Piers Morgan Blasts Harry and Meghan Nomination: 'Trashing Their Families'

Piers Morgan mocked Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's nomination for a Hollywood Critics Association TV Award suggesting they received it for "trashing their families on TV."

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are in the running for Best Streaming Nonfiction Series at the HCAs alongside Prehistoric Planet 2, Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss, The 1619 Project and others. The nomination is a boost for the couple after the collapse of their Spotify deal and a spate of criticism from previously unlikely places.

Harry & Meghan dropped on Netflix in December 2022 after months of feverish speculation and soared to the top of the streaming platform's charts, though it also got criticism for re-hashing swipes at the royals already aired in their Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2021.

Some traditions never die out, including the reliability of a swipe from their long-standing opponent Piers Morgan, who wrote on Twitter: "Many congratulations to Meghan & Harry on being nominated for an award for trashing their families on TV. Truly heart-warming!"

Morgan's clapback comes as Harry awaits the outcome of a trial in the United Kingdom in which he has attempted to tie Morgan to historic phone hacking at the Daily Mirror, where he previously was an editor.

In a lengthy witness statement, Harry accused Morgan of orchestrating a campaign against him and his wife in retaliation for the lawsuit, which was filed in 2019.

Harry wrote: "Unfortunately, as a consequence of me bringing my Mirror Group claim, both myself and my wife have been subjected to a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation from Piers Morgan, who was the Editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I will back down, before being able to hold him properly accountable for his unlawful activity towards both me and my mother during his editorship."

He pointed to a specific example that he says demonstrated Morgan's knowledge, a section of his book in which Morgan says, "I'd heard rumours that [Princess] Diana had been secretly comforting" U.K. TV personality Michael Barrymore.

Harry used letters Diana sent suggesting she was "devastated" that the Mirror found out about their meetings to suggest she was not herself the source of the newspaper's story.

"Given my mother's very hectic schedule in the months leading up to her death in 1997, I think it is also safe to assume that she would have been exchanging voicemails with Mr Barrymore about his problems and their plans to meet up," Harry said in his statement.

"In light of what she says in the second letter about being 'devastated' to find out that the Daily Mirror had somehow discovered details of their private meetings and being horrified at the thought of Mr Barrymore thinking that she had leaked the details together with Mr Morgan's reference to 'secret' meetings, I can only assume that this information had been obtained via voicemail interception and/or other unlawful information gathering such as live land line tapping."

Morgan has previously said he has never hacked a phone, nor instructed anyone else to hack a phone.

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.

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