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Meghan Markle accused Vanity Fair of writing a racist headline about her in 2017, a new book claims.
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Meghan reportedly thought the headline was similar to a song performed by Judy Garland in blackface.
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Valentine Low wrote about the reported incident in his new book, “Courtiers.”
The Duchess of Sussex accused Vanity Fair of writing a “racially motivated” headline after she posed for its cover in 2017, according to royal author Valentine Low.
Meghan Markle spoke about her relationship with Prince Harry for the first time in the magazine’s September 2017 cover story, which was written by Sam Kashner and had the headline: “Wild About Harry.”
Low’s new book about the royal family, “Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown,” was released on Thursday in the UK. In the book, Low reports that an anonymous source told him Meghan was upset about the story because “it was about Harry, not about her.”
Low also wrote that Meghan and Prince Harry considered the headline racist.
According to Low, Meghan and Prince Harry weren’t happy with the headline and pointed out its similarity to the song “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” which had been performed by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in blackface in the 1939 film “Babes in Arms.” On the cover of the magazine, the article’s headline read: “She’s Just Wild About Harry!”
Low’s source added that the couple tried to get Vanity Fair to change the headline on its digital version because they thought “it had been racially motivated.” At the time of writing, the headline online still reads “Meghan Markle, Wild About Harry.”
Low is a royal correspondent who has covered the royal family for The Times of London since 2008, according to his profile on The Times’ website. Writing in the acknowledgments for “Courtiers,” the author said that he conducted almost 100 interviews with sources who had worked at various royal households from the 1960s to the present day during the research of the book.
Meghan and Harry have previously spoken openly about what they described as racist treatment at the hands of the British press. In 2016, Harry issued an official statement calling out the press over the “racial undertones” he identified in articles written about the then-actress.
“His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment,” a representative for Harry said at the time. “Some of this has been very public — the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social-media trolls and web-article comments.”
Then in 2021, Harry and Meghan said in their interview with Oprah Winfrey that racism from the British tabloids directed at the duchess played a “large part” in their decision to leave the UK the year prior.
A different royal book claims Meghan ended her friendship with the Vanity Fair journalist who wrote the cover story
Low isn’t the only author to report on Meghan’s Vanity Fair story in recent months.
In Tom Bower’s royal book, “Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War between the Windsors,” which was released in July, Bower wrote that Meghan was upset that Kashner, the journalist who interviewed her, didn’t include an anecdote about the time she convinced Procter & Gamble to change its sexist dish soap commercial.
Kashner didn’t include the story because Vanity Fair’s fact-checkers had raised questions about its accuracy, Bower wrote in the book.
“I thought this could have been an actual friendship,” Meghan told Kashner, according to the book. “I don’t now think that can happen.”
However, Kashner later denied some of the details mentioned in Bower’s book, including the claim that he felt that Meghan was trying to manipulate him when they met and that she liked him because he had a stutter.
Writing in the letters section of The Times of London in July, Kashner said that Bower didn’t convey his “admiration and respect” for Meghan.
“I found Ms Markle to be exceptionally warm and gracious and admired her intelligence and remarkable courage, as I still do,” he said. Kashner said that he regretted Meghan’s anecdote being edited out because “I’d wanted to highlight her lifelong activism.”
Representatives for Vanity Fair, Sam Kashner, and the Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Read the original article on Insider
