India– Before Meghan Markle implied in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that the British royal family had expressed racially motivated sentiments to her husband, Prince Harry, about their son Archie, her friend Priyanka Chopra had supported the Duchess of Sussex against the British press’ negative coverage of her. Priyanka in a 2019 interview labeled the reportage around her as ‘racist’ and had said that Meghan was more than capable of taking on detractors.
Meghan and Harry sat for their first joint interview on Sunday, after announcing last year that they would take a step back from their duties as members of the British royal family. In the interview, the couple revealed the reasons why they were forced to distance themselves from the royals.
In an interview with The Sunday Times Priyanka had opened up about the criticism Meghan had faced and said that much of it is due to her biracial heritage. Priyanka had said that the media’s criticism of her is ‘really unfortunate’, adding, “But if there’s anyone who can handle it, it’s her.”
She continued, “Of course, it has to do with racism, it’s an obvious reason. The beauty of Meg is that she’s been herself through all of this. A lot of people got to know her after everything, but I knew her before [she started dating Harry] and she’s the same chick. Now she’s got a real platform, she talks about the same things she always did.”
Priyanka attended Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, but Meghan wasn’t present at Priyanka’s wedding to Nick Jonas the same year. She denied a report in The Sun that suggested she’d visited Meghan in London in 2019, to meet Archie and mend their relationship, which the report said was ‘broken’. “While these are great gift ideas. this story is untrue, and I was actually in town for work,” she wrote in a tweet, adding, “I hope whoever this ‘source’ is starts checking their facts more often.”
In the Sunday Times interview, Priyanka said that she first met Meghan at a women-in-television dinner, where they ‘connected on how we see the world and as girls’.
In the Oprah interview, Meghan said about the royal family’s treatment of Archie, “All around this same time, we have in tandem the conversation of he won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title, and also concerns and conversations as how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Meghan clarified that she hadn’t heard this particular conversation herself. “That was relayed to me from Harry from conversations that the family had with him,” she said. Harry refused to elaborate when asked about it, saying, “That conversation, I am never going to share.”