What Omid Scobie Said About 'Royal Racist' Names Days Before Leak

Omid Scobie said he did not want to "be seen as dropping clues" about the identity of a royal who expressed concern about Prince Archie's skin color in an interview with Newsweek just days before two names leaked in a Dutch language edition of his book.

Endgame describes how King Charles III and Meghan Markle exchanged letters in the days after she told Oprah Winfrey an unnamed royal had "concerns and conversations" about how dark her unborn child's skin might be.

The English language version said British law prohibited the naming of the individual and a second royal who was present but hours after publication it became apparent the Dutch language version had gone on sale with the names included.

The apparent "error," as it was described by the Dutch publisher, sparked a major outcry in Britain as the names circulated on social media before Piers Morgan ultimately named the pair live on his show.

However, just days earlier, Scobie told Newsweek of his desire to avoid leaving a trail of breadcrumbs leading to the pair's identity and how Prince Harry and Meghan were ready to "put [the issue] to one side."

"What I didn't want to do is be seen as dropping clues or anything like that," he said during the interview conducted under embargo on Thursday, November 23. "In the book, I'm very aware of, like, the legal restrictions on reporting something like that."

"I really wanted to get into that in the book because when I started I didn't understand why after such a huge bombshell on global television, with Oprah, the couple then went silent on the matter.

"We knew that it hadn't been discussed within the royal family, we knew that it hadn't been resolved, especially straight afterwards.

"And so for then Netflix to come and nothing to be in it, then Spare to come and nothing to be in that, I was really curious."

The existence of the letters between Charles and Meghan had already emerged in a story in U.K. broadsheet The Daily Telegraph in April in the run-up to King Charles' coronation.

"I wanted to kind of get in or find out what was actually in them. Thankfully, in this situation, there's like 10 different eyes on these sorts of things.

"Nothing ever happens privately within the royal family but to learn that, despite not seeing eye-to-eye on the matter, that Megan and Charles as the head of the family had discussed it gave me a better understanding why Megan and Harry felt that they could kind of put it to one side."

Scobie said the comments were viewed differently by Meghan and Harry on one hand and Charles on the other, which is why he wanted to send the letter as a representative of the family to clarify.

"They might not have viewed these conversations in the same way," he said. Harry and Megan, we know, saw this as unconscious bias. We know that, for Megan, it was concerning.

"To Charles, there was a worry that they were taking it that way. His feeling was that it wasn't said in any kind of malicious way but the conversation about the topic needed to be had.

"I think what's disappointing though, is to find out that there were two names, two people, two members of the family involved in those conversations, which I wasn't really clear on until I got into the reporting for this," he continued, and that concerned parties didn't actually follow up with Megan at all.

"It's a family situation, they can handle it however they want but this is also a public institution.

"And I think the way in which something like that was handled internally says a lot about their attitudes as a whole as a firm towards the subjects on a much larger scale."

And, he said the royals had not known the comments had upset Harry and Meghan at the point they were initially made: "Of course, it was only the Oprah special that really put it on the map for them that [Harry and Meghan] were hurt by it."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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