week, she described having to continue working after son Archie Mountbatten-Windsor's nursery caught on fire.

She did not mention the palace by name and was restrained compared to past interviews by both her and Prince Harry, but the implication was clear. The same palace institution that she told Oprah Winfrey in March 2021 would not allow her to seek help when she had suicidal thoughts was once again framed as uncaring and unsupportive.

Meghan said on Archetypes about the nursery incident: "Everyone's in tears, everyone's shaken and what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said, 'This doesn't make any sense.' I was like, 'Can you just tell people what happened?' And so much, I think, optically, the focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels."

Both interventions suggest that, despite Meghan's efforts to forgive, a strength of feeling still persists about her royal life and dealings with the palace.

Harry too managed to drop in a veiled dig at his family, despite only having a walk-on part in the interview.

Quoted by The Cut, he said: "Most people that I know and many of my family, they aren't able to work and live together." Davis added that the word "family" was delivered with a "vocal eye roll."

Meghan and Harry, however, work side by side in their home office, and "it just feels natural and normal," the duke said.

What may prove most concerning for the palace is the ambiguity in Meghan's account, laden with implicit references that Davis herself said she struggled to decode.

In the final line of her roughly 6,500-word article, Davis wrote: "[Meghan] smiles and waves as I make my way out the door, wondering if somehow I'd missed everything she was trying to say."

There were other moments during the interview when Meghan appeared unwilling to say in full what she truly thought about her royal life.

Davis wrote: "Though she has been media trained and then royal-media trained and sometimes converses like she has a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain directing what she says (at one point in our conversation, instead of answering a question, she will suggest how I might transcribe the noises she's making: 'She's making these guttural sounds, and I can't quite articulate what it is she's feeling in that moment because she has no word for it; she's just moaning'), at this stage, post-royal, there's no need for her to hold back.

"She's flinging open the proverbial doors to her life; as any millennial woman whose feminism was forged in the girlboss era would understand, she has taken a hardship and turned it into content."

Several aspects of the interview caused confusion, however.

In one, Meghan appeared to suggest Harry had lost his father only for royal author Omid Scobie to clarify on Twitter that she meant she had lost her own father, but the duke did not need to lose Prince Charles.

Meghan told The Cut: "Harry said to me, 'I lost my dad in this process.' It doesn't have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that's his decision."

Scobie wrote: "There seems to be confusion in some headlines about this quote in The Cut interview. I understand that Prince Harry is actually referring to Meghan's loss of her own father, and Meghan is saying she doesn't want Harry to lose his."

Archetypes gave Meghan virtually unrivaled airtime equivalent in exposure only to the Oprah Winfrey interview. Between the first episode and her first interview promoting the series, she did not manage to avoid criticizing the palace with weeks still to go of the weekly series.

Prince Harry's memoir, due for release by the end of the year, adds another dimension to Meghan's comments. The duchess makes it clear there are bombshells she has not yet launched—and the royal family may, therefore, have an anxious few months on their hands.