Meghan is on the cover of the December issue of American glossy Harper’s Bizarre – sorry, Bazaar – but though the photos, clothes and jewels (Celine, Chanel, Cartier; the latter mostly ‘model’s own’) are gorgeous, the interview is a waffling word salad sprinkled not with flowers but clichés, only slightly obfuscated barbs and not one pinch of self-awareness.
There’s an accompanying black-and-white film on Instagram showing us behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot and, well, its slo-mo gravitas is so cringe-making, it could almost be a French & Saunders spoof.
The interviewer, Kaitlyn Greenidge, an award-winning novelist, gives us here what can also be described as fiction: there’s no edge, no probing, no humour. (Though Meghan assures us many times she’s ‘fun’, always, even when working so hard on her brand at her lovely desk right by the kitchen, which she seems barely out of.)
‘Meghan is of a generation of women who were taught to seek self-actualisation through work…’ Greenidge gushes. Most of us do it to pay Octopus Energy, but still.
‘She’s pursuing a life and a career that feel authentic to her and her alone.’ Blimey. It goes on: ‘How do powerful women flex? Do they lead with deference or dominance? Meghan seems to lead with affability.’ The thesis maintains that any suggestion of bullying minions is lies because Megs is all butter-wouldn’t-melt when a ‘famous film titan’ passes their interview table at the Beverly Hills hotel. So there.
The one diversion from the bony bottom-licking script is when the interviewer describes Meghan, 44, as an ‘elder millennial’. I can only imagine Megs snorted into the ‘photorealistic image’ of her face that the restaurant had added to the foam of her frothy coffee at someone bringing up the vintage of anything other than her delicious rosé.
Throughout their chat, the epithets ‘mom’ and ‘founder’ crop up yawningly often. Meghan manages a dig at her own mother, Doria Ragland, calling her ‘a free spirit’, while the Duchess, on the other hand, has made motherhood ‘a study, using books and apps, a diligence that has made her an authority within her friend circle’, observes Greenidge. Well, that’s one way to get you barred from Mumsnet.
Meghan even lets the kiddies near the stove for the jam-making, but there’s a reason: ‘I hope [Archie and Lilibet] see the value of being brave. They saw it when the jam was just a pot on the stove, bubbling.’
Honestly, Megs? You are not a kitchen-table start-up. You married a prince. It’s quite clever, though – and the friends, including Serena Williams, all say how smart she is – that the Duchess manages to shoehorn her lifestyle brand As Ever into almost every paragaph when it’s the least interesting thing about her.
Talking of Prince Harry: ‘No one in the world loves me more than him,’ Meghan gushes. ‘So I know he’s always going to make sure that he has my back’.
When she talks of ‘H’, she places a manicured, bejewelled hand on her heart and says he possesses a ‘childlike wonder and playfulness’. Do grown men and fathers, especially one who has seen combat, want to be described in such a fashion? Is she saying he’s a man-child with mummy issues?
It gets worse: ‘He sees media that I wouldn’t,’ she says. Ah, she’s letting us know he can read.
This cover story comes after reports that the Sussexes have lost their allure for many Americans.
You can read between the glossy lines that Meghan knows she needs to fire-fight. But then we also read in the interview – the second half of which takes place in a friend’s New York home – that the house manager announces, ‘Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’ as she enters, even though the only other person present is the interviewer.
That Hallmark movie moment shouts volumes: a fake display showing that she is grasping on to the brief period of her life when she actually did deserve a magazine cover. I wonder if she wears a tiara in bed?
Of course, the whole point of this exercise is to plead, ‘Do I not bleed?’ But then we spy a shot of her wearing head-to-toe The Row, a label only millionaires can afford. Or see the ‘barefaced’ portraits – in which, clearly, Meghan is wearing make-up. Or suffer through the trailer for the Christmas special of With Love, Meghan, as she trills, ‘Let’s go craft!’ – I imagine we all feel as queasy as if we’d eaten an entire tin of Quality Street. It’s all as fake as her mate Kris Jenner’s face.
Meghan says finally, attempting to be as sage as the ‘erbs she forages in ‘the garden’: ‘There’s no such thing as perfect. I, too, get to make mistakes.’
Well, this interview is a great big fat one.
