Meghan Markle: Magazine editor Tina Brown’s withering assessment of Duchess’s career

Legendary magazine editor Tina Brown has shared an extraordinarily scathing assessment of the Duchess of Sussex’s career. Photo / Getty Images

Magazine editor Tina Brown has given an extraordinarily blunt review of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, describing “all of [her] ideas” as “total crap”, and suggesting “naïve” Prince Harry is a “lamb to the slaughter”.

Brown, 70, was the former editor of both Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and author of best-selling royal biographies, The Diana Chronicles and The Palace Papers.

She also personally knew Princess Diana, with the pair having lunch together just a few weeks before the late royal’s tragic death.

Speaking on a recent episode of The Ankler podcast, hosted by former Hollywood Reporter editor Janice Min, Brown gave her brutally honest assessment of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s post-working royal careers.

“In England, they’re going to constantly make a career out of trashing Harry. But actually, the thing about Harry is he’s very good at being Prince Harry,” she pointed out.

“And that’s the tragedy of all of this, is that he is the most talented member of the royal family, without doubt, in terms of being a prince, which is all he does know how to do … he’s really sort of flawless at it.”

“Harry could still, as I say, make a comeback. He’ll always be Prince Harry. He’ll always be the grandson of the Queen and the son of Diana," Brown said. Photo / Getty Images

Brown explained that she believes Harry is “naïve” and “unschooled in the ways of the world”.

“Being Prince Harry means that I doubt if he ever booked a table in a restaurant,” she said.

“The army was great for him, and he was extremely good and competent in there. That really helped turn him into a real person.”

But with Markle, “he’s the lamb to the slaughter in this situation.”

“He was terribly impressed by Meghan,” she claimed.

“He thought that she knew all, she persuaded him that she was the savvy Hollywood wheeler-dealer who could come in and make them stars and all the rest of it. And he just sort of blindly followed her like a child, really.”

She added: “I think he’s pretty much in the thrall of Meghan. The trouble with Meghan is that she has the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world. She’s flawless about getting it all wrong. She really is.”

Prince Harry and Meghan have copped a brutal review by former magazine editor, Tina Brown. Photo / Getty Images

It does appear that Meghan has struggled to find her footing in the business and entertainment market in the US since she and Harry moved to California in 2020 after resigning from their roles within the monarchy.

The couple enjoyed a huge ratings success with their Harry & Meghan docuseries for Netflix, but her follow-up project – a childrens’ series titled Pearl – was axed before it even got off the ground.

Meanwhile, Meghan’s podcast, Archetypes, launched in 2022 to plenty of fanfare and attracted a huge audience upon debut, but quickly dropped off, with no season two.

Her and Harry’s joint Spotify deal abruptly ended last year after the couple reportedly failed to meet “productivity benchmarks”, with one of the streaming service’s executives going on to describe them both as “f***ing grifters”.

Meghan is now preparing to launch her latest project, a homewares and lifestyle company titled American Riviera Orchard, which will also reportedly be tied in with a new Netflix series.

Despite having a soft launch earlier this year, with Meghan sending a batch of personalised, homemade jams to a select number of high-net-worth and influential friends and unveiling the company’s Instagram page, there have been no official updates since.

But the future looks shaky, according to Brown.

“Unfortunately, she made every mistake in the book, and she’s kind of run out of road,” she said on The Ankler.

“I don’t know where Meghan goes. She’s a perfectionist about getting it all wrong.

“Her issue is that she doesn’t listen. She has all these people, asks them their opinion, and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do. And all of her ideas are total crap, unfortunately.”

However, when it comes to Harry, Brown was slightly more optimistic: “Harry could still, as I say, make a comeback. He’ll always be Prince Harry. He’ll always be the grandson of the Queen and the son of Diana”.