Goddard made her comments during a special 60 Minutes Australia report on Meghan Markle following a number of claims made in a recently released bombshell biography.
Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors by Tom Bower has generated considerable interest following its publication in the U.K. last month. At least two claims made in the book have been questioned by palace sources.
The book examines the claims of bullying lodged against Meghan by former palace staffers. The allegations were published in an article by the U.K. broadsheet newspaper The Times shortly before the broadcast of Prince Harry and Meghan’s sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey.
When asked whether she felt Meghan had in fact experienced bullying herself while in Britain following her marriage to Harry in 2018, Goddard said: “To be fair, all the women who have married into the royal family get bullied. Let’s use the proper word for it, they all get bullied.”
“So many commentators have said ‘come on, you know waity Katey,’ they’ve had to go through that,” Goddard said in reference to the nickname given to Kate Middleton before she became engaged to Prince William in 2010.
“They’ve listed all the women,” Goddard continued, adding Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall as another example of someone who experienced aggressive press reporting through her royal associations.
“Why? Why does any woman who marries into the royal family, why do they have to go through that” Goddard asked. “I can think of the men who’ve married into the royal family—or can you?—they don’t have to go through that, it’s just the women.”
“What happens to them?” she continued. “They get denigrated. They get paired off against each other. ‘This one’s not as pretty as that one,’ ’this one’s more bossy than that one’…and if they complain, then that’s it, they’re going to take them down. What they’re meant to do is demurely give up and just deal with it.”
Both Meghan and Harry have spoken openly about the mental struggles they faced as a result of negative press reporting, including incidents of racism against Meghan, while in the U.K.
Speaking to Winfrey in 2021, Meghan revealed that she had become so distressed at the beginning of 2019 that she considered taking her own life.
Harry later elaborated in the docuseries The Me You Can’t See where he compared the treatment of Meghan by the press to that faced by Princess Diana in the 1990s.
“History was repeating itself,” he said.
“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.”
In her interview with 60 Minutes Australia, Goddard told anchor Tom Steinfort that she couldn’t “blame” Harry and Meghan for wanting to move to the United States and remain there given what they experienced in the U.K.
“They get hit at every turn,” she said. “Also they’ve successfully sued publications [in the U.K.] a number of times. I think they’ve realized that those publications are gonna make their lives as miserable as possible. So, I can’t blame them if they stay in the states for the foreseeable future.”
Newsweek has reached out to representatives of Trisha Goddard for comment.
If you have thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-8255. The line is available 24 hours every day.
