How Meghan Markle's Controversial Interview Defined Her Year

Meghan Markle's controversial interview with The Cut—which poked fun at her for having "a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain directing what she says"—was New York Magazine's most read of the year.

The Duchess of Sussex did a cover interview and photo shoot with the magazine to promote her Archetypes podcast, though the article that followed was cutting to the point she later told Variety: "I can survive it."

Now New York Magazine has included the story at the top of a list of its most read of 2022 across all its digital sites.

There was much about the interview that looked positive for Meghan, including the stylized images, though ultimately the narrative that emerged post-publication became one of the duchess seemingly failing to quite convince a highbrow writer from a glossy U.S. publication many anticipated would be on her side.

The dynamic echoes much of Meghan and Prince Harry's year, which included many positives but ended with serious questions being asked by respected U.S. publications outside of the usual cohort of critics.

Meghan Markle's Interview With The Cut

Journalist Allison P. Davis sat down with Meghan at the royal's California home for a piece titled: "Meghan of Montecito."

Davis did not damn Meghan with the obvious hysteria of over-the-top U.K. tabloid headlines but with cutting asides slipped in here and there.

One early observation read: "Then, in the lull in conversation, Meghan turns to me and leans forward to ask in a conspiratorial hush, 'Do you want to know a secret?'

"Meghan, silenced no more, looks around, making sure nobody (who would be?) is listening in. Then the top-secret drop: 'I'm getting back … on Instagram,' she says, her eyes alight and devilish.

"This could have been a troll: Delivering a nothing with such gravitas feels as if Meghan, who has been so trolled by the media, is serving it back, just a little. But, as I quickly realize, it is actually news."

Davis later says Meghan backtracked on the suggestion she was returning to Instagram.

The article also gave Meghan the opportunity to take some swipes at the palace machinery she left behind, including the system through which pictures of royal children are released to newspapers on the royal rota including the Daily Mail, The Sun and other publications the couple have enjoyed tense relations with.

Meghan said: "Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child? You tell me how that makes sense and then I'll play that game."

She also got a chance to plug her Spotify show and take Davis with her on the school run to pick up her son Archie.

Perhaps the most mocking segment of the article read: "Though she has been media trained and then royal-media trained and sometimes converses like she has a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain directing what she says (at one point in our conversation, instead of answering a question, she will suggest how I might transcribe the noises she's making: 'She's making these guttural sounds, and I can't quite articulate what it is she's feeling in that moment because she has no word for it; she's just moaning'), at this stage, post-royal, there's no need for her to hold back.

"She's flinging open the proverbial doors to her life; as any millennial woman whose feminism was forged in the girlboss era would understand, she has taken a hardship and turned it into content."

Elsewhere, Davis noted that the mansion "is the kind of big that startles you into remembering that unimaginable wealth is actually someone's daily reality."

She wrote: "Finding a house to start their new life wasn't easy, Meghan tells me. 'We were looking in this area'—she's referring to Montecito, the tony beachside hamlet north of Los Angeles—'and this house kept popping up online in searches.'

"At first, they'd resisted going to visit. 'We didn't have jobs, so we just were not going to come and see this house. It wasn't possible. It's like when I was younger and you're window shopping—it's like, I don't want to go and look at all the things that I can't afford. That doesn't feel good.'"

"How utterly humbled we all are when confronted with a depressingly aspirational Zillow hunt," Davis observed.

New York Magazine included the article at the top of a list of most read, stating: "This list, which is measured by total collective minutes of audience engagement, is just a small sample of the work New York puts out each day in print across its six digital sites — Intelligencer, the Cut, Vulture, Grub Street, the Strategist, and Curbed — and in its growing portfolio of newsletters."

Asked about The Cut's article in a later interview with Variety, Meghan appeared regretful but philosophical about Davis' take.

She said: "The [New York] story was intended to support Archetypes and focus on our projects. I've had some time to reflect on it. Part of me is just really trusting, really open—that's how I move in the world. I have to remember that I don't ever want to become so jaded that that piece of me goes away. So despite any of those things? Onward. I can survive it."

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's 2022 in Review

Meghan and Harry's 2022 was a year they finally launched new projects on the back of deals signed in the early months of their U.S. lives and also held a successful Invictus Games in the Netherlands in April. However, there was disappointment too.

In May, Netflix canceled Pearl, Meghan's animated children's series which she worked on with David Furnish, husband of Elton John and former friend of Princess Diana.

By August though, Meghan had put the blow behind her and was ready to release Archetypes, the first podcast from their Spotify partnership.

The deal was first announced in December 2020 and a press release at the time suggested it would bear fruit as early as 2021. There were tensions, though, over the platform's relationship with Joe Rogan, whose own Spotify exclusive show was criticized for its coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine.

When Meghan's weekly podcast finally dropped it triggered a tidal wave of headlines and stormed to the top of the Spotify charts—a significant triumph from her first outing.

However, it did not hold on to first place and the early episodes, which included swipes at the royal family, appeared to perform better than the later, safer ones released after Queen Elizabeth II passed away in September.

Ultimately, Archetypes capped off a successful launch by winning a People's Choice Award in November, though Meghan was not there to collect it, choosing instead to focus on a Ripple of Hope Award from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights given out the same night.

By the end of Archetypes' run, Meghan had parted ways with producer Rebecca Sananès and also appeared to abandon its original concept for the last two episodes.

The show was designed to look at different labels used to hold women back, with an episode on "The B-Word" or the trope of the "angry Black woman" or "the bimbo."

Early promotional material suggested there would be an episode about the trope of the "slut," however, no such episode appeared.

There was an episode which touched on female sexuality and included an interview with Candace Bushnell, whose writing inspired Sex and the City, though it was not organized around any label. It was the second-last episode and was titled: "Beyond the Archetype: Human, Being."

The final episode also abandoned the concept that had been applied consistently throughout the first ten episodes, inviting an all male cast of guests under the title: "Man-ifesting a culture shift." Again, it was not organized under any particular negative label.

Then came their Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, directed by Liz Garbus, which would attempt to tell their royal story afresh, revisiting the start of their relationship, palace strife, their royal exit and the establishment of their new life in California.

The show was a ratings hit but earned criticism from American critics, who do not usually form part of the rank and file British commentators who regularly seek to tear the couple down.

An article in Variety, for example, observed that the show was a rehash of a story they had already told to Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, while noting in its headline: "It's well past time for Harry and Meghan 2.0."

The article read: "It's not that Harry and Meghan don't have a story worth telling; the prejudice they faced from the royal family and the British press was awful. But telling the story ad nauseam has diminishing returns.

"At some point, even the dimmest of minds among their fans is going to tire of their 'Oh, woe is us' routine as they play the victim card again and again. That's a tone-deaf message to be sending from their posh Montecito estate at a time of economic insecurity around the world."

One facet of monarchy is that public funding insulates the royals from failure, removing the pressure to be commercially successful. However, Harry and Meghan left that economically protective environment after finding it emotionally inhospitable.

For the Sussexes, 2020 was the year success in the private sector appeared to become a reality through big money contracts only for 2021 to be the year they delivered for Oprah Winfrey but not for the multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify.

Ultimately, Meghan and Harry's 2022 was a year in which they finally made good on the promise of their first months in America—but also experienced the reality that success and adoration in the Darwinian world of the U.S. entertainment industry is far from guaranteed.