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Bethenny Frankel gave her views on Prince Harry's apparent sharing of private messages from royal family members in his new book Spare, on the latest episode of her podcast.
The former The Real Housewives of New York City star opened fire on the California-based royal, saying that the move to share private conversations in his memoir was "crazy," and was a move from the "Housewives handbook."
Harry appeared to share the contents of messages from Prince William and Kate Middleton in his book which was released on January 10, something Frankel likened to Real Housewives franchise stars bringing "receipts" to a reunion special taping.
"So, the Harry and Meghan book has been extremely explosive and such a pop-culture phenomenon and it doesn't even matter what my opinion is, or what anyone's opinion is," she told listeners of her ReWives podcast.
"When the texts between Meghan and Kate were made public—which just, like, that's so crazy that someone could share with the media texts between family members, much less royal family members, it's crazy. I bet you in the future, family members will have to sign NDAs or they'll get sued."
Frankel was referring to a section of Harry's memoir which gives an account of the widely speculated pre-royal wedding frictions between Meghan and Kate in 2018, which led—according to varying accounts—to one or both of them crying.
Though it is not made clear whether the conversation he recounts came from texts exchanged between the future sisters-in-law or a private telephone conversation, he opens the account by saying Kate texted Meghan complaining about Princess Charlotte's bridesmaid dress.
"They set up a time to speak that afternoon," Harry wrote. "'Charlotte's dress is too big, too long, too baggy. She cried when she tried it on at home,' Kate said."
"'Right, and I told you the tailor has been standing by since eight a.m. Here. At KP. Can you take Charlotte to have it altered, as the other moms are doing?'" he says Meghan replied.
"'No, all the dresses need to be remade,'" was Kate's alleged response.
"It made me really think of the Housewives," Frankel told her listeners on Wednesday.
"Meghan really is playing from the Housewives handbook because when we first started out on the Housewives no one showed receipts at a reunion, no one ever dared read someone's texts," she said. That started happening years later and that's a common practice now in the Housewives, to show texts, to print out pages of correspondence, to show emails."
Harry went on to recount a number of personal stories about Kate, including that she told Meghan the pair were not close enough to discuss her hormones when Meghan had said Kate was experiencing "baby brain" after the birth of Prince Louis.
On this, and the apparent text sharing, Frankel said that Kate was "rising above" the drama because she cannot answer back, being a senior member of the working royal family.
"This is Housewives," she said. "What happens with the Housewives is someone shares receipts and then someone says 'Oh, well what about when this happened'...But Kate's not playing in the Housewives sandbox. Kate is rising above.
"As a member of the royal family, she cannot go back and forth and start showing whatever texts she has or whatever stories she has. One party is totally silent and the other is talking and that can be frustrating."
On the claims made by Harry in Spare, both Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have adopted a blanket "no comment" position, one which has been debated by commentators in recent weeks.
This has not damaged the sales of the book. Harry's first literary project broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling non-fiction book since records began, with 1.4 million copies sold on its release day.
Newsweek reached out to representatives of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for comment.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more