Prince Harry, Meghan Markle facing major staff turnover dubbed a ‘bloodbath': expert
There's been another staff shake-up within the House of Sussex.
Four members of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's staff have left in recent weeks, People magazine confirmed on Friday. Hello! Magazine, which was the first outlet to report the news, said that the staffers who left included their Los Angeles-based deputy press secretary, Kyle Boulia, and their U.K. press officer, Charlie Gipson. Both were brought on last year.
Fox News Digital reached out to Archewell, which handles the offices of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for comment.
Prince Harry Remains Stuck In The Past While Meghan Markle Builds Hollywood Empire: Experts
"This stands as another indication of the dysfunction and instability within their household," British royals expert Hilary Fordwich claimed to Fox News Digital.
"Highly qualified professionals from many top-notch firms have previously struggled to thrive under the Sussexes," Fordwich claimed. "This latest bloodbath serves as solid confirmation."
Read On The Fox News App
According to People, Meghan, 43, and Harry, 40, hired Meredith Maines as their chief communications officer earlier this year. She previously worked for Google, Hulu and "American Idol." The couple also added Emily Robinson, formerly of Netflix, as the new director of communications.
"Something tells me there will be another change in the future," a source told Hello! Magazine. "Meghan and Harry have hired some of the most incredible people at the top of their fields, yet somehow none of them ever work out."
Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told Fox News Digital that about 20 people have left their roles working for the Sussexes. The couple stepped back as senior royals in 2020 and moved to California.
"Something is clearly very wrong if you work for the Sussexes," Fitzwilliams claimed.
Click Here To Sign Up For The Entertainment Newsletter
"There are those who would link this to the reputation Meghan has of being difficult to work with," he shared. "Bullying allegations, which Meghan has strongly denied, have dogged her since they surfaced in The Times before the notorious Oprah interview [in 2021]. They were recently repeated in The Hollywood Reporter where it was alleged that Meghan was 'a dictator in high heels' and also appeared in Vanity Fair.
"There could be another reason - the Sussexes are often dreadful at making plans," Fitzwilliams claimed. "On the one hand, it was always clear that a series like 'Polo' for Netflix would flop. Yet, they still went ahead. On the other hand, it is most unlikely that Harry took advice before he appeared on the BBC [in May] after he lost his case on security."
"I would love to know who advised them that it made sense to post the 'twerking video,'" said Fitzwilliams, referring to the video Meghan posted of her and Harry doing the "Baby Mama Dance" on the day of Princess Lilibet's birth.
"This will haunt them," said Fitzwilliams. "With judgments as bad as this… you can't blame staff for looking elsewhere."
British broadcaster and photographer Helena Chard told Fox News Digital that the Sussexes are "on a mission to create their own royal court."
"[They want to] boost their profiles," she claimed. "[There's a view] that a new, bigger team will be better for them and especially help Meghan create a financial empire."
WATCH: MEGHAN MARKLE AND PRINCE HARRY ACTED LIKE A COUPLE OF TEENAGERS, PALACE SOURCES ALLEGE IN EXPLOSIVE NEW BOOK
In February, Vanity Fair published a scathing cover story about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's lives in California. A spokesperson for the couple didn't immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment at the time.
Several of those who worked with the former American actress came forward to the outlet and candidly shared their experiences. They described how, at first, the mother of two would be "warm and effusive," creating an atmosphere of "professional camaraderie."
However, whenever something went poorly, "often due to Meghan and Harry's own demands," she would become "cold and withholding towards the person she perceived to be responsible."
A source told the outlet that it was "really, really, really awful. Very painful."
"She's constantly playing checkers," the source claimed. "She's just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you're not in it, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment."
The source described it as "undermining."
Like What You're Reading? Click Here For More Entertainment News
"It's talking behind your back. It's gnawing at your sense of self. Really, like 'Mean Girls' teenager," claimed the source.
Producer Jane Marie had a different experience collaborating with the duchess.
"She's just a lovely, genuine person," Marie told the outlet.
Royal expert Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital that the Sussexes are looking to revamp their image as they continue raising their young family in the U.S.
"The Sussexes seem to be losing the war against the constant vitriolic comments from unnamed individuals close to the royal family in London," he claimed.
"The Crown seems to be turning fiction into reality now with brand and media battles constantly going on," he said. "King Charles is seen giving a cheery wave and smile in public but has his head in his hands in private over how to unite the family."
Fordwich and Fitzwilliams said the couple's swift staff turnaround has raised eyebrows.
Two sources told Vanity Fair that a colleague with ties to the couple's Spotify podcast "Archetypes" took a leave of absence after working on three episodes. Several others said they took extended breaks from work "to escape scrutiny," left their jobs, or underwent "long-term therapy after working with Meghan."
"I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better," a source told Vanity Fair. "But who am I to criticize Meghan Markle? She's doing great."
When the couple made their royal exit, they cited the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media, as well as a lack of support from the palace, as their reasons for stepping back. But in 2021, days before Meghan and Harry's televised interview with Oprah Winfrey aired, royal reporter Valentine Low broke the story of bullying allegations against the duchess.
Meghan's team strongly refuted the claims.
"The duchess is saddened by this latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma," a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said in a statement sent to Fox News Digital at the time.
Prince Harry Accused Of Bullying In 'Deeply Damaging' Claims As New Scandal Rocks Sussexes: Expert
"She is determined to continue her work building compassion around the world and will keep striving to set an example for doing what is right and doing what is good."
A spokesperson for the Sussexes also told The Times, "Let's just call this what it is – a calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful misinformation."
Low told Fox News Digital in 2023 that he stood by his reporting.
"The important thing is we all know they're quite litigious," he said, referring to the Sussexes. "But despite getting several strongly worded letters from their lawyers before we published - after we published, we didn't hear a word from them. So that speaks volumes, too."
Low's book "Courtiers" also alleged that "relations between the couple and some of their senior staff became so fractious that William's private secretary had to step in to help keep the peace." Low also claimed that some former staff still had difficulty discussing their experiences. Some would even refer to themselves as members of "The Sussex Survivors' Club."
When Low's book was published in 2023, reps for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex didn't immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace previously told Fox News Digital they generally do not comment "on such books."
Meghan Markle's 'Messiah Complex,' Frequent Hugs Sparked Clash Within Palace Before Royal Exit: Book
Meghan returned to Instagram in the new year after disabling her social media accounts ahead of her 2018 royal wedding. There, she regularly promotes her lifestyle brand, As Ever, and her Netflix lifestyle series, "With Love, Meghan." New episodes are premiering in the fall.Original article source: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle facing major staff turnover dubbed a 'bloodbath': expert
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
"The Most Important Thing About Art is Freedom," says AR Rahman at IGF London 2025
Oscar-winning composer on scent cinema, AI, and the reinvention of Indian music culture LONDON, June 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- In a deeply personal and expansive conversation at the final day of India Global Forum London 2025 at Taj St. James' Court, Academy Award-winning composer AR Rahman urged artists, institutions, and governments alike to nurture creative freedom and cultural innovation. "In cinema for over 40 years now, I was bored with the same rectangle form," Rahman confessed. "It's just seeing and hearing—what else can we do?" That question sparked Le Musk, Rahman's pioneering immersive project which brings scent, touch, and narrative together. "The idea came from my ex-wife who loved perfumes. I thought, why not create a theatre experience with perfume and haptics?" Now coming to London for a year, Le Musk is more than a film—it's an artistic manifesto, showcasing Rahman's continued defiance of convention. The fireside chat turned from personal to philosophical, as Rahman explored the urgent need to preserve traditional Indian music, asking: "Where is the next shehnai player? Where is the next Bismillah Khan Sahib? Unless we find them, recognize them, and let the world see them—they'll vanish. That's where the inspiration for JHAALA came in." JHAALA, Rahman's initiative to platform and preserve Indian classical arts, seeks to make the invisible visible—through technology, talent discovery, and global exposure. On artificial intelligence, Rahman struck a balanced note of caution and curiosity: "AI is like Frankenstein—it just steals from human experiences, human knowledge, human art, and then puts together multiple thoughts. It's copied from us. And now it gets faster, because we feel with emotion—and it just runs on data." "We should use it for what it is—for speeding up the mundane. Don't fear it, use it." Beyond technology, Rahman called for a national cultural renaissance: "If you look at South Korea and K-pop, it emerged in the last 10 years because of government involvement and economic growth. It was a collective movement. That needs to happen with Indian music too. We need to reinvent the wheel." Throughout the session, one sentiment rang clear: true art is unbound by formats, expectations, or institutions. "The most important thing about art is freedom," Rahman stated. "You can't do that with a film studio." He ended with a reminder of music's enduring universality: "Music transcends religion. It heals. It connects. It's a shared soul." IGF London 2025's closing conversations made one thing certain: in a world fractured by algorithms and agendas, it is artists like Rahman who restore harmony—not just in sound, but in society. The forum forms part of IGF London 2025. With over 100+ speakers, 1000 participants, and events across iconic venues in London, IGF London 2025 encompasses a spectrum of topics - from technology and trade to culture and commerce. This year's edition marks a powerful milestone - a decade since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landmark 2015 visit to the UK, and the two nations have finalised the long-awaited Free Trade Agreement. IGF London is the first major international platform to celebrate and analyse this historic achievement, unlock new opportunities that emerge from its conclusion, and shape the next phase of UK-India collaboration. About India Global ForumIndia Global Forum tells the story of contemporary India. The pace of change and growth India has set itself is an opportunity for the world. IGF is the gateway for businesses and nations to help seize that opportunity. To know more, click here Social Media Handles & Hashtag to Follow Twitter: @IGFUpdates & @manojladwaLinkedIn: India Global Forum#IGFLondon Photo - - View original content to download multimedia: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How ‘Andor' Created an Entirely New Language from Scratch
Across the soundscape of Star Wars, the mosaic of alien languages is as important as John Williams's brass horns. But the Ghorman tongue heard throughout Andor season 2 is unusual, even in a galaxy far, far away. Unlike Jabba's gooey Huttese or R2-D2's whistling bleeps, Ghorman, spoken by the proud Ghor, is one of the most fleshed-out constructed languages (commonly referred to as conlangs) in all of Star Wars. For that, you can say, "Indebe"—that's Ghorman for "thank you," people—to dialect coach and conlang creator Marina Tyndall. "This conlang of Ghorman was loosely inspired by the inventory of terrestrial French," Tyndall explains to me. "It shares over 85 percent of the phonology of French." She adds that while French is the main foundation for Ghorman, the Ghor language does not contain a single word of French. "You might get a flicker of recognition; you catch a syllable that resembles a French syllable," she says. "But it's a false friend." Hailing from London, Tyndall is a dialect coach and constructed-language creator with a growing list of credits in Hollywood. She's applied her craft for movies such as Inferno (2016), Tenet (2020), Death on the Nile (2022), and TV shows like Killing Eve. Since 2016, Tyndall has contributed to the Star Wars franchise, beginning with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and more recently with Andor. In season 1, Tyndall formulated the Kenari and Aldhani languages. For season 2, which concluded in May, she created Ghorman entirely from scratch. "The starting point was that we wanted all of the Ghorman characters to sound approximately alike when speaking English," Tyndall says. It was important that the characters and their actors "share a broad, phonetic, and articulatory base with one another." Tyndall wasn't alone in her process. She's quick to credit Andor creator Tony Gilroy as well as on-set dialect coaches Naomi Todd and Marion Déprez as her biggest collaborators. Producer David Meanti, a native French speaker, also consulted to ensure no word invented for Ghorman could be misconstrued as "playground innuendo." Still, if our world had an academic expert on Ghorman, it would be Tyndall. She constructed the language over a process that began in early summer 2022 until the cameras rolled for Andor season 2 that autumn. That included teaching the language to hundreds of extras for Andor's unforgettable eighth episode, in which the Ghor sing their national anthem before a massacre by the Empire. For Tyndall, the ordeal felt like songwriting, and working with her team like a jam session. "You improvise words and melody and then you figure it out backward," she says. "If you are creating a conlang as an academic exercise, it is best approached as a science. But once you introduce actors and storytelling into the mix, it is very much an art." Tyndall's songwriting approach to Ghorman turned literal when she translated the Ghor's anthem for episode 8. The lyrics were first written in English and performed on a temp track by—who else?—Tony Gilroy, who then sent it all to Tyndall for translation. She jokingly describes the dynamic like she's Bernie Taupin writing for Gilroy's Elton John. "I am one of the privileged few who heard the English original," she brags. (She adds that Gilroy has "actually a very good voice.") "I came into the office one day to see David Meanti and other people singing it to each other," Tyndall says. "It was a very full-throated rendition. I was pleased to see the spirit of Ghorman pride had spread as far as the production office. I know a number of our production personnel could easily do it for karaoke night." While Ghorman has roots in French, it also "contains scrambles, mutations, and back formations of words" from other languages—even from dead ones. "It contains words that have been free-associated out of the semantic cloud of English," says Tyndall. "For example, if the word were ball, we might start throwing words out: throw, arc, bounce. And we make a fusion of anything we've spat out." French wasn't the only lingual flavor that was recognized by Andor's Ghorman-speaking cast. "Among our cast who played the Ghor, one of them said it reminded him of learning Hebrew," Tyndall recalls. Another actor said they sensed a little bit of Breton. "It's a really beautiful illustration of why it's so worth casting multilingual actors," Tyndall says. "If you have access to at least one other language, you've got access to a whole other system of thought and feeling. What we asked these actors to do was huge. I feel like this high-wire act we asked them to do, they did so outstandingly." As for why French is the main influence for Ghorman, those reasons elude even its creator. While she acknowledges parallels between the Ghor's revolt against the Empire and the French resistance during World War II ("It is the story of struggle," she says), Tyndall was not clued in on anything beyond her task of making the language. "The aim was that all the actors we cast had a similar speech style or accent. It could be that there are creative reasons for having landed on a French-speaking cast, but I wasn't party to those reasons." Tyndall does have thoughts on the world-building implications of Ghorman. Applying the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to Star Wars, Tyndall says the Ghorman language reveals insight to how the Ghor think, feel, and see their place in the galaxy. "It's a language of trade," she says. "It will have cross-pollinated with a number of other languages from people with whom the Ghor have traded. We hypothesize it's a rich language, one in which you're able to be quite specific. You might have more than one word for the verb to know. Depending on context, you're claiming to know you are acquainted, whether you have mastered it, and whether you know it in terms of empathy or appreciation." And there's this: The Ghor are sticklers for details, which is handy on the frontlines of a rebellion. "The Ghor are people who communicate in a very efficient but specific way. I imagine they have had to code-shift a lot," Tyndall says. "They have a number of ways of saying the same thing. Because life has been all about trade and peril. These two things have characterized their history in this galaxy—being under threat but having to conduct business at the same time." You Might Also Like Kid Cudi Is All Right 16 Best Shoe Organizers For Storing and Displaying Your Kicks
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Director Kenneth Branagh compares Jodie Comer to young Meryl Streep: 'I wish I had shares in her future'
Kenneth Branagh just paid Jodie Comer the highest compliment in Hollywood: He compared her to Meryl Streep. In a new interview, the award-winning filmmaker discussed directing Comer in his upcoming movie, The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, heaping on the praise for his 32-year-old leading lady. "I consider myself fortunate to have worked with her at this stage in her career," Branagh said while speaking to U.K. outlet The Times. He added, "As somebody once said of the young Streep, 'I wish I had shares in her future.'" The Killing Eve actress stayed humble when the director's Streep comparison came up in a separate interview for the same story, replying, "He is very kind… Bless him." A psychological thriller due out in theaters next year, The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde also stars Patricia Arquette, Michael Sheen, Tom Bateman, and Vicky McClure. Branagh stayed coy about the film's plot in the Times interview, teasing only vague poetic details about Comer's character — "dark night of the soul … reckless emotional exposure, volatility." Comer rose to fame playing assassin Villanelle in the hit BBC America series Killing Eve. The role earned her critical acclaim, scoring her a 2019 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and two BAFTA TV awards. The British actress also earned an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance as a lawyer defending men from sexual assault until she becomes a victim herself in the stage play Prima Facie. She latter held her own in Ridley Scott's 2021 drama, The Last Duel, in which she starred opposite Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and in The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols' 1960s-set drama about the rise and fall of a Midwestern motorcycle gang that also featured Tom Hardy and Austin is currently gracing the big screen in Danny Boyle's zombie thriller 28 Years Later, a sequel to the 2002 flick 28 Days Later. Responding to another Branagh comment about how she was "hungry for hard work," Comer told The Times, "Probably. I like a bit of hard work. It's a space I like to be in, that I don't feel I fully understand it, or I ever really will." Speaking on how she maintains boundaries between her work and her personal life, Comer noted, "There does seem to be a real fashion to see how much you can torture yourself. And you can see it a lot when it comes to campaign season [for awards]. It becomes, 'How far has everyone gone? How much has everyone given?' And that's not something I can connect with personally." Streep is a Hollywood legend with three Academy Awards, three Emmys, two Screen Actors Guild awards, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, seven Grammy nominations, and an American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. She recently appeared on Only Murders in the Building seasons 3 and 4 as Loretta Durkin, an actress who marries main character Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) in the season 4 finale. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
