The tights and timidity of Meghan Markle’s interview with Bloomberg

Meghan Markle sharing notes with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang

All over again. Five years after she and her family decamped the U.K for the U.S. in search of a more private life and four after her much maligned interview with Oprah Winfrey, you’d think that Meghan Markle’s seething displeasure with the British royal family has met with closure. Not one bit. In her latest interview with Bloomberg’s ‘The Circuit’, Ms Markle told host Emily Chang she “had to wear nude pantyhose all the time” in her capacity as a royal, and that it “felt a little bit inauthentic”. Tragic it is when a person’s authenticity is so sheer and thin, and fragile it can be undone by a pair of nylons. This marvelously keeps the feud with the royals narrative alive. In the age of Trumpism, grievances, even if recycled, are a sure sell.

Ms Chang had asked her guest: “Is there an inherent tension in trying to be relatable while also being a duchess?” Her reply was so well-rehearsed, you could almost hear the production directions. “No… I’m just being myself. So I think, probably it was different several years ago, where I couldn’t be as vocal… Let’s be honest, that was not very myself. I hadn’t seen pantyhose since movies in the ’80s, when they came in the little egg.” The Montecito matron was referring to L’eggs, the hosiery brand launched in 1969 by the T-shirt and underwear maker Hanes; she was also saying that she is the product of the present, when women let their legs go undressed. She added, “but that’s a silly example, but it is an example of when you’re able to dress the way you want to dress, and you’re able to say the things that are true, and you’re able to show up in the space really organically and authentically.”

For the main sit-down interview, Ms Markle dressed the way she wanted, in West Coast splendour: a crewneck cashmere sweater with dolman sleeves and a calf-length, pleated polyester skirt. Both are by the Californian brand Jenni Kayne; both are Made in China. Like Karoline Leavitt, Ms Markle loves imported clothes. There is something dressed-up about the appearance, as if she was a guest star at The Tonight Show, even if the outfit is oddly akin to modest fashion, which is rather unlike what she dons for her Netflix series, Love, Meghan, now in its second season. Seated in what looks like a living room, her body was lost in the pile of polyester, coloured to mimic sulphur. She needn’t dress to scare off snakes. After all, the interviewer had no fangs, nor intention to bite.

Ms Markle ran on high-octane enthusiasm and was in fine story-telling form. She could have come fresh off the set-kitchen of her eponymous series: the energy was the same, the expressive eyes were the same, the arms conducting an orchestra were the same, the aggressive display of friendship was the same, all brilliant tools of her craft. She showed that she was enjoying herself, tossing her head back when she found something amusing, not necessarily funny. Ms Chang, at the top of her game, giggled along, and tossed back her head too, discarding the objective conduit for information that journalists are, rather than as a friend or a fan. The laughter presumably made the women more authentic and relatable, even if the interview easily passes off as a pre-arranged, uncritical publicity stunt, a strategic launch for the new season of her show.

When she asked questions, Ms Chang’s phrasing was designed to play up the girlfriend vibe: “tell me about…” It was a candid chat between BFFs. In today’s media landscape, the journalist’s part is just as performative as the interviewee’s, effectively facilitating the celebrity’s snow-sugar-coated narrative, and laughing at each other’s clever turn of phrase, delighting in each other’s motherhood tales. Given that Bloomberg’s reputation is built on hard-hitting business and financial reporting, this episode of ‘The Circuit’ came across as a love letter dressed as a profile. In a beautifully-crafted illusion of intimacy and informality, the women even enjoyed beer and lunch of smash burger, an East Coast dish that is now made to appear American Rivieria chic. Even Sumiko Tan can’t register on the same scale.

Ms Markle had her own rhetorical device, too: “No one has ever asked me that.” Her interviewer had wondered: “If you could choose one thing for people to know the truth about you, what would that one thing be?” The delight in the reply was palpable. Similarly, back in 2019, on the ITV documentary, Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, journalist Tom Bradby asked Ms Markle how she was doing, given the intense media scrutiny that she was facing then. Her reply? “Thank you for asking because not many people have asked if I’m okay.” It was a key movement that continues to define the public’s perception of her. Back then, her reply showed emotional vulnerability, this time, it was to say she’s unflappable, “a real person”.

The insistence on being a “real person” is the central, and most ironic, claim of the entire interview. For a woman who has so deliberately curated every aspect of her life—from her home goods brand to a Netflix show of pristine perfection—the claim rings with an almost tragicomic earnestness. This is not the “real” of the un-manicured, the imperfect, or the burnt one-skillet pasta. This is the “real” of an influencer’s staged existence, complete with beautifully-placed artisanal jams in a designer-chic kitchen. For the Bloomberg interview, she had everything worked out, too, or scripted, even strangely not calling her spouse by name throughout the interview, just “my husband”. And amenable for Ms Chang to describe her critics as “ever-present”.

And they are. They needn’t be critics, either, just witnesses to the fact that for all the reported millions she has made from her royal sojourn, the humble pantyhose was cast as a symbol of an oppressive, “inauthentic” life. A cruel irony, given a person’s authenticity is so sheer and thin it can be undone by a single pair of nylons. Yet, for a smash burger lunch, she has no qualms wearing skinny pants. In the current American currency of grievance, an inconvenience is easily traded for an injustice. Her complaint was presumably meant to make her more relatable, but in her quest for flawless authenticity, she instead revealed a profound misunderstanding of what a “real person” truly finds confining. The very effort to seem aggrieved exposes a life so privileged that its only chains are those of hosiery. Meghan Markle posited: “I think a lot of behaviors, habits, roles that you end up playing in your life can bring out the best or worst in a lot of people, but you are still who you are.” Was this another role she played? As ever.

Screen shots: bloombergoriginals/YouTube