All week, the British media has been freaking out over the Princess of Wales’s “cancer free” video, which was filmed to look like a commercial for douche. I think the baseline reaction across the board was that the video was cringe, awkward and poorly conceived. What’s taken the criticism next-level is that Buckingham Palace seems to be quite upset about it too, and King Charles and Queen Camilla think the whole thing is unbecoming and tacky. Throughout all of the negative commentary, the Duchess of Sussex has been referenced repeatedly. You would think that Meghan makes a regular habit of creating bizarre videos where she walks through fields whilst her voiceover describes her medical issues. Meghan does not. During Meghan’s medical issues – her miscarriage, her suicidal ideation – Meghan spoke and wrote about the issues respectfully and movingly and never turned those issues into an cringefest douche commercial. Well, in the Mail’s latest Palace Confidential episode, they’re once again crying about Kate’s dumb video and comparing Kate to Meghan.
The Princess of Wales’ slick video announcing she has finished chemotherapy treatment has left some in royal circles worried that she is echoing Meghan Markle, according to the Mail’s Richard Eden. Speaking on Palace Confidential, Mail+’s weekly talk show, Richard said insiders feel that the three-minute clip showing Kate with Prince William and their children in the countryside is ‘the sort of thing that Meghan would have loved to do.’
They do not want Catherine to ‘turn into’ Meghan, he added. Richard also said the clip left him feeling ‘uneasy’, adding that it appeared to be an attempt to create a ‘Hollywood trailer’.
Sitting alongside the Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English, he said: ‘Lots of people have said to me, “Oh you know it’s just the sort of thing that Meghan would have loved to do, obviously being an actress and we don’t want Catherine to turn into Meghan.”
Richard added of this week’s video: ‘The royal family should be different. They should be dignified, not chasing this. Yes, it’s the way that Catherine might have wanted to tell her story, but she’s surrounded by advisers. And she’s got people saying, “we want to get loads of hits on Youtube or whatever, and I think the Royal Family should be above that. They don’t need to be the Kardashians.’
Rebecca English feels the Royal Family’s use of video and social media has improved, but warned that content still needs to be authentic. She added: ‘They are getting more professional and upping their game but I do see that it needs to be authentic as well. I think it’s one of these things that needs to be applied slightly carefully.’
“Oh you know it’s just the sort of thing that Meghan would have loved to do.” Trust me when I say that Meghan would not have loved to make a weird video announcement that she ended chemo. Beyond the issue of Meghan living rent-free in all of these people’s heads, the whole thing is that Meghan and Harry produced their docuseries where they told their side of the story, and they used private footage which they shot themselves. Years later, Kate hired a commercial director to COPY the Sussexes and try to manipulate the public into believing that her marriage is happy and healthy.
This is actually something I’m stuck on too: “Yes, it’s the way that Catherine might have wanted to tell her story, but she’s surrounded by advisers.” I want to know the inside story of how the video came to be. Was it really just Kate hiring Will Warr on her own initiative and deciding to film this in Norfolk over the summer? Or were there meetings where the clownshow advisors and the senior staff signed off on all of this?
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Will Warr/KP.
Oh they cannot possibly blame Kate for that criticized video, Meghan must be brought in. Meghan never ever did that.
Well, Palace Confidential was created to talk about Meghan and Harry 🙄 if they stop talking about them and don’t bring them up in every topic, the show will come to an end 😢
The British rags and royal family wish Kate were Meghan with her easy-speaking voice, natural charisma, style and intelligent use of words. Kate does have nice hair, which appears to be all her own now. The British public and media should have been pleased to see the couple with their children in whatever setting, given they are chosen ones and not H&M. The constant comparison with Meghan is sad. You can’t blame Kate for her inability to “be” Meghan, no matter how much she attempts to cosplay her sister-in-law.
Please…. Kate wishes she could be Meghan with every fiber in her being!!
Kate wants every thing Meghan has – including Harry!
Meg and Harry don’t have to do stupid fake PDA videos to prove their love. Meg and Harry truly love one another and it oozes out of them naturally. Let’s for once leave Meg out of it!
You know it’s just an attempt for Maureen to click bate Meghan, because William and Kate’s sycophantic media never provide any example of when Meghan was so shallow and empty. Meghan wrote about her miscarriage in the NY Times. She centered other women and talked about others suffering through covid. When she was offered an opportunity to appear on the cover of Vogue, what did she do? She placed 15 other women on the cover. What did Kate do with the same opportunity? They know the fact: despite their attempt to bring the couple down, Harry and Meghan will always be the original, the blue print. The others will try to copy and will fail miserably, every time.
Is Richard Eden also Maureen,there was a thread somewhere saying that’s his alias but I never followed. What’s the story?
@Neeve I think it was really simple but hilarious – Eden had tweeted something, there were some responses, and one of the responses was from someone named Maureen something but it was clearly Eden using a fake account.
It would be like if I posted a response to this comment as “Neeve1” but you could tell from the context that it was me because I said something like “oh I also meant to add when he started this conversation on twitter….”
What I want to know is how and why William agreed, it really makes me wonder just what was negotiated for her moving forward. I know people think Kate doesn’t have a backbone but I believe she was on strike at some point and she or her mother threatened to burn it all down.
Good question, Neeve. This video announcement comes over as inauthentic. Back in March, the Cancer Bench video, where a highly edited K explained a bit of what happened did not hit the same way. And we noticed back then that W wasn’t there with her and that her message was quite different from what W had been saying. Now he is here, and this video comes across as fake. But he wouldn’t be in this thing if he didn’t want to be. Given that K has a nasty scar, which she did not have a year ago, maybe this idea came from him?
He doesn’t like her that’s for sure and she does seem to have the upper hand (for now) but he needs/wants that happy family image and to compete with H&M too.
And she actually looks much better now than she did last fall and way better than him. She looks well rested with a lot of natural hair after all those bad wigs, while he looks like a wreck.
Scapegoating Meghan will not work . Blaming their PR team will not suffice . Will and Kate who are the joint CEO of their KP organisation must be held responsible and accountable .
It’s definitely not working, THE WALES MOVIE IS STILL BEING RIDICULED ALL OVER THE INTERNET😁
W&K hate that they just look more and more ridiculous with every PR disaster
Exactly! This has nothing to do with Meghan, and we are tired of them using the Sussex’s as scapegoats to cover their blatant manipulation of the narrative and media. KP is obviously corrupt from the top down.
Why is everyone conveniently forgetting that Egg started all this mess with his pap drive to the hospital & that shopping pap stroll. Remember the headline for the pap drive? Something like “don’t worry kate, I’ll look after you.” He’s a willing participant. The BM are protecting him by blaming Kate & now Meghan. Just cos he looked constipated in the video doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying.
Women ALWAYS get blamed. Even Harry gets “excused” by so many of the derangers because they believe Meghan has bewitched him and because he’s, you know, just so stupid – arghh. Whenever push has come to shove Kate gets thrown under a bus and and in this instance the toxic British media will focus on hot William and his super hot beard.
This. The woman is always Lady Frickin’ Mccbeth.
“He’s a willing participant.”
But I think the issue was William “started” the mess on his own. Kate and MaMidds were silent in the beginning, save the five wheeled car that William insisted was an unauthorized photo. We still are not given confirmation that it wasn’t a body double for William in the farmshop and the photo of ‘going to visit Kate’ was, I believe, a warning to keep the BM in line as Cam started picking apart William’s narrative that there weren’t photographers, he was visiting every day, etc.
What’s happened since Trooping seems to be Kate and MaMidds driven. It feels like they were trying to merge both eras of Kategate after the fact and with the express need for William to be seen accepting the Middletons after he let the press have free rein to criticize their business dealings in the run up to Xmas and being the husband William pinky swore to the world he was as he kept harping on Big Blue being missing and letting Kate twist in the wind over a Frankenphoto he was credited for taking while insisting he was doing the precious school runs and being father of the year.
William didn’t look constipated to me, he looked brought to heel and defeated as Carole insured he performed all their Disneyfied wishlist to rehabilitate the Middletons’ image for posterity to atone for whatever actually happened all this time.
Well, he’s the next king and he’s a royal – but Kate is middle class, which is either a good thing or bad thing depending on the day.
In Spare, Harry gave the impression that William and Kate took their marching orders from Charles. He dictated what they could and could not do. Now we see the Wales going rogue. We see the Midds in the video but no C&C . Declaring their independence from Charles may not end well.
Well it’s not like Charles can tell William what to do now. He doesn’t hold the the purse strings anymore. The time Harry was talking about was when he and William were dependent on Charles for funding and the Queen was still around. So it’s not a matter of them going rogue but more that William as the PoW has more freedom to do things and spend money as he wants.
I don’t think Charles ever could keep William under control.
There’s a post going around on Twitter that this was filmed on a nudist beach. I’m not British, so I don’t know if this true, or not but if is, Meg would never.
Rebecca English was defending Kate saying that this is how she wanted to tell her story and that she be allowed to tell it they way she wants to. This is a direct contradiction to what she and others have said when it came to Meghan and Harry. These royal reporters are hypocrites and as I said on an earlier post Meghan would not have done a video like this. The British press is comparing Kate’s video to the Netflix docuseries but the two are not the same. Even if Meghan did a video she would not be rolling around in fields saying she’s cancer free. There would have been footage of her visiting a cancer charity, she would have thanked her doctors and nurses as well as advocated for more support for research.
Well said, unbelievable how English twisted everything to place pity on 🦴 and try to excuse how absolutely self serving and tone deaf this video actually is.
Meghan is not about sappy in-your-face hand holding like this! If she were a cancer patient announcing that her adjuvant care was ending, she would have shone a light on fellow cancer patients and survivors (plus their loved ones), thanked those who had cared for her and pointed out charities and resources for other cancer patients.
I’m sorry, but Meghan and Harry’s handholding is almost their trademark now.
H&M look like they’re in love. That’s different from WanK starring in this sappy video.
… If Megan had felt the need to share such information with the public at all, which she may well, as a private citizen, have chosen not to do.
The tabs and reporters are mad because W&K cut out the middle man. Just like Harry and Meghan. Video was embarrassing though.
I can’t bring myself to watch the video but the photos are nauseating. The on with her head on his shoulder: pass the bucket. Who do they think they are fooling?
No need to watch the video. There’s lots of stupid moments like people crawling on a log pile, Kitty wandering solo through golden fields (in family profile video, shot in soft focus with yellow filter), and Kitty standing around in the trees staring at…something. There are ick moments of Willy and Kitty performing…something skin-to-skin with each other. Thankfully no shots of Kitty grabbing Willy’s behind. But the shot of Willy crouching over Kitty, laying prone on the beach, while one of the kids is watching is bizarre — what is he doing, pretending to hump, sucking her neck, who knows?
My sincerest apologies to anyone out there going through very real medical problems, whether that involves the dreaded “c” or something else just as devastating, but I can’t think of this video any other way than “Kitty’s Kancer Kommercial.”
The funny thing to me about all this is that the little video has been eaten up by the British middle class. I was born in England, came here at 24 in 1975. I have a lot of family and friends in the UK, and they were charmed to see Catherine and William acting vaguely human, they bought the video and the awkward PDA. I remember when the 1969 documentary on the year in the life of the Windsors was released, and there was a lot of support for that too. It humanized the family, sure they are awkward and wooden but it seemed this was actually more endearing. That film was reminiscent of so many awkward home movies, that were so popular at the time. We could relate as Charles, the full of himself big brother, showed off his cello skills to little brother Edward, and the string broke and hit Edward in the face, and Charles clearly had no idea how to handle the situation. (Oh the foretaste of things to come.) The British seem to relish a royal family that is just a rung or two above them, my niece saw the Queen as a wise grandmother, my brother, somewhat older than Charles, feels he grew up with him and watched his struggles and can understand and maybe even sympathize, even though they are nothing alike. So, I actually find the reaction from the press interesting, because as far as their desired audience of middle class (white) Britain goes, I think the video was actually quite successful in endearing them and eliciting their sympathy. Catherine has bought herself another 6 months of minimal public facing appearances.
Thank you for this insight into how it’s going down with the masses over there!
@glamarazzi Depends who you talk to. The British public are not a monolith. I think most people have moved on. Young people have little interest in the monarchy anyway. I expect the Daily Mail reading population ate it up though. My British pensioner Mum hated it and thought it was cringy and inappropriate for a future Head of State to be rolling around in the sand with his wife in front his children.
I put a few disparaging remark about it on the DM website and they were not published, it seems they are censoring the comments and only allowing positive ones, yes the majority of their readers love W an K but you normally get a few negative ones.
What’s interesting to imagine is the press continued to blanket criticize Kate for months and years, as they did Meghan. Would the people who were initially charmed by this video slowly start to change their minds?
Of course they would. The British people are like sheep. They think the media isn’t telling them how to think but it is. There are always outliers of course but the British public is easily persuadable. I say this as British person myself.
I’m afraid I have to agree with you Julia, some are easily led, there has been over five years of propaganda against Meghan and it has been successful, I think she was far too popular with the public at first and was outshining the heirs, so she had to go. BTW I’m British as well.
Philip thought the documentary was a good idea, after it was shown he was not of the same opinion. And the Queen did not care much for it. It was never shown again and apparently never will be.
All roads lead back to Meghan with these clowns. They will never stop wanting Kate to be Meghan and I love that desperation for them.
I just feel Charles and Camilla’s sticky fingers all over this mess and wonder if the constant references to H and M aren’t just about their obsession with the Sussex, but also a vague warning? A threat? Remember the video was well received at first. One commentator said it would “save the monarchy” . Bet C and C didn’t like that. I’m sure there is a lot going on and no doubt W and K are surrounded by half-wits but I keep feeling like all that’s happened, everything from H and M to the current W and K fiasco can be traced back to one poisonous source. Anybody who dares over shadow it or does too much work or makes it look as selfish, childish and boring as it really is will be “dealt with”.
Wasn’t Kate appointed some military guy as her private secretary? How did he allow this? It is just so far away from the conservative family image they were projecting for years where the wife is silent and meek, follows behind her husband in public. They can’t also just blame Kate. If Will didn’t want to do it, he wouldn’t as we have seen from him for years. He also chose this and thought it was a good idea and approved the final video.
Note Rebecca stresses that their content needs to be authentic! RR are well aware Will likes to be socially distanced from his wife at all times. The 3 children are trotted out as buffers between non talking parents when possible. Judging by the kids reaction in THAT video they have NEVER seen their parents be openly affectionate towards each other which is sad to contemplate. Her forcibly snuggling up to him when he looked rigid with distaste and a lot less animated than the logs lying around must have caused the intimacy co ordinator to quit.
And she mentions being above the likes -I think Eden said that in his other column or someone said it yesterday – how they should be above engagement and likes on social media.
Which is hilarious considering how much they spend on bots.
Forever Meghan Markle >>>>>>>>> KKKate Middleton. In every ways.
That fake, racist, manipulated woman can bask in derangers’ adoration & pretend she is the (future) Queen for all she wants; but she & her mother realize she’s inferior to Princess Meghan. Their jealousy & behaviors are/were extreme.
I wondered did they commissioned this video after seeing the Archewell “Thank You Colombia” video? This (what I called) Insomnia Drug or Magic Mushroom commercial looked like a really poor made rush job. Discarded the audio track, viewing the video, the editing was bad, there’s no flow in the story telling, the soft focus filter made the story or feeling it wanted to convey unsincerely. Did any Madmen, ad agencies will OK this video?
P.S. Watched the video, the medical profession side of me couldn’t help but think: No no… don’t wear dresses and shorts, the bugs, the ticks, the diseases…
I love how Eden uses the conditional “Meghan would have loved” – in other words, something that hasn’t happened and is only hypothetical.
But so interesting about this call for dignity – like if the public can’t see any work out of W&K, they should at least see some dignity.
What’s even weirder about this whole Meghan would have loved it assumption is that this is a cancer video. So Meghan would love to have cancer and then make a video to say she is done with a cancer treatment? Bullshit. It’s actually gross that they’re even saying that.
At this point, they just use Meghan’s name without even thinking what it could mean – like they have a legal obligation to insert her name into every article they write.
The part about this whole “Meghan would have loved” thats cracking me up is that Meghan CAN. If Meghan wants to make a cheesy overproduced hazy video of her and Harry and her kids frolicking in nature and on the beach…..she can do that. She can do that and release it on the ARO instagram (maybe they’re eating jam on the beach, I dunno, lol) – nothing is stopping her. Meghan can do whatever she wants now.
She does NOT want to do a video like this for any reason, because that’s not her style.
Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex would never make such an undignified and manipulative video. Meghan and Harry prefer professionalism, authentic and honest behavior and a modern understanding of the roles of women and men. They also don’t use their children for their own publicity.
LIARS. They would LOVE for Kate to be more like Meghan: intelligent, capable of stringing together two sentences, capable of doing more than one engagement per year, etc. Instead they’re stuck with that moldy, dusty crew.
Yes, that’s why Meghan was told to be 50% of herself, exactly why.
And yet, 50% of Meghan would still overshadow Kate in intelligence, charisma, and dignity.
Kate would so love to be like Meghan in every way it’s crazy. She especially would like Meghan’s hot, loving husband. They know this video bombed for the most part so somehow they are trying to link Meghan to it. Next they will try and say that Meghan told Kate to do the video and it will become Meghan’s video.
Yes, they are actually that desperate.
Yeah, just like the success of SmartWorks was really down to Kate, the failure of this stupid video will be down to Meghan. 🙄
I have waded through DM comments in response to Jan Moire’s criticism of the video and I was surprised at how many negative ones were published. Yes it was 80/20 in favour but they did allow criticism of both the video and Kate. People pointed out her laziness and unlikelihood of even what passes for “normal service” from her being resumed any time soon! But the majority were absolutely appalled at any criticism of a devoted wife and mum with cancer doing said video.
Interesting, when I looked at the DM a couple of days ago they were not allowing negative criticism at all my negative comments were not published and it is no worse than those today, not even the warning about climbing on those wood piles, they must have given into pressure.
As always, I’m left wondering how many of those ‘positive’ online DM comments are genuine.
🙄 No chance of that.
lol they really worry about married-ins being seen in the light which they wish to be seen.
When I become a royal I’ll have a serf walking backwards in front of me with a fan to lift my soft, shiny, bouncy curls and stroll in slow mo’ for the cams.
I def. won’t have sex with minors or cheat on my spouse like I was to the manner born.
To the manor born, actually.
They wish Meghan was this tacky so they could insult her some more.
Meghan can maybe come across a bit cheesy, especially in the way she writes (some of her prose is overly flowery). The way she pretends to do a curtsy in the Harry and Meghan documentary comes to mind where Meghan bows her face into her lap while she’s sitting and Harry looks on nonplussed, kind of like “I’ve seen this before” lol. But she would never do a whole 3 minute staged fake family commercial for [insert clothing/pharmaceutical brand here] or whatever the Wales were trying to do so they can stop trying to drag Meghan into this mess.
I’m not as offended by the Waleses’ video as some others, I just found it bizarre because it seemed more like a video collage of “best moments of this past summer” than a cancer update video. We all complained William should be in a photo or video with her but when we got it, it was very cringy and confusing.
I think it is the worst of all the videos. The PDA was so heavy handed. I think Meghan’s prose is just fine and the married ins have in the past talked about the new protocols and curtseys and so on.
They should be so lucky as to have her be as hard-working, charismatic, efficient and attention bringing as Meghan. It would even be an upgrade to Kate if she were as hard-working and attention-bringing and good at business like the Kardashians.
They WISH Kate had a sliver of the Markle Sparkle ✨. As for the other brother if could swap bodies and lives with Harry he would.
Going back to the post from an immigrant’s experience in the UK on SM. It’s a culture of non-directness, non-assertiveness, and a culture of whiners and complainers. And they 100% don’t like change.
They hate M because she’s a very successful and smart woman, she’s positive, innovative and she’s amazing at her job.
Their princess and future queen is just Mediocre. They were fine with mediocrity as M didn’t enter the picture. Once M became part of the RF, they know they were cooked as K sucks at her job. And those people are still complaining about it until today lol.
Imagine a life of competing with an overseas in-law who’s not that into you.