This year, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been growing their communications team and making some really smart hires. First and foremost, they hired Meredith Maines from the political world – Maines started working for them in early March, and I swear I could see the difference immediately. In the months since Maines began working for them, they’ve added more qualified people to the team, and Meghan especially has been hiring for As Ever. Well, the Daily Mail is currently bum-clenching over another new hire: Emily Robinson, who was PR executive associated with the Netflix series The Crown. LMAO.
Of all the people they could have chosen, Prince Harry and Meghan have turned to the PR executive who was responsible for promoting Netflix’s controversial Royal Family drama The Crown to manage their public image. In an appointment that appears to twist the knife on the family feud, it can be revealed that Emily Robinson, announced last week as their new Director of Communications, was in charge of the program from series three to six.
Could there be a clearer indication of the distance from the Windsors – and that there is no intention to bridge that gap?
Robinson oversaw the global publicity for The Crown’s storylines including Harry in Nazi fancy dress, Diana’s controversial Panorama interview, and the ‘ghost’ Diana talking to the Queen. She was also reportedly on the team which fought against calls that the show adds a ‘fictional disclaimer’ on series five when it depicted Charles plotting against his mother and savoring the possibility of her abdicating, according to insiders.
It is widely believed that The Crown was a source of irritation, mortification, and offense to the Royal Family — and Robinson was the woman who promoted it as a prestige drama that depicted essential truths about the Monarchy.
Sources say she ruled publicity for The Crown ‘with an iron fist’ and was a ‘divisive’ figure at Netflix as a result. She left her job in April 2024, a few months after the final, most controversial, series aired. That one – series six – featured a sympathetic portrayal of Mohammed Al Fayed, father of Princess Diana’s boyfriend Dodi, hinting that he might have been the victim of a ‘racist’ establishment. Allegations that Mohammed Al Fayed was a sexual predator were circulating widely before the show aired, and have since apparently been confirmed in dozens of accounts from women who fell prey to the Harrods boss.
The show also imagined a chance encounter between Kate Middleton and Prince William in London before Princess Diana’s death. And it depicted Kate’s mother Carole Middleton as a pushy matchmaker, determined to thrust her daughter into the future king’s orbit — even if that meant making her attend St. Andrew’s University.
A source says: ‘In the circumstances, it’s almost beyond belief that Harry and Meghan would hire someone straight from The Crown.’
It is understood that the Sussexes are aware of Ms Robinson’s background on the Netflix show, but feel that it is only one show out of a number which she has been involved with.
Re: Mohammed Al Fayed, multiple things can be true all at once: al Fayed was a sexual predator AND he was treated abhorrently by the Windsors because the Windsors are racist. Al-Fayed wasn’t the only one who got a whitewashed treatment by The Crown either – hello, they barely touched the surface of Lord Mountbatten’s depravity. And The Crown pulled its punches on what Charles and Camilla did to Diana. The fact that Peter Morgan dared to even *imply* that Carole Middleton is a Machiavellian figure who masterminded William & Kate’s courtship was just funny though, because that’s what actually happened AND Morgan also pulled his punches there as well. Anyway, The Crown was one of Netflix’s biggest success stories and it won tons of awards, despite the regular hissy fits from the Windsors. It also means that Emily Robinson probably has a lot of experience dealing with the palace’s attempts to whitewash their own narratives, which is probably why she was chosen by the Sussexes.
Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Crown and Backgrid.
-
- Dusseldorf, GERMANY – Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex attending a lunch reception during the One Year to Go event, one year before Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023, at the City Hall on the Market Square in Dusseldorf, Germany. Pictured: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle BACKGRID USA 6 SEPTEMBER 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
-
- Dusseldorf, GERMANY – The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, were spotted uplifting spirits during the fourth day of the Invictus Games 2023. Held at the Merkur Spiel-Arena in Dusseldorf, Germany, the couple looked genuinely happy as they interacted with athletes and fans alike. Pictured: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle BACKGRID USA 13 SEPTEMBER 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
-
- Montecito, CA – **FILE PHOTOS** Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, will celebrate her 43rd birthday on August 4th, together with husband Prince Harry and their children Archie and Lilly Mountbatten Windsor, probably in their villa in Montecito, California. Pictured: Meghan Markle, Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 3 AUGUST 2024 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
-
- The Crown S4. Picture shows: Camilla Parker Bowles (EMERALD FENNELL). Filming Location: Australia House, Aldwych
Cain rehiring Jason and going on Clarkson show is no big deal, but the Sussexes are supposed to get approval from the BRF on whom to hire.
When are the BM are going to give up on, they can’t control or tell the Sussexes what to do.
The Sussexes hired a deeply capable individual with experience dealing with the fire hose of inanity and insanity that is the UK press.
She worked in the pr department of the streaming giant that they also work with. She was tangentially connected to a show about the UK royal family. In addition to dozens of other shows.
The uk press cannot with any degree of certainty say what her pr plan was regarding the promotion of the show. To say she single handedly pushed for specific things that they cite as grievances is a bold move and also a complete lie. There is an entire team making decisions while in close contact with the producers and legal team.
Anyway. Good for the Sussexes! She has experience handling material that was being pelted with lies before release and with the uk press and the brf’s attempts at both pathetic power plays, controlling the narrative and pointed assassination attempts of every aspect of the show before it was even released. But even more than that, she’s intelligent, hard working and talented. The Sussexes do – with very few exceptions- hire the best
Oh this is so good!! Yes the “bum clenching “ will certainly be on display a lot. HOW DARE THEY HIRE HER! 😂😂😂
ROFL, so this is the clearest indication of the gap between the Sussexes and the Wndsors? Not anything else that’s happened over the past 5 years?
Lets be clear , the clearest indication of the gap between the Sussexes and the Wndsors is the continued employment of Jason by William and rewarding Jason with royal honours.
Possibly, but I think the clearest indication of the gap is that the Windsors are in the UK and the Sussexes are in California, and there’s no interest on the part of either side to change that.
I would say that the clearest indication of the gap is the fact that the left behind Mayo Brigade so obviously has no clue what’s going on inside Harry and Meghan’s camp or teams that they either have to regurgitate gossip from years ago or they have to make things up (based on interviews or posts we all saw at the same time they did).
“In an appointment that appears to twist the knife on the family feud”
🥱
Well, the Sussex hires are far more competent than the platinum standard grey men of the Palaces.
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys who have relationships with the tabloids. The institution is filled with unprofessional gossips, so anyone who is directly employed by Sussexes are…competent.
Sucks to be the grey men in a dying institution. Knife meet boredom.
As for Lazy in that Crown photo – she really just wanted to sell her body.
Oh the poor liddle diddums Royals have got something else to get upset about .
How will they cope with this latest terrible betrayal by the evil Sussexes .
My heart aches for them .
I’m up for all the knife twisting they want to do. Mind you, the royals have jase the actual knife? I wish H and M were as petty as I am, I would torture the f of the left behinds. But the only ones who twist knives ARE the left behinds. They lie and bully and try to steal things, which make them look deluded and absurd. But hey, they’re rich and do absolutely nothing.
I agree – I’ve always admired Harry’s restraint when it comes to the RF. If I grew up without a Mom because of RF and British Media, I think I would have burned the entire establishment to the ground on my way out the door. ALL the skeletons would be out of the closet.
I didn’t watch the Elizabeth Debicki seasons of The Crown (don’t remember season numbers, so using Diana actress, lol) but that picture of the actress playing Kate reenacting the catwalk thing Kate did reminded me just how trashy and obvious Kate was when she was throwing herself in William’s way. Her obsession with marrying him and changing her own university plans and timeline just so she could stalk him. I hope at least her kids made it all worthwhile in the end, because I can’t imagine literally anything else about her life doesn’t actively make her bitter.
Stalkers United! You’ll get your man in the end!
Hopefully SOMEthing was worth it because guaranteed the man was not.
(Honestly, most people wouldn’t have found Harry worth all that Meghan went through, either, and he obviously adores her.)
It’s just a TV show. This shows that the people around the Royal Family have no understanding of the real world.
Are they not embarrassed? Not everything Harry & Meghan do has to be linked to them.
Excuse me but an actual twisting of the knife is William allowing his staff at KP to lie about Meghan and Harry with leaks to the media among other things. One of those staff members being William’s true partner, Jason Knauf, who was the one who accused Meghan of bullying with no evidence and despite the fact that he and the KP staff had been leaking lies, insults and nicknames they have for Meghan from the beginning. William’s true partner was the one allowed to go against the NDA to lie on court record that he had some rights to Meghan’s private letter to her father, which essentially means that he gave the UK papers permission to print her (heavily redacted letter) to help paint her in a negative light with lies. His true partner was the one who went to what is obviously the Temu version of the actually credible 60 minutes in America, when he lied and told stories on 60 minutes Australia about two people who left the UK five years ago. His partner in crime is the same one who William lied and claimed was no longer working for him at KP but was conveniently promoted after these betrayals to Harry and Meghan, by giving him the head job at his Earthcrap initiative and for a real knife twist he gave him an honor for his service of helping William betray his only brother. We just saw these two true partners or lovebirds (depending on their preference, I don’t judge) on a romantic trip to talk about the environment 😉 that neither of these men have shown any interest in protecting. This is just a small fraction of the number of times that William has twisted the knife in the backs of Harry and Meghan.
Their new hire worked for Netflix, which is probably how she got recommended to them. I am also sure, there are more jobs on her CV than the Crown. This isn’t the same situation as Charles hiring from Daily Mail or Will rehiring Jason.
Uh oh. They’re breaking out their trusty Netflix sources again. Which could technically be any royal reporter with a Netflix account at this point. Bc apparently their Netflix sources say she’s a divisive figure who rules with an iron fist. Please.
Man Netflix has become their own villain in this saga with the British media. I don’t know if it’s because of Meghan’s deals with them, the fact they didn’t end their contract as they hoped and prayed, or the Crown for not being Totally sycophantic about the BRF.
Either way they have a bee in their bonnet about that organization, which is hilarious because they were all in on The Crown the first three seasons it was about Elizabeth and her generation even if it wasn’t totally flattering to them. Which tells me that the uproar is because Charles and Camilla cannot stand any sort of negative portrayal of themselves.
Also it’s very telling and narcissistic that they think just because she worked on the TV show that was about the British royal family that she has knives out for them rather than she was doing her job as a publicist and promoting one of the shows that she was tasked to promote. Everything that everyone does is not because they’re thinking about you. What a messed up way to raise people that they legitimately believe that every decision someone makes is because they’re thinking about how you may take it for good or ill.
Netflix gave Harry and Meghan a pretty big monetary deal. Which allowed them to breathe and make plans when they were cut off from security by the RF. That was a big deal. The RF wanted to control them through money and security and Netflix messed that up really. And then there was the docuseries. As for the crown, honestly, it didn’t go hard enough and painted them much more favorably than they deserved so I roll my eyes at that part.
The final seasons of The Crown were extremely flattering to Charles , Camilla, William and Kate. Charles is portrayed in a sympathetic light, the tampon conversation was put in context (which the UK tabs, happy to dredge up every single scandal up again clutching their pearls at Harry’s ‘betrayal’, didn’t do in their extensive re-reporting) where, IMO, it didn’t come across as sordid or depraved but almost sweet and Curtis-esque.
The real problem with that episode is that someone was allowed to sell a private phone conversation like that in the first place which is kind of Harry’s point isn’t it? I struggle to believe that it was picked up be an amateur radio enthusiastic completely accidentally, which I understand is the story. Why Charles isn’t 100% behind Leveson 2 is a mystery for the ages. He could even advocate for it in secret but it appears he’d rather serve up his son and daughter in law chasing after popularity he can never attain.
Harry is the one who got a slight retconned villain edit as a whiny ingrate in the last season of The Crown. Consider what everyone knows to be true about Phillip, The Queen Mother and Mountbatten and recall how they are portrayed in the show. Heck, even Al Fayed. It was maybe more reverential and flattering than the first few seasons?
We all know what Robert Lacey, the show’s consultant, says about Harry and Meghan and its pretty standard high handed disdain, the idea that he was writing anything in particular at the couple’s command is a fantasy. Had The Crown continued it would have followed the party line regarding the Sussexes.
Harry never blames Camilla, Charles or the Queen for what happened to Diana, the way the papers at the time tried to do and the way many of the public do now. He blames the media pretty much and that is something the The Crown were not really willing to go anywhere near, IMO. In the time frame they could also have said a lot about Edward and Sophie and they didn’t.
The whole thing was a disappointing whitewash which seemed to say the Royals were flawed but fundamentally decent. It’s the same UK press which has historically humiliated the British Royal Family in the way they now claim The Crown, in its mild rehashing, and Harry, in having Chinese-walled commercial relationships (exactly as the BBC of Panorama fame does the Windsors) with Netflix, does. Such hypocrisy . They also love reporting on the filming , the actors and awards at which time The Crown becomes a source of immense national pride!
The season before with the young Diana was very unflattering to c and c. There were complaints by c and c so Diana was made to look weepy all the time in the following season. and nothing much of her working for causes was shown. It was not flattering to william who came across as sullen and sulky
I really agree that Charles and Camilla, if they had integrity and courage, should be pushing for Leveson 2. It was a leaked phone-tapping that outed the affair and revealed the whole tampon conversation in the first place.
Could the brf show more clearly that they have some heavy-duty control issues?
What exactly is their point to this whining? Every time the Sussexes bring on new hires, especially communications, they get all twisted about it and think it’s only about the royal family on Salt Island.
The Sussexes hiring an obviously qualified person to run their communications is the last straw! There is no coming back from this!
Yeah having Meredith has for sure changed things. And hopefully there will be progress moving forward as they use a larger team to work their coms.
At the same time I expect a few months down the line for some hate articles to come because of the shuffle of comms members.
I don’t think people realize how stressful it must be to work on their team because of the presidential level of interest and the targeted hate.
You cannot have a normal response as you would other celebs.
I hope the new team does a better job playing offense and not defense.
Oh, no!
She ruled with an iron fist.
Absolute baller move. I hope the left-behinds and their pack of rota rats sh*t their pants when they heard the news.