Piers Morgan used to be many things: a British tabloid editor, a columnist for the Daily Mail Online, a Good morning Great Britain ITV host and apparently Meghan Markle’s friend.
In a world-wide interview on Sunday night, the Duchess of Sussex and her husband, Prince Harry, revealed to Oprah – and to 17 million viewers – how the cruel and unrelenting press, the oppressive life in the palace and real racism led Meghan to think about suicide. Buckingham Palace responded with a statement expressing family sadness. Morgan responded with a wave of vitriol. “I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report,” he said of Meghan on his show the following Monday. His program that morning became “the most claimed show on British television in nearly 15 years,” reported Deadline. More than 41,000 people have submitted written complaints about Morgan’s behavior to the ITV broadcaster, including a formal complaint from Meghan herself. Ofcom, a media surveillance company in the UK, is now investigating Morgan.
Tuesday, Morgan returned briefly to present his ITV program, before invading the middle of the program. Her co-host, Alex Beresford, defended Meghan and Harry and drew Morgan’s attention to them. “I understand that you have a personal relationship with Meghan Markle – or had one – and she cut it off,” said Beresford. “Has she said anything about you since she cut you off? I don’t think she has. But you still continue to destroy it. “Morgan got up and left.” I’m sick of it, “he said, interrupting Beresford. Shortly after, Morgan’s departure from ITV became official, and he took to Twitter to defend their use of freedom of expression.
But why the hell did the tabloid lord Morgan seem so personally affected – and offended – by Meghan? We have examined the confusing timeline of Morgan and Meghan’s relationship – from friendship to hate – so you don’t have to.
Fall 2015: Morgana Suits fan, follow Meghan on Twitter. She responds with a direct message, opening a line of communication between the two that continued until their meeting a year later. She sends it pre-released Suits episodes that they discuss during the DM. A friendship is born.
June 29, 2016: Meghan is in London to see Serena Williams play tennis at Wimbledon. She sends a message to Morgan: “I would love to say Hi!” They meet for a pre-dinner drink at their local pub. Morgan’s first impression, he writes in his column in the Daily Mail: “She looked every inch the Hollywood superstar – very thin, very long, very elegant and impossibly glamorous”. Their conversation covered Rwanda, race and armed violence. At the end of the night, Morgan proclaims, “I really liked her.” He wrote: “When we drank in my pub, I found out that she was a very intelligent, focused, caring, vigorous and confident woman.” This seems to be the first and only time that they have met in person.
She left her drinks for a private and exclusive dinner at 5 Hertford St. Morgan. She discovered, through some tabloid research, that the very dinner she left him for was where she met Prince Harry.
November 12, 2016: Morgan calls Meghan “charming” on twitter.
December 15, 2016: Morgan writes a column in the Daily Mail about why Meghan would make a great bride. He praises her humanitarian spirit, which she will later criticize, and says that the fact that she is divorced and multiracial will be an asset to the royal family. The column ends with him encouraging Harry to ask the question as quickly as possible.
November 27, 2017: The royal family announce Harry and Meghan’s engagement. Morgan congratulates the couple, and particularly Meghan, tweeting: “My friend will be the perfect modern bride.” He continues to tip that he hopes to get a wedding invitation.
But the first feeling of resentment towards Meghan appears in her engagement day column. Your headline reads: “Cordial congratulations, Harry, you have chosen a true guardian (even though your romance has destroyed my beautiful friendship with the incredible Meghan Markle).” In the article, he revisits his first meeting – and finds that they haven’t communicated since.
Late 2017 / early 2018: The ghostly narrative permeates columns, tweetsand talk show interviews. Morgan ends an interview saying, “She owes me an invitation to the wedding to make up for killing me.”
May 14 to 19, 2018: While the Markle family drama unfolds in the days before the wedding, Morgan twitta his sympathy by Meghan, whose father will not attend. He then writes a column cutting Meghan’s father, who sold photos to a paparazzi photographer, and expressing sadness for Meghan. The day before the wedding, Morgan tweets again, he is still upset about missing the wedding invitation.
May 20, 2018: Morgan The love is the royal wedding, which he watched (much to his dismay) on TV, not in the chapel.
June 18, 2018: Morgan starts to turn to Meghan. He invites Meghan’s father to his ITV morning show and paints a narrative of him as the pitiful victim of Meghan’s cruelty and coldness.
December 2018: Morgan calls Meghan his ex-friend and a social climber. He too continues to write in defense of Meghan’s father, calling Meghan for her seemingly abhorrent treatment of him. Fans think that this line of attack is getting a little obsessive –and a little old.
January 8, 2020: Meghan and Harry announce that they will step down from their duties as “senior” royalty. Morgan collapses on Twitter.
March 6, 2020: In his column, Morgan praises a photo of Meghan and Harry on a rainy day. However, the play quickly takes a negative turn. He writes: “I have not hidden my disdain for many Sussex antics since they were married 20 months ago, nor for my ex-friend Meghan fantasizing about me when she met her prince. He lists how Meghan and Harry’s alleged “constant complaints” and attempts to “intimidate the queen into doing their royalty” and “PC madness” quickly catapulted them out of the graces of the media.
From summer to winter 2020: How Finding Freedom, a new book sympathetic to Meghan and Harry, hits the shelves, and the royal duo signs their contract with Netflix, Morgan’s flurry of insults continues. He calls them “hypocrites” in one column and “a pair of terribly bitter laughs, incredibly obsessed, totally deluded and sadly deaf” in another (a little more extreme).
March 7, 2021: Meghan does not mention Morgan by name in her interview with Oprah, but expresses how the press attacks severely affected her mental health.
March 8, 2021: Morgan responds to Oprah’s interview with a lack of care and sensitivity. He writes in the Daily Mail: “I have never seen an interview so disgustingly insincere. Not one more terribly hypocritical or contradictory. ”He expresses these same ideas in the air during Good morning Great Britain.
March 9, 2021: Morgan storms outside Good morning Great Britain when called on by his co-host for his cruel obsession. He gave up on the show forever soon afterwards. Meghan filed an official complaint to the ITV against Morgan.
March 10, 2021: Morgan writes in Twitter: “On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her interview on Oprah. I had time to reflect on that opinion and I still don’t have it. “