Last Thursday, the Duchess of Sussex posted a cute little video to her Instagram Stories. She had a special visitor – Jonathan Grahm, the chocolatier from the LA-based chocolate company Compartes. Meghan’s As Ever brand has collaborated with Compartes on chocolate bars and a new dark-chocolate-and-caramel collection. The video was Meghan showing Grahm around the chicken coop in Montecito, and she says, to camera, “when the chocolate man comes to see the chickens.” You can hear Lili in the background too:
“When the Chocolate man comes to see the chickens!”
Jonathan Grahm, CEO of Compartés Chocolate visits Duchess Meghan in Montecito. 🍫🍯
As ever x Compartés#AsEverByMeghan pic.twitter.com/xGHPWwJPC4
— ChrisBaronSmith (@ChrisBaronSmit1) April 30, 2026
The story, for me, is how Compartes and As Ever are tight because Grahm and Meghan are tight. The story is about the business side of things and how we’re hopefully getting more chocolate. Milk chocolate, hopefully!! But for the Daily Mail, the story is about hearing Lili’s voice in the background, and they’re upset about Lili’s American accent.
Meghan Markle has revealed Princess Lilibet’s American accent in a new video posted yesterday. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s four-year-old daughter made a subtle appearance in her mother’s Instagram Stories, filmed inside the Sussexes’ chicken coop. Meghan was joined by Los Angeles-based chocolatier Jonathan Grahm, the co-founder of Compartes, after the pair worked together on a special Mother’s Day collection for As Ever.
‘When the chocolate man comes to see the chickens. Compartes is here, and there’s Hill and Jill!’ the Duchess said, as she turned the camera on the birds. Lilibet, whose face was concealed, then called out to Meghan as she informed her mother that she had collected ‘a grey’ chicken egg.
‘Mum, I got another grey one!’ the toddler excitedly said, as the Duchess replied: ‘Thanks, sweetheart!’
While Lilibet’s face was not visible, Prince Harry and Meghan’s daughter’s bright pink dress could be seen in the background of the video. The Duchess wore a sleeveless black top and trousers as she gave Jonathan a tour of the coop at Harry and Meghan’s $14 million Montecito mansion.
Royal fans first heard Lilibet’s voice in January 2025, when the Duchess posted an emotional tribute in memory of the Sussexes’ late beagle, Guy, on social media.
It appears both children now have pronounced American accents after the Sussexes quit the Royal Family and moved to California in 2020.
Lili was born in California and she’s been to England once in her life, around her first birthday. What other kind of accent would she have? Archie as well – while he was born in England, he’s lived in California since he was a baby. I get the feeling that they’re blaming Harry for not “teaching” his kids how to speak with British accents? I have no idea though, nor do I understand why they keep making a big deal over American accents.
Photos courtesy of Meghan’s Instagram.
How Shocking, A child growing up in America has an American accent. And yet there is no fuss when August’s face is not shown in the recent video of Eugenie and Jack.
Is anyone really complaining about the accent? I really think they were just noting it, as the first time we’ve heard Lili speak.
@Jezz … Oh, it is definitely a complaint, one they’ve used against Meghan ‘the American’ since 2018.
I believe they’re laying groundwork for justifying why Archie and Lilibet should be excluded from any potential work with the royal family in the future. “It’s not that we dislike them, poor little sausages! But they’re (gasp, pearl clutch, vapors) ‘American,’ you know. Can’t very well have them representing the UK. It’s all Meghan’s fault!”
And this is not the first time we’ve heard Lilibet speak.
From the little I have seen of Lili, she is a firecracker, and people think Meghan has time on her hand to think about derangers.
She seems perfectly sweet and quite docile to me, collecting eggs and giving hugs.
How dare she raise her children (who live in America) to have American accents!!! Please with this fricken nonsense!!
No matter what Lili or Archie say or do, the British media will criticize and demonize them.
We all know why.
I think it’s interesting that they’re fixated on their accents because one thing I learned from my British friend who moved here to the US is how strict English people can be with accents + social class. In America if you work hard enough and make enough money you can change social class and achieve upward mobility. My friend makes it sound as if you can gain all the money in the world and be a self made zillionaire in the UK but if you have an accent from a certain area of town you’ll still be treated like “a peasant”.
So I say all that to say, I wonder if they’re mad that they can’t joke on Archie and Lily not having the “right” or “posh” British accent, because they sound like average Americans.
That’s it exactly. They can’t fit an American accent into their stupid accent/class system.
Pygmalion for real.
My mother was from Australia and had an Australian accent. My friends would always say how cool it was but I never could hear it. I did pick up some of her phrases thoughn like eh, sticky beak and bush week. The Sussexes children probably don’t even hear Harry’s British accent.
Same here. My father is from Germany and my mother was from Israel and I never heard their accents. My dad (a Holocaust survivor) took speech lessons to get rid of his German accent so perhaps that helped. My mom grew up in Israel while it was still a British mandate and her English teachers in school were all British. She had blonde hair and green eyes and people usually thought she was Scottish. My sibs and I all sound 1000% American
IIRC, Queen Noor’s children (Jordanian royalty) have American accents because their mother is American (their older siblings have British accents because the previous wife was British). It’s not that deep. My goodness the British press makes me tired.
My husband born near London to a Scottish Mother and and English Father, he was bought up in Australia, and left there when he was 22, he can speak broad Scots, Australian and English.
I believe accents for Brits is more than an identification of where you’re from. Accents are part of the British class system. They seem to define your social class and your education. I’m in every mention of Lili and Archie in a British publication, their accents are forever going to be mentioned. They seem to treat it almost as an offence for half-American children living in America during their formative years to have American accents.
What did they want them to do? Lock the kids in a room while streaming episodes of Masterpiece Theatre on an endless loop so that they acquire proper and very toney British accents? They’ll be okay with their vulgar American accents, I’m sure.
I don’t think there is anything “vulgar” about an American accent or indeed “proper” about a British accent (any of them). I know the point you’re trying to make but it’s interesting the way some people have just accepted English people’s impressions and just keep repeating them as if they’re true.
😂 I don’t think that either but obviously some Brits do.
My kids born here but we’re both from uk. Kids have a sort of hybrid accent. With only one parent they’ll pick up words and be able to probably flit between accents as they get older and are more conscious of it.
Yeah, my dad was like that. He picked up a few specific words & pronunciations from his Irish mother although he was born here in the States.
More stories on how Harry must send the children to school in England immediately so they will have “proper” accents are incoming! Now that the king will live another 20 or 30 years he must insist on it or he should strip their titles! Combined with the fact that both kids have birthdays over the next couple of months and the tabloid beasts will be able generate at least 100 articles, minimum.
Yep! Because “accent correction” (er…”improvement”) has worked out so well for Kate! It’s so amusing to watch the press and the royal family pretend she’s nailed that after-market “posh” accent when the elephant in the room EVERY speech, EVERY interview is how shaky and inauthentic it is (but don’t let any of the Royals hear you say it out loud)!
Poor kitty – she spent years on that ridiculous accent and trying to copy the fashion and mannerisms of William’s upper class peers, only to fail time and time again because aristocrats are born, not manufactured. She’ll always be “Doors to Manual” to them, no matter how she looks or sounds.
Then, once Harry found the love of his life, Kate might have expected to at least get the pleasure of seeing someone else suffer to try and fit in as she had. She might never truly be one of the toffs, but at long last she probably thought she would have the upper hand in the hazing process of Harry’s new girlfriend. Finally!
Harry’s previous serious girlfriends were much posher than Kate, so she couldn’t bully them.
I can just imagine her devastation when not only was Meghan personable and confident, but that she clearly did not care one bit about trying to imitate her way into aristocratic circles and in fact seemed to find the whole thing sort of ridiculous. Why should Meghan act like her background was something to be ashamed of? Why would she need to change the way she dressed or spoke? She was well-suited to a public role right away, and certainly didn’t need Kate’s hard won “fashion contacts” or elocution tips.
You can just imagine how that would have rankled Kate (who has spent 20+ years imitating but never becoming an aristocrat). It almost – ALMOST – makes me feel sorry for her.
The rota like pretending that covering the royals is there job and they are FORCED to cover Harry and Meghan it has nothing to do with the fact that Harry and Meghan stories get them the most money, clicks and engagement. Their “job” is forcing them to continue reporting and harassing 2 people who stopped being tax funded royals over 5 yrs ago and moved to another country. Their excuse to cover Harry and Meghan is already paper thin and largely hinges on the fact that Harry used to belong to the firm and was someone they had access to. Lili and Archie’s American accent makes it abundantly they have no justification for reporting on them. They’ve never been working royals or public figures, they don’t live in the UK and any coverage of them will look exactly like what it is. British press crossing the ocean to harass and stalk 2 American kids just because they don’t like their parents.
Much more interesting is how Princess Cathy acquired her hilarously posh accent.
If the DM wanted Harry and Meghan’s kids to have British accents, then the DM and the rest of the British media should have treated the kids and their parents with decency and respect. Unfortunately, racism and other prejudices won, the King took their house away, and the kids will have privacy, protections and freedoms that likely surpass anything that they would have experienced in the U.K. Tabloids like the DM have about a decade to practice decency if they want the kids to even consider UK universities or something like UWC Atlantic.
The accent thing in addition to being a class indicator like others have mentioned, is just another indicator to me of their sense of ownership over members of the Royal family. That a prince and princess have American accents is just something they can’t tolerate. In their minds Archie and Lili belong to them, and having an American accent is the starkest example that they really don’t.
It’s bizarre though that they are surprised or care, given the fact that they have not been to the UK often, go to school with Americans, live in America, and presumably other than their father are only exposed to other people with British accents occasionally. Would it have been odd that they don’t speak with an American accent if the Sussexes had never left and they grew up in the UK, because their mother is American?
I couldn’t agree more about the sense of ownership that the Brit Media has always had for the Sussexes. They act like jilted lovers that can’t get over the fact that Harry and Meghan left an intolerable situation in the UK and are thriving in sunny California.
Oh nooo, a child born in the US has an American accent!
Does she even say “Mum, I found another grey one” I swear I hear the far more shockingly American “Oh My God I found another gray one!”
She says Mom. Definitely American.
Sounds like Mom to me too.
They are so uptight and angry about anything related to the Sussexes. So they let us know with each article and complaint that they would abuse the Sussex children the same way they abuse their parents. They are so racist, misogynistic and xenophobic that I can’t believe that anyone who isn’t like them reads their filth and believes it.
Posh Britsh accent does not mean class and decency. See Andrew, Lord Mountbatten, and other members of the BRF who protected Epstein.
Hello everyone, an American here. Personally, I’m glad she doesn’t have an accent because some of you Brits are very hard to understand. When you form your words you drop the sound so it appears that you never finish saying your words.
LOL, @Siri. I made a comment here quite a while back about how some “posh” Brits not only don’t pronounce words in their entirety but don’t form full sentences when they speak as well. I was wondering if that was some sort of lazy, posh, way of speaking. I brought it up in relation to Boris Johnson but William speaks that way as well. It just comes across as lazy and ill-educated.
Yup, we called it even before Lili was even born – the British media would be noting and complaining about how “American” the Sussex children behave and sound. Nevermind that they live in America, attend American schools, and have an American parent and primary grandparent – obviously they have an American accent and will use some American expressions!
Also, for contrast, imagine the uproar if the children *had* sounded even vaguely British (which can happen! They might mirror their dad’s accent or slang when speaking with him, for example). Then, instead of a whole week’s worth of pearl-clutching over the precious Windsor bloodline being tainted with Americanisms, there would instead be whole week’s worth of pearl-clutching about how Meghan is cunningly preparing her kids to usurp the throne by forcing them to speak with posh British accents in order to infiltrate and destroy the aristocracy.
Or maybe the rota thinks that being of royal blood means you come out of the womb sounding like Stephen Fry?
😂
As long as she doesn’t sound like Kate’s fake “posh” accent that hurts my ears, then its fine.
Why is there an article about this? Plus, as Kaiser what other accent is Lili supposed to have? She’s American.
I’m hearing Tom Petty’s lyrics, “she was…an American girl” in my head. Sweet child born in America sounds American. Shocking.
For me, the relevant phrase was “when they quit the royal family.” They did NOT quit the royal family. They left England to save Meghan’s life and to escape the torment and lies about Meghan and Archie. This is NOT quitting the royal family. It’s the royal family shoving them out with the unsaid byword, “Leave or die.”
There’s every chance even if they’d stayed in Britain those children would have had some sort of Americanized/hybrid accent.
My daughter was born in the south and my son lived there from 3 on. I have a slight southern accent (mainly a few words and sounds). My husband doesn’t have one at all. Our kids don’t really either. It’s a few words here and there. I realize a British accent is more pronounced but there’s every chance those kids would have used American phrases and pronunciations even if raised in England.
I thought I heard Lili saying “Mum” instead of “Mom.” I’ll listen again. I listened again, but am not sure if it sounded like Mum or Mom. Oh well. Adorable kiddo.
The Brits are really, really hung up on the whole accent thing–accent as representing class, primarily.
And for the record, DM, Lilibet didn’t say ‘mum’, she clearly said ‘mom’. ‘Cause she’s American.
I bet the chickens have American accents too. that should send the DM into a tizzy.
My favorite part about American kids (with American accents) who have parents with “other” accents, is how hilarious it is when they get older and they NAIL making fun of their accented parents. I can imagine Lili and Archie absolutely ROASTING their dad – his perfect accent in place – when they get older with his English “DAD-isms,” and, they will be ABSOLUTELY ON POINT it in the most perfect and hysterical way!
Accents are part of how the British class system works and part of how you identify upper and lower class individuals. Her talking like an American will have the upper class clutching their pearls.