It’s safe to say that things haven’t been going well for Meghan Markle lately. After returning to Instagram at the start of 2025 and promoting her cooking and gardening show set to premiere on Netflix, she received some bad press as she and Prince Harry were dubbed “disaster tourists” for surveying areas of Los Angeles County destroyed by the wildfires. The couple also took heat for only showing up at an evacuation center for 17 minutes and doing a “photo opp” with Pasadena’s mayor Victor M. Gordo.

Due to the devastation in her home state, the duchess’s Netflix show was pushed back until March and she’s had to deal with more negative headlines and allegations that she mistreats her employees following the publication of a recent Vanity Fair feature.

People haven’t been able to stop talking about the explosive cover story. And for anyone wondering if this is just a hit piece out to get Meghan, it should be noted that once upon a time this magazine put the Suits star on the map introducing her to the world when she was still Prince Harry’s girlfriend.

Now, a Vanity Fair correspondent is sharing what stood out to her about these two pieces and how it’s likely affecting Meghan.

Vanity Fair published ‘Wild About Harry’ before the Sussexes got engaged

For its February 2025 cover storyVanity Fair spoke with dozens of the Duchess of Sussex’s former employees who alleged that working with her was “really, really, really awful. Very painful. Because she’s constantly playing checkers–I’m not even going to say chess–but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you are not in, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment.”

Another former colleague, reportedly part of Meghan’s team when she did her Archetypes Spotify podcast, revealed they had to take a “leave of absence after working on three episodes.” Several others claimed that they too had to take “breaks from work to escape scrutiny,” leave their job altogether, or undergo “long-term therapy” after having the duchess as a boss.

As royal correspondent Katie Nicholl pointed out, this is the same magazine that printed a feature after sitting down with Meghan in 2017 titled Wild About Harry and the outlet’s reporting has always been top-notch.

Royal correspondent says Meghan is ‘deeply disappointed’ by turnaround now

During an episode of Kinsey Schofield Unfiltered, Nicholl and the host discussed what Meghan and Harry must be thinking now after the blistering piece has made the rounds.

When asked about the latest Vanity Fair piece Nicholl had this to say: “It’s clearly been very well-researched. The journalist in question obviously spent a lot of time speaking to numerous sources and some who have gone on record but the majority as you might expect have not. I think it’s pretty damning for Harry and Meghan. When you consider that Vanity Fair was the magazine that sort of launched Meghan as Harry’s new girlfriend [in] that Wild About Harry front-page cover story that was so positive for her.”

Nicholl continued: “Five years [since leaving the U.K.] when you might expect the couple to be the toast of Tinseltown, to be producing brilliant content with this multi-million [Netflix] deal … You would expect them to be having much more of an impact; creating award-winning content, really having Archewell and their philanthropic platform exploding on a global level. I think the feeling is they just haven’t lived up to expectations.”

After giving full disclosure that she works for Vanity Fair as a royal correspondent, Nicholl explained: “Coming from Vanity Fair, which is always very fair … it is always top-quality journalism. It’s impartial, it’s balanced, it’s well-researched. And for the Sussexes to have come out of a piece like this the way they have they must be– well I would imagine–they must be deeply deeply disappointed.”