Piers Morgan Doubles Down on Major Meghan Markle Scandal

Piers Morgan has called Meghan Markle "a liar" as he doubled down on controversial statements dismissing her account of feeling suicidal.

The Talk TV host has blamed Meghan for the fact that he was forced out of his previous job as a presenter on Good Morning Britain over statements made in the hours after Meghan and Prince Harry's Oprah Winfrey interview, in March 2021.

He appeared on The Breakfast Club podcast on January 18, when he was asked by hosts DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God whether he stands by the remarks.

Morgan said: "She made a claim that she had had suicidal thoughts and she'd gone to a senior member of the Buckingham Palace staff and asked for help and was told, you can't have any, effectively, because it would be bad for the royal brand. I did not believe that happened.

"So what's happened since? This is over two years ago, right? Ever since then, not a single shred of evidence or a name of that person has ever been produced.

"Prince Harry writes a book of over 400 pages, never mentions this. Didn't mention the racism claims either. It was like they never happened. He then said later, 'I didn't mean to say that the royal family were racist. We didn't. It was the media.'

"Bulls***—you said that members of royal family, turned out to be King Charles and Kate [Middleton], had expressed negative concern about the potential skin color of your baby, which[...]that conversation will have never happened and there is no evidence that it happened in the way they tried to imply.

"Oprah gasped in horror. And so for two years the royal family have had to deal with being accused of being callous racists who don't care about a young woman's suicidal thoughts and don't care that about being brazenly racist about the skin color of their child?"

Meghan told Oprah in March 2021: "I just didn't want to be alive any more. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought.

"And I remember how [Harry] just cradled me. And I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help.

"I said that 'I've never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere.' And I was told that I couldn't, that it wouldn't be good for the institution."

Meghan and her mother Doria Ragland discussed her experience of suicidal thoughts again in her Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan.

Harry also described the moment Meghan told him about her feelings in his book, Spare. "Without her, she said, all the press would go away, and then I wouldn't have to live like this. Our unborn child would never have to live like this. 'It's so clear,' she kept saying, 'it's so clear. Just stop breathing. Stop being. This exists because I exist.' I begged her not to talk like that."

However, little further detail has emerged about her exchange with the palace official who she suggested denied her permission to get help.

'Deluge of Hate'

There is one conversation Harry describes with a senior palace aide, who he nicknames the Bee, though the atmosphere appears to be very different to Meghan's description.

It takes place after the birth of their son Prince Archie in May 2019, months after Meghan told Harry she was feeling suicidal in January that year.

"Days later," Harry wrote, "Meg and I welcomed the Bee into (Crown Estate property) Frogmore [House], made him comfortable in our new sitting room, offered him a glass of rosé, gave a detailed presentation.

"He took meticulous notes, frequently putting a hand over his mouth and shaking his head. He'd seen the headlines, he said, but he'd not appreciated the full impact this might have on a young couple.

"This deluge of hate and lies was unprecedented in British history, he said. 'Disproportionate to anything I've ever seen.'

"Thank you, we said. Thank you for seeing it. He promised to discuss the matter with all the necessary parties and get back to us soon with an action plan, a set of concrete solutions. We never heard from him again."

Morgan said he believed "mental health is incredibly important," but he added: "Is it feasible that somebody at Buckingham Palace, at a high level, said to a young woman who said, 'I feel suicidal,'—'you cannot get help'?

"And by the way, Harry, at the time, was the figurehead of a major mental health charity. Why couldn't he get her help? Right? None of it made sense to me.

"But in his book, it never gets mentioned. There's not a mention of her mental health or suicidal thoughts, right? There's not a mention of the supposed racism again. It's like it never happened."

"I think she's a liar," he concluded. "And I think he, unfortunately, is a liar, too."

Newsweek has contacted representatives for Harry and Meghan via email for comment.

Harry has previously argued that Morgan's criticisms of him and Meghan are revenge for a lawsuit against the Daily Mirror alleging phone hacking during a period when Morgan was the editor.

In an earlier witness statement submitted to the High Court in London, he said: "Unfortunately, as a consequence of me bringing my Mirror Group claim, both myself and my wife have been subjected to a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation from Piers Morgan, who was the editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I will back down, before being able to hold him properly accountable for his unlawful activity towards both me and my mother during his editorship."

The prince won the case in December and called for a police investigation into hacking at the tabloid.

Harry's statement, read by his lawyer David Sherborne, outside court said: "The court has found that Mirror Group's principal board directors, their legal department, senior executives, and editors such as Piers Morgan, clearly knew about or were involved in these illegal activities."

"I respectfully call upon the authorities—the financial regulator, the stock market who were deliberately deceived by Mirror Group, and indeed the Metropolitan Police and prosecuting authorities—to do their duty for the British public and investigate bringing charges against the company and those who have broken the law," the statement added.

Jack Royston is Newsweek's chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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