Author Bonnie Greer has claimed the US now views the UK as ‘the nice lady down the road with bodies buried in her garden’ following Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.
During the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s sit down with the chat show host, which aired across the pond on Sunday and in the UK last night, the couple claimed a senior royal asked Harry how ‘dark’ Archie’s skin would be, and alleged that the one-year-old was denied the title of prince because he is mixed-race.
Meghan also told Oprah that she was denied help when she approached the institution while struggling with her mental wellbeing and having suicidal thoughts. Buckingham Palace is under intense pressure to issue its response to the cascade of extraordinary and damaging claims.
Appearing on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show today, London-based playwright and novelist Bonnie said she’d been ‘up all night defending this country on American television’.
During the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s sit down with the chat show host, which aired across the pond on Sunday and in the UK last night, the couple claimed a senior royal asked Harry how ‘dark’ Archie’s skin would be, and alleged that the one-year-old was denied the title of prince because he is mixed-race
‘That’s how bad it is,’ she told the host. ‘You know what this country looks like now? It looks like the nice lady living down the road, people went to her house and found out there are bodies buried in the garden. You don’t come back from that.’
‘Oh my goodness’ Jeremy exclaimed in response, adding: ‘We look really sinister, do we?’
Bonnie replied: ‘Bad, bad, bad,’ adding: ‘It’s “the United Kingdom is at fault”… I love this country, this country’s been really good to me, I’m heartbroken about this, because like I said, I’ve been on air last night on American television telling people “it’s not what you think”, you know, “I don’t know what’s going on in the Royal Family, most people don’t, y’know, Her Majesty has 65 years of service, don’t put it on her”.
‘But people are saying, “well what kind of country is that that even allows something like this to happen?”‘
Bonnie said Americans previously looked at Britain and thought it an ‘incredibly wonderful place’, but Oprah’s stunned face following Meghan’s sensational claims summed up the reaction across the States.
Appearing on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show today, London-based playwright and novelist Bonnie said she’d been ‘up all night defending this country on American television’
‘The fact that this was going on and this woman had to be driven out?’ Bonnie said. ‘Listen, the signal was Oprah Winfrey’s face. That’s what people should have paid attention to, not even what Harry and Meghan was saying, it was Oprah’s face.
‘And Oprah was going [hands to her open mouth]… that’s what America was doing and it wasn’t about the Royal Family.’
The interview, the most significant with a royal in over two decades, exposed a stark difference of opinion between the US – where newspapers and social media users were broadly supportive of Meghan – and the UK, where she came in for criticism.
Following its airing on CBS on Sunday, most US pundits sided with Meghan, with a CNN commentator saying the interview laid bare ‘hypocrisy’ within the Palace.
On CBS This Morning, Gayle King, who is close friends with Oprah Winfrey, called Meghan ‘brave’ for opening up about her suicidal thoughts.
Bonnie claimed the US now views the UK as ‘the nice lady down the road with bodies buried in her garden’ following Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey
During a live event with the Washington Post on Monday, former presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said the ‘cruelty’ the British press showed to Meghan Markle was ‘outrageous’ and slammed the Royals for failing to support a ‘young woman who was just trying to live her life’.
She added that it was ‘heartbreaking’ to watch the ‘incredibly accomplished’ Duchess ‘not be fully embraced’ by both the ‘permanent bureaucracy that surrounds the Royal family’ and the UK press.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also waded in on the matter yesterday, stating in a daily press briefing: ‘For anyone to come forward and speak about their own struggles with mental health and tell their own personal story — that takes courage.’
She went on to explain that President Joe Biden supports speaking openly about mental health and investing in such ‘areas,’ which he is ‘committed to [doing] in the future.’
Meanwhile the US co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Opal Tometi, is calling for a boycott of the Royal Family, telling TMZ she believed people should stop standing by the Palace.
More than a third (36 per cent) of those questioned said their sympathies were mostly with the monarch
But royal experts in the UK have widely condemned Meghan and Harry for their ‘damaging’ claims about the monarchy.
A survey revealed today that more Britons have sympathy for the Queen than for Meghan and Harry in the wake of their explosive Oprah interview.
A snap YouGov poll revealed most of the public’s sympathy lies with Her Majesty and the Royal Family, but the British public is split on whether the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were treated fairly by the Firm.
Some 32 per cent believed they were treated unfairly, while an equal proportion – 32 per cent – did not, and 36 per cent did not know.
Viewing figures revealed more than a million viewers turned off ITV’s ‘£1m’ Oprah chat, with audience numbers peaking at 12.4m out of an average 11.1m during two-hour bombshell broadcast in UK.