Piers Morgan’s feud with Meghan Markle came to a head this week, culminating in the British TV host’s resignation from “Good Morning Britain” on Tuesday over nasty comments he made about the Duchess of Sussex after her interview with Oprah Winfrey. (Although, can we really call it a feud if Markle has never responded to any of Morgan’s many, many jabs at her?)
Morgan got taken to task on the air on Tuesday for dissing Markle’s confession that she was suicidal, saying ” I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she said, Meghan Markle. I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report.”
But it hasn’t always been ugly — Morgan’s association with Markle began civilly enough in 2015, when the then-actress apparently messaged Morgan after he had followed her and some of her “Suits” castmates. Morgan tweeted a screenshot of the 6-year-old message in January of this year, saying, “think it’s fair to say she’s probably not such a ‘big fan’ of mine now.”
That’s because things rapidly disintegrated between the two, as Morgan initiated an onslaught of criticism against Markle after she became a household name thanks to her romance with Prince Harry. Now that their “feud” has boiled over, see all the times Morgan has come after Markle since that fateful first message.
“She had reached a loftier place and there was no room for people like us.”
In 2016, after she and Morgan had been steadily communicating, Markle went to a private member’s club — where she is believed to have met Prince Harry — and Morgan said he never heard from her again. That’s when his first dig at the future royal came.
“We’ve now seen dozens of other people say they too got ghosted, we all got frozen out. She had reached a loftier place and there was no room for people like us,” Morgan said, according to Metro. “It raises a few alarm bells that she was prepared to just cut people. She did it to her ex-husband, she’s done it to almost all of her family.”
Morgan seemed particularly hurt by Markle’s “ghosting” because, in his mind, he may have been responsible for putting her in the car that would take her to meet her future husband. In a 2018 interview with “The Late Late Show,” Morgan recounted his memories of Markle again, calling her a “social climber.”
“The backstabbing, money-grabbing Markles”
Morgan really started targeting Markle and her family beginning in 2018. In May of that year, just three days before her wedding to Prince Harry, Morgan referred to the event as “an acrimonious, disorganized fiasco” — and placed the blame squarely on Markle’s family.
Though he sympathized with Markle, Morgan described her family as “a bunch of repulsive PR-crazed Kardashians, exploiting their girl’s royal romance for as much money and residual fame as they can squeeze out of it.” He went on to opine that Markle and Prince Harry shouldered some of the blame by not inviting her family.
Comparing Markle to a Kardashian became a go-to jab for Morgan — he went on to do it several times, including in June of 2019, when he attempted to compare Markle’s lifestyle with Kim Kardashian’s. Among his grievances: “They both use social media to aggressively promote themselves and their families, including posting very similar images of their new babies. … And they both like to shamelessly live their lives surrounded by lavish homes, cars and flunkies.”
One of Morgan’s columns even called the Sussexes “grasping, selfish, scheming Kardashian wannabes” after Harry and Meghan announced their intention to step down as senior royals, while another called the couple “the world’s most tone-deaf, hypocritical, narcissistic, deluded, whiny brats” and “appallingly bitter, staggeringly self-obsessed, utterly deluded, and woefully tone-deaf laughing stocks.”
“Show some damn heart”
In July 2018, Morgan began ramping up his criticisms of Markle, calling on her to repair her relationship with her estranged father. “If you’re truly a humanitarian, Meghan, then show some damn heart to your loving father before he succumbs to a broken one,” Morgan wrote in his Daily Mail column.
This was a complete reversal on Morgan’s part, as he had previously called Thomas Markle “foolish” in the days leading up to the royal wedding, and claimed he “has no one to blame but himself for missing the biggest day of his daughter’s life.”
“Me-Me Meghan”
Markle quickly became a regular target in Morgan’s columns. In July 2019, Morgan took issue with Markle stepping in to guest-edit Vogue’s September issue. The host wrote, “As a B-list actress, she’s probably craved all her adult life to be a Vogue star.” Morgan took particular offense because two months earlier, Markle wasn’t present for then-President Donald Trump’s visit to the U.K. At the time, Morgan called it a “shameful failure of her royal duty.” To Morgan, Markle’s Vogue stint was a selfish one, prompting him to refer to her as “Me-Me Meghan.”
Even when criticizing Prince Harry, Morgan often pointed to Markle as the root of the royals’ problems. In October 2019, Morgan went so far as to use Markle as a verb, writing that Prince Harry had “been Meghan-ed and that means when he’s not pontificating piously about progressive woke issues, he’s playing the victim card.”
“An absolute disgrace”
Now, after years of criticizing and publicly trashing Meghan Markle and her family, we arrive at this week. Markle and Prince Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah on Sunday night seemed to strike a chord with Morgan, as he unleashed a barrage of tweets about the couple.
Morgan repeatedly referred to the interview as a “Whine-athon,” lamenting that “anyone who criticises Meghan Markle is automatically deemed a racist bully” and referring to her actions as “an absolute disgrace.”
Let's be very clear: the new clip from Oprah's whine-athon with the Sussexes shows Meghan Markle directly calling the Queen & Prince Philip liars.
They are the heads of 'The Firm'.
And she's done this as Philip lies seriously ill in hospital.
It's an absolute disgrace.— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 4, 2021
No, but it was just another reminder that anyone who criticises Meghan Markle is automatically deemed a racist bully, but when she bullies her female staff or spray-guns her husband's family on global TV, it's a cry for help from a poor victim. https://t.co/8KWQXzrqPN
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 8, 2021
Morgan went on to publicly say he didn’t believe Markle’s claims of being suicidal, which drew immediate backlash. He issued an apology the following morning, but ITV — the broadcasting company in charge of “Good Morning Britain,” on which Morgan was a host — promptly opened an investigation into his comments.
Then, on Tuesday morning, Morgan got so heated over a conversation about Markle that he stormed off the set of “Good Morning Britain.” His exit came after his co-host Alex Beresford called Morgan out for his relentless criticisms of Markle.
“I understand that you don’t like Meghan Markle — you’ve made it so clear a number of times on this program. And I understand you’ve got a personal relationship with Meghan Markle or had one and she cut you off,” Beresford said. “She’s entitled to cut you off if she wants to. Has she said anything about you since she cut you off? I don’t think she has, but yet you continue to trash her.”
Morgan stood up and walked out, saying, “OK, I’m done with this.” He has since resigned from “Good Morning Britain.”
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