Meghan Markle spoke out about the importance of voting in a feature for Marie Claire magazine published this week. But might the royal have a future in US politics herself?
HuffPost spoke with Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie — authors of the bombshell royals book “Finding Freedom” that came out earlier this week — about their reporting, the Duchess of Sussex’s voting comments, and whether they think she would ever consider getting more involved in politics or running for office herself.
Durand said she would not make a prediction, but added that the Duchess of Sussex is “an incredible role model for women and for young people.
“She’s an incredibly eloquent and inspirational speaker and she has the capacity to really inspire people and get involved and I think that’s what we need in our country right now,” the journalist told HuffPost.
“I think that would be a wonderful moment if she decided to do that, but I wouldn’t venture a guess nor would I encourage her to do so,” Durand said, adding that she’s “sure that there are many people that would love to see that.”
“I think right now [Meghan and Harry] want to focus on the family and really look to the future ― setting up their Archewell nonprofit,” Durand said. “Maybe in the future, we’ll see that, maybe we won’t.”
On Tuesday, Marie Claire published a piece featuring 100 women, including the Duchess of Sussex, talking about why they’re voting in the upcoming 2020 election.
Meghan told the outlet that she knows “what it’s like to have a voice, and also what it’s like to feel voiceless.”
“I also know that so many men and women have put their lives on the line for us to be heard,” the duchess added. “And that opportunity, that fundamental right, is in our ability to exercise our right to vote and to make all of our voices heard.”
When asked what the duchess meant by feeling “voiceless,” Scobie told HuffPost that “within the institution of the monarchy there is a freedom to talk about many things, but there often many areas that are also deemed as perhaps slightly too politically sensitive.”
British royals can vote but the queen must remain politically neutral.
Because the Sussexes have stepped back as working members of the royal family, Scobie, who is the royal editor for Harper’s Bazaar, said that the two “don’t have those same boundaries anymore.”
Before the change in their royals commitments, the couple “never would’ve been able to get involved in the Stop Hate for Profit campaign and calling up big organisations to talk to them about the way they sell their advertising or buy their advertising,” he said.
The campaign is made up of civil rights and other advocacy groups asking advertisers to boycott Facebook until it curtails the spread of hate speech and disinformation and the amplification of violent content on its platform.
“People often ask us, ‘Do you think they have freedom?’” Scobie said of the couple’s transition. “And looking at the work that they’re doing, I do think that they are much freer to do the things that mean the most for them.
“They are a couple that talk about impact a lot and I think that that impact ― we’re seeing it right in front of us,” he said. We “see Meghan talking about voting for the first time in a while, because of course that’s something she would’ve been almost silent about throughout her time as a working royal.”
He mentioned a scene from the book that recounts a story from Harry and Meghan’s wedding reception, where she gave a speech, “which is a slight diversion from protocol anyway and all of her American friends sort of [started] hooting and hollering because they felt they hadn’t heard their friend Meg speak in so long … I think now we really do hear her voice, as it should be.”
A spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex previously told HuffPost that the couple “were not interviewed and did not contribute to ‘Finding Freedom’” and that the “book is based on the authors’ own experiences as members of the royal press corps and their own independent reporting.”
Meghan, who has been a fierce advocate for women’s rights since she was a little girl, has made her political opinions known in the past. She denounced Donald Trump as “divisive” and “misogynistic” during an appearance on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” prior to the 2016 election.
Trump has called Meghan “nasty” twice and later weighed in on the couple’s decision to step back as working members of the royal family in January.
He tweeted in March that he wouldn’t be providing security for the Sussexes and that they “must pay!” after reports that the two had moved to Meghan’s hometown of Los Angeles.
A spokesperson for the Sussexes said that “privately funded security arrangements have been made” and the couple did not have plans to ask the US for security assistance.
In “Finding Freedom,” Scobie and Durand say Meghan reportedly rolled her eyes in reaction to Trump’s Twitter outburst.