Fact Check: Did Meghan Markle List Herself as 'Caucasian' on 'Babe' Site?

The Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan, an autobiographical series created with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has attracted worldwide attention, offering a glimpse both into the lives of the famous couple and their separation from the British Royal Family.

Allegations that Markle, who identifies as biracial, has faced racial hostility since meeting Harry have been widely reported, including claims that a member of the royal family asked about her son Archie's skin color.

Her lineage was again brought up this week when users on social media found an image of an online profile posted in 2013 that lists her as "Caucasian", with some suggesting the former actress wrote these details herself.

The Claim

A tweet, posted on December 10, 2022, claims that Meghan Markle had listed herself as a "Caucasian" supermodel. It had several hundred engagements.

Several other tweets have also shared the same screenshot.

The Facts

While the profile image of Meghan Markle was posted recently, it appears to have been circulated online for a few years. The earliest example Newsweek could find was in 2019, posted on Twitter, alongside similar disparaging claims about Markle and her race.

However, the biography was not authored by Meghan Markle, and instead appears to be a user-submitted biography from a mostly pornographic website called freeones.com.

The website was found by searching for images similar to the profile of Markle posted on Twitter. Markle is still listed on the site as "Caucasian", although her details can be edited by anyone.

While an exact copy of her profile on freeones.com as shared on Twitter has not been archived, other profiles from 2013—when Markle's details were reportedly added to the website—show the same format and presentation as the entry posted on social media (such as the header "Babe Statistics".)

That same year, Markle told the South China Morning Post that she was "bi-racial".

"Specifically for me, because I'm bi-racial, I can go in for so many parts," she said.

"If you're blond and blue-eyed, you may have 10 auditions but, because I could look what they call 'exotic Caucasian', instead of having 10 auditions I would have 40. You hear 'no' a lot more.

"It hurts a lot because you feel like all you hear is 'no'. It's really just about powering through. At a certain point, people just give up and once they've dropped out of the pool your chances of making it are so much better. It's a numbers game."

Markle's representatives told Newsweek she had not uploaded any information to the site, and that third parties without any relationship to her or the authority to act on her behalf to do so were responsible.

Although the website is dedicated to a user-submitted rating system that ranks porn stars among its most popular actresses, it includes entries for non-porn actors (including Markle) as well.

How versions of Markle's outdated profile from a porn site came to be shared in 2019 (as the earliest archives of her profile are from 2021) is unknown.

However, the fact that the website is editable by anyone, is largely dedicated to hardcore pornography, and that her representatives have dismissed the claim, confirms Markle had no part to play in its creation.

The Ruling

False.

Meghan Markle did not upload the information to the website shared on social media. The snapshot describing Markle as "Caucasian" is from a largely pornographic website that allows any users to upload and edit information about actors.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team