When Harry Met Meghan, A Review of REVENGE
It's odd that Tom Bower has promoted his Meghan Markle biography the way he has, often gleefully extolling it as something that will “bring her down.”
After reading Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors, I concluded it isn't a vicious takedown at all. Yes, there are regular shots of snark, but it’s actually a methodical and comprehensive summary of the last few years of Royal news, and Meghan’s professional, and personal, ambitions leading up to it.
Bower weaves a massive trove of details and interviews into a compelling and fascinating story. First, we meet Meghan, an aspiring actress from California who was raised within the edges of Hollywood. Over-indulged by a successful father, she then hustled relentlessly for her own wealth and fame.
Bower paints a life of exhaustive climbing, professionally and personally. Work is a slog with only some rewards. Home life isn’t much better.
After a first marriage and years of looking for a new partner, people describe how she set her sights on a British boyfriend, only to land a blind date with the most eligible bachelor of all, Prince Harry. Bower says the ambitious but frustrated actress ends up in the role of a lifetime, marrying the popular and world-famous second son of the phenomenon that was Charles and Diana.
Meghan is suddenly a member of the British Royal Family, and the people she had spent her entire life chasing, are now lining up for her.
Heady stuff for a girl with big dreams. And, Bower concludes, that journey of increasing fame “turned a compassionate young woman into a merciless opportunist.”
As Bower tells it, Meghan’s climb doesn’t end with this megastar marriage. Even with the world at her feet, Meghan isn’t happy with Royal life, is frustrated by protocol and rules, and battered by a critical press. Bower says she “conjured up a fantasy” and, to her staff, “gave the impression that she believed she personified the monarchy’s importance.” Harry is described as a besotted husband who, perhaps afraid of losing her, only “encouraged her misunderstanding.”
Bower says they were easily seduced by an ambitious team of Hollywood agents and celebrities. Together they bring chaos and upheaval to the House of Windsor, as they leave Royal life for the United States.
But, in a plot twist worthy of a Greek tragedy, Bower writes that the couple’s new American livelihood, “requires them to grandstand as members of the very family they unceasingly damned.”
Quite a read!
The first thing that strikes you is the on-the-record testimony. According to his notes, Bower interviewed at least 80 people. Most of the stories are directly attributed to named sources. Even though Bower thanks people “who wished to remain anonymous” — you don’t get the sense that you’re reading an anonymously sourced story.
In fact, quite the opposite. The same personality traits and types of interactions are repeated year after year by different people who encounter Meghan. Much as their fans won’t want to admit this, it simply defies logic and reason that so many named people would lie about their dealings with her on the record. Or be able to go back in time to revise their past comments to meet a current agenda.
One valid criticism is that Bower didn’t interview any close friends or associates still on good terms with Meghan, to give another side. (Bower told a television interviewer they were forbidden by the Sussexes) Nevertheless, he still includes positive reports. There are some rebuttals to the critical stories. Bower describes a younger Meghan, as a “warm” and “empathetic” person, who impressed teachers, friends, and colleagues. He includes flattering quotes about her and cites the fierce efforts of friends to defend her.
There are some clumsy mistakes in timing and other details, and perhaps some copy-edit errors. (For example, Meghan’s name in an Oprah quote about Gayle King) But, as the story moves from humble beginnings to Royal life, you quickly see Red Flags jumping off the pages. You can almost feel the snowballing effect of Meghan’s life decisions, especially once she married Harry.
Bower seems to conclude this was a normal woman changed by blind ambition, who eventually couldn’t (and frankly didn’t know how to) control the mega-celebrity she achieved. (Even, according to Bower, falling out with the Beckhams, after accusing them of leaking stories about her to the press.)
There are two stories in REVENGE that are a good test of the wider truth in Bower’s book. Meghan’s interactions with Vanity Fair and British Vogue. Two different publications that Bower says had similar experiences with her, one just before the engagement to Harry was announced, the other, shortly after the Royal Wedding.
In both versions, their first experience with Meghan is someone who wants to kill them with kindness, eager to please and contribute. But as time goes on, things unravel, Bower names one agent who discovers that Meghan, “has two characters, one concealed and one fictional, with a baffling tendency to switch from idolising to belittling.”
With Vanity Fair, Sam Kashner, the contributing editor assigned to her, told Bower that after the interview was complete, “She demanded that the media do what she expects. I felt manipulated and betrayed.” He added, “I felt played, orchestrated.”
Then, describing her time as a guest editor for British Vogue, working closely with the actual editor-in-chief, Edward Enninful, Bower writes, “over the seven months, Meghan persuaded herself she was editing the issue,” claiming the editorial team showed “silent exasperation” with her. The staff also wondered did she consider that “she had crossed the line in her relationship with Enninful.”
Also, Meghan “never appeared to consider the conflict of using her marriage to promote herself.”
The one trait Bower keeps coming back to, and provides testimony to back up, is that Meghan wants to be portrayed as perfect, and wants any projects she spearheads to be perfect. He describes how she seems to go into a frantic tailspin when things don’t go her way, and relentlessly contacts anyone and everyone she knows, instructing them to fix things. The reported episode surrounding press coverage after Vogue’s release is head spinning.
The words of Melanie Phillips in The Times seem to take on a wider meaning, “When in a hole, she doesn’t just keep digging. She keeps going until the earth caves in on top of her, and she doesn’t stop even then.”
Why are these two events so significant?
Glossy magazines exist and operate in a certain space, the world of publicists and agents, all working on a common goal.
It’s an unwritten rule that everyone keeps mum about difficult clients, and projects the image, not the reality.
It is highly unusual for people from magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair, to go on the record with an author like Tom Bower. And even weeks after those first excerpts were leaked, there has been no official denial from either publication on the specific stories included.
Sam Kashner did write a letter to The Times after the excerpt was published. But important to note he didn’t actually deny anything, except for the fact that he didn’t have a stutter! (seems his letter was motivated by ego more than anything) The only thing he added was that he felt the article didn’t convey his “admiration for Meghan” and that he found her “warm and gracious.”
Bower quickly responded to that with a statement of his own, that he had a long phone conversation with Kashner where he relayed all the quotes he was going to use (typical fact checking ahead of publication), and Kashner “did not make a single objection or correction.”
Much has also been made of a passage about Serena Williams, and whether she denied being Meghan’s friend. Again, Bower is not the one who pushes that narrative. Kashner claims that when he did his fact-checking and approached Williams for a quote, he recorded that she, “denied she was Meghan’s friend, just an acquaintance.”
Kasher would have little reason to write that down several years ago if it wasn’t true. Williams has not denied the comment. Why she wanted to make that clarification at the time is anyone’s guess.
Though it’s a small detail in a larger story, it’s significant because Bower is not the one who pushes it. Like most of his book, he writes what named sources tell him, in this case, what Kashner relayed from his notes. Most of the book is the testimony of people who dealt with Meghan over the years. Agents, production crews, reporters, old friends, and family members, have all contributed to the book. Again, it defies logic to think all these people lied.
The other clear problem in their lives, according to Bower? The people surrounding them. You’re also left to wonder how different the story would be, if Meghan had divorced her Hollywood advisors from the start. It’s suggested frequently that the couple were used by those intent on getting self-promotion, and/or record commissions, off their Royal status.
In the end, Bower’s story of Meghan and Harry seems to come down to this:
A young woman desperate for celebrity and wealth, but ill-equipped to handle it on a grand scale. An outsider to the centuries-old Royal Family, who didn’t study or prepare for the greatest role of her life.
And a world-famous man from this institution, so desperate for love and a family of his own, that he ignored red flags, and didn’t explain the workings of his family firm to his new wife.
Bower’s Harry and Meghan are a couple who veered out of their depth and flailed instantly, who took a giant stumble off the world stage, and are still struggling to find their footing again. And, perhaps, listening to the wrong people.
Bower also notes that Meghan has a tendency to embellish her past, and rewrite a more flowery reality, where she is generally the flawless heroine. Again, the fixation on perfection. (It makes you wonder if she missed her calling as a romance or fiction writer.)
It strikes you at the end, that Meghan would be better off if she stopped trying to paint such a pristine public image of herself. No one believes that, and no one can maintain that. (From the simplest thing of denying she googled Prince Harry before meeting him)
Pushing that perfect image creates a vicious cycle, the more she describes herself as a Saint, and calls in others to do the same, the more people with a less than stellar experience of her want to push back and talk to someone like Bower. You end up being forensically examined in books like this.
At the end, I was reminded of an old saying:
“Man is inclined to exaggerate almost everything — except his own mistakes.”
Up next, Harry’s memoir. It’s reportedly finished and due for a Christmas release. Stay tuned…