Megyn Kelly Says Harry's 'Own Book' Exposes What He, Meghan 'Did Wrong'

Ex-Fox News host Megyn Kelly has taken aim at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in an episode of her internet talk show, telling viewers that the royal has exposed the reasons why people "don't like" the couple in his new memoir, Spare. In a clip from Monday's episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, which has since been uploaded to Twitter and viewed nearly a million times, Kelly made reference to Harry's remarks during his recent interview with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes. The prince said he and Meghan were willing to "openly apologize for anything that we did wrong," but every time they ask the royal family that question, "no one's telling us the specifics." "OK, so he needs somebody to give him specifics on what they did wrong," Kelly told viewers. "Here's just a couple off the top of my head, all right. Your wife's a bully. Her former press communications person who worked for both you and your brother, Jason Knauf, is on the record about the bullying she committed against people who were younger than or were less powerful than she was within the palace, who she made cry all the time." Kelly continued: "One of the other people who she apparently made cry was Princess Kate. She told Oprah that Kate made her cry, but now we know from your own book, Harry, that it was Meghan calling Kate a 'baby brain, it's your baby brain,' after she gave birth to her third child.... That has a tendency to make people not like you, when you have the nerve to comment on their hormones after they just had a baby, when you barely know them."

Later on in her list, Kelly cited Harry's "fights with the press" as a particular irritant. "We're sick of it," she said. "Stop whining about your negative press coverage!" Kelly's reference to Meghan and bullying comes from claims made in 2021, ahead of the Sussexes' interview with Oprah Winfrey, which alleged Meghan's treatment of staff had left them in tears and feeling they had to leave their jobs. According to The Times in Britain, a redacted email written by Knauf, communications officer for both Harry and William, raised concerns about Meghan and bullying with his boss, William's private secretary. A review of the allegations was conducted by Buckingham Palace, although Meghan's representatives said it was an orchestrated smear campaign to discredit her ahead of the Oprah interview's broadcast. In 2022, the palace announced that it would not publish the findings of the review. In his new memoir, Spare, Harry accuses William and King Charles' staff of enabling the press in the perceived "smear campaign," if not "outright collaborating." "Meg was apparently a bully—that was the latest vicious campaign they'd helped orchestrate," he wrote. "It was so shocking, so egregious, that even after Meg and I demolished their lie with a twenty-five-page, evidence-filled report to Human Resources, I was going to have trouble simply shrugging that one off." The content of this report has not been made public.

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Kelly's point about Meghan upsetting Kate stemmed from 2019 articles that said the duchess made Kate cry over a bridesmaid's dress drama ahead of Harry and Meghan's 2018 wedding. In her interview with Oprah, Meghan insisted that it was the other way around and that Kate had upset her. Harry writes in Spare that each of the women was apparently left upset by the other in the lead-up to the wedding. According to the prince, Meghan had accused Kate of having "baby brain" when she forgot a detail about the rehearsals, having given birth to Prince Louis a month earlier. "You hurt my feelings, Meghan," Kate is said to have told the duchess at a later meeting, before William called her rude for mentioning his wife's hormones. Harry also writes that Kate made demands to Meghan regarding Princess Charlotte's bridesmaid dress, insisting that it be remade four days before the wedding. After her fraught conversation with Kate, Harry says, he found Meghan "on the floor. Sobbing." So far, both Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have declined to comment on Spare and the allegations in it. Harry's antipathy toward the British press is well known. In his memoir, he lists numerous grievances against it, dating back to his early childhood and the media's hounding of his mother, Princess Diana. Days before Spare's release, its contents were leaked by news outlets that managed to obtain unauthorized copies. One story revealed that Harry claimed to have killed 25 Taliban fighters during his service in Afghanistan. "It wasn't a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed," he wrote. This led some commentators to say Harry was boasting about the number, but the prince told Stephen Colbert on Tuesday that this was distorted by the British press. "Look, I'm not going to lie. The last few days have been hurtful and challenging. Not being able to do anything about those leaks that you refer to," Harry told the late-night TV host. "Without doubt, the most dangerous lie that they have told is that I somehow boasted about the number of people I killed in Afghanistan." Harry added that "if I heard anyone boasting about that kind of thing I would be angry" and that it's "very disturbing that they can get away with it."

The popularity of both the prince and his wife has taken a dive since Spare's revelations and the release of their recent six-episode Netflix series, which presented some of their grievances against the royal family. The couple are now equally disliked by about two-thirds of the nation (68 percent), according to a YouGov survey conducted after Spare's release on Tuesday. Both royals are now more unpopular with those over 65 than the disgraced Prince Andrew, who lost his public role as a royal after being accused of sexual assault by Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. Andrew denies the allegations made against him but settled a lawsuit brought against him by Giuffre in 2022. Newsweek reached out to representatives of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for comment. James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page. Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.