Prince Harry and Meghan Are 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' Says Bethenny Frankel

Bethenny Frankel has advised Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to stay away from paparazzi hotspots in a viral video after the royal couple were followed by photographers while leaving an awards show in New York City.

Harry and Meghan attended the Women of Vision Awards, by Ms. Foundation for Women, at the Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night. Their spokesperson said the couple were involved after the event in a "near-catastrophic car chase" with the paparazzi.

Harry and Meghan were traveling with her mother, Doria Ragland. The spokesperson said the "relentless" chase lasted over two hours and "resulted in multiple near-collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD officers."

The incident draws damning parallels with the paparazzi pursuits endured by the prince's late mother, Princess Diana. She died from injuries sustained in a 1997 high-speed Paris car crash while being chased by photographers.

Former Real Housewives of New York City star Frankel took to social media to discuss the incident and criticism of the couple. Some commentators have accused Harry and Meghan of overdramatizing the event, following the publication of photographs and eyewitness accounts.

"Are we going to talk about Meghan and Harry and the car chase," Frankel told her 1.4 million TikTok followers. "So that sounds very scary. To be sought after and hounded sounds very scary. That's the honest truth."

"Eric Adams (New York City mayor) said that sort of car chase was very unlikely to have happened. Now there are all these different accounts back and forth, but let's break it down..." Frankel added.

"They stayed quiet for a while, which was helpful for them," Frankel said before talking about a previous paparazzi pursuit shown by the couple in their 2022 Harry & Meghan docuseries.

"The story about Diana and the paparazzi chase, and in their Netflix show, they were showing that a paparazzi was following them and it seemed very dramatic," Frankel said, "but it didn't look like it was actually that dramatic what was happening, meaning it didn't seem like it was a crazy, crazy car chase, and it didn't seem that dire, right?

"Now the problem is, it's the 'boy who cried wolf'," Frankel said. "Perhaps this was the worst car chase since Princess Diana, but people have a hard time believing it because they've been raising their hands so much, saying: 'We are experiencing the same thing as my mother who was killed in a paparazzi car chase.'

"It's a story that keeps being pushed. So it seems like it fits perfectly... in that narrative of: 'Oh, this is a good way, now we finally get to prove that it is as bad as it was for Diana,'" she added.

On what this means for the couple, Frankel said they should stop attending events in New York or Los Angeles that put them in unnecessary danger.

"You can live a very, very well-rounded life without entering into the eye of this very dangerous storm," she added. "So don't go if you know this is a massive risk and you are hounded by the paparazzi ad nauseam and it's going to risk your life."

Following Tuesday night's incident, the NYPD released an official statement that said the chase involved "numerous photographers" who made Harry and Meghan's journey from the Ziegfeld Theater "challenging."

"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination," the statement added. "And there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries or arrests in regard."

This is not the first time the couple have been photographed by the paparazzi in the U.S. It comes as Prince Harry has been openly critical of the U.K. press and tabloid media for targeting his wife, whom he said he feared would follow the same fate as his mother.

In a 2021 documentary interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry said: "History was repeating itself."

Referring to the racially focused coverage Meghan received in Britain, the prince continued: "My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone that wasn't white and now look what's happened. You want to talk about history repeating itself? They're not going to stop until [Meghan] dies."

Since leaving the monarchy and moving to the U.S. in 2020, the couple have employed a private security team, which accompanied them on Tuesday night.

Harry is involved in a legal battle in Britain over the government's decision to remove his 24-hour state-funded bodyguards. The prince has said that he should be able to pay for armed police protection when he visits the U.K.

Newsweek approached representatives for Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Bethenny Frankel via email for comment.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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