Tina Brown says Meghan Markle’s ‘ideas are total crap,’ calls Prince Harry ‘naïve’ and working with Harvey Weinstein was ‘dumbest’ career move
Tina Brown says “all of [Meghan Markle’s] ideas are total crap,” and thinks Prince Harry is a “naïve” “lamb to the slaughter.”
The former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor dished on the couple to promote her new Substack, “Fresh Hell” — and also admitted that going into business with Harvey Weinstein in the late ’90s herself was “the dumbest career move of anybody’s life.”
The Ankler’s Janice Min asked the Brit wunderkind editor who took over New York in the ’80s about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the latest episode of the Ankler podcast.
Brown said of Harry’s defection from the royal family: “In England, they’re going to constantly make a career out of trashing Harry. But actually, the thing about Harry is he’s very good at being Prince Harry. And that’s the tragedy of all of this, is that he is the most talented member of the royal family, without doubt, in terms of being a prince, which is all he does know how to do … he’s really sort of flawless at it.”
As for Markle, she added, “I think he’s pretty much in the thrall of Meghan. The trouble with Meghan is that she has the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world. She’s flawless about getting it all wrong. She really is.”
Brown said of the “Suits” star-turned-American Riviera Orchard entrepreneur, “She’s a perfectionist about getting it all wrong. Her issue is that she doesn’t listen. She has all these people, asks them their opinion, and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do. And all of her ideas are total crap, unfortunately.”
She reckons of Harry’s worldview, “he’s so naïve and really unschooled in the ways of the world. Being Prince Harry means that I doubt if he ever booked a table in a restaurant. The army was great for him, and he was extremely good and competent in there. That really helped turn him into a real person.”
But with Markle, “he’s the lamb to the slaughter in this situation,” Brown said. “He was terribly impressed by Meghan. He thought that she knew all, she persuaded him that she was the savvy Hollywood wheeler-dealer who could come in and make them stars and all the rest of it. And he just sort of blindly followed her like a child, really.”
The couple married in 2018 at Windsor Castle, but quit the royal family in 2020 and decamped for California.
Brown says of Markle’s moves — and future — “unfortunately, she made every mistake in the book, and she’s kind of run out of road. I don’t know where Meghan goes. Harry could still, as I say, make a comeback. He’ll always be Prince Harry. He’ll always be the grandson of the Queen and the son of Diana.”
Meanwhile, Brown also candidly recalled her time working with former power producer Weinstein, when she created the ill-fated Talk Magazine with his Miramax Films.
“Well, the Harvey that I went to work for had just [produced] ‘The English Patient,’ so he was the god of quality at that point,” she told Min of launching their mag in 1999. “And, in probably the dumbest career move of anybody’s life, I left the New Yorker magazine to go into business with Harvey.”
Talk was also overseen by famed Condè Nast exec Ron Galotti, who was allegedly the inspiration for Mr. Big on “Sex and the City,” and Hearst was also involved in the short-lived venture.
Weinstein is infamously behind bars pending a new New York sex crimes trial after a 23-year sentence was overturned in April. He’s also facing another indictment, plus a trial in Los Angeles.
Brown says that these days, “It’s so funny, whenever I go and speak at women’s empowerment conferences, I can see that they’re all crushed when I say that Harvey Weinstein didn’t sexually harass me. I mean, they all want him to have sexually harassed me.”
She added on Min’s podcast, “He didn’t sexually harass me, but he was very difficult in other ways. I completely understand how people could end up feeling very much afraid of him. It is pretty incredible to think of him sitting there in that prison, and he’ll probably die there.”
Brown also expounded on Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Tucker Carlson, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise and more in the wide-ranging chat.
Brown is also behind the Truth Tellers investigative journalism summit in London, we’ve reported.
She told Page Six of the initiative, “We celebrate great journalists, who do brave and courageous work … What’s exciting about the summit is that we’re really trying to do great work despite these difficult times … Nothing beats a journalist willing to knock on doors.”
We have reached out to Markle and Prince Harry’s rep for comment.
