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Meghan Markle has accused the royal family of planting negative stories about her in the newspapers to make problematic stories about other members of the family “go away.”
Meghan, in a trailer for the Netflix show Harry & Meghan, the second part of which is due out Thursday, said: “You would just see it play out. A story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute, and they’d go, ‘We’ve gotta make that go away.’
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“But there’s real estate on a website homepage. There’s real estate there on a newspaper front cover. And something has to be filled in there about someone royal.”
Meghan’s comments appear to reinforce her earlier claim that she was “fed to the wolves” when she was a royal.
Meghan’s lawyer Jenny Afia said today that there was a “war against Meghan” which saw unnamed figures brief negative stories about her to the media.
Afia, a partner at law firm Schillings, which has acted repeatedly for Meghan and Harry, said: “There was a real kind of war against Meghan and I’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other peoples’ agendas.”
Afia also says, of stories about Thomas Markle, “This barrage of negative articles about the breakdown of the relationship with her father was the final straw in a campaign of negative, nasty coverage about her.”
The other talking head in the trailer is Lucy Fraser, a friend of Meghan’s who works in PR.
Fraser said, “Meg became this scapegoat for the palace. And so they would feed stories on her, whether they were true or not, to avoid other less favorable stories being printed.”
Fraser provides no evidence for her claims in the trailer, so it will be interesting to see whether evidence to back the allegations is made in the films when they drop tomorrow.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have been approached for comment.
