Meghan Markle Responds to Report About Leaked Letter to King Charles

Meghan Markle Responds to Report About Leaked Letter to King Charles

Meghan Markle has moved on from royal drama.

A new story in the Telegraph reported that the Duchess of Sussex "expressed her concerns about unconscious bias in the Royal family in a letter to the King" following her interview with Oprah in March 2021. The exchange of letters reportedly began with King Charles writing to his daughter-in-law, and referenced the family member who wondered about Archie's skin color. There was speculation that the Telegraph's source was the Sussexes, but a representative for the Duchess of Sussex quickly shut that down.

"The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago," the spokesperson said. "Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating."

The spokesperson did not deny the existence of the letters, rather, the statement says Meghan is "not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago."

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex in September 2022.

Unconscious bias is something the Sussexes, mainly Harry, have spoken about before. In a conversation with Jane Goodall, while he was still a working royal, Harry said that unconscious bias is "something which so many people don't understand."

He continued, "Despite the fact that if you go up to someone and say 'what you’ve just said, or the way you’ve behaved, is racist'—they’ll turn around and say, 'I'm not a racist.' I'm not saying you’re a racist, I’m just saying that your unconscious bias is proving that because of the way that you’ve been brought up, the environment you’ve been brought up in, suggests that you have this point of view—unconscious point of view—where naturally you will look at someone in a different way. And that is the point at which people start to have to understand."

In a 2020 discussion with Black Lives Matter activist Patrick Hutchinson, Prince Harry said he didn't know what unconscious bias was until he met Meghan. He said, "it took me many, many years to realize it, especially then living a day or a week in my wife’s shoes." This year, Prince Harry spoke about "unconscious bias" in the royal family during his interview with Tom Bradby, and in his Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, he said, "in this family sometimes, you know, you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution. There is a huge level of unconscious bias."