The royal couple said before the book was published that they “did not contribute” to it but it was only after an interview Mr Scobie gave while promoting it that they directly refuted any of his claims. Mr Scobie alleged Prince Harry called the Queen, accusing her personal dresser Angela Kelly of failing to accommodate suitable trial fitting for Meghan’s tiara, claiming the Duke said: “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but this woman needs to make this work for my future wife.” However, a source close to Prince Harry said the suggestion the Duke of Sussex yelled at his grandmother was “totally untrue and completely ridiculous” ‒ as is the suggestion that he would use such coarse language as “what the hell” towards her.
One royal commentator suggested that if the Sussexes were “rallying against some of the stuff in the book” ‒ which is supposedly written to tell their side of their story ‒ it could demonstrate how the saga had “become this sort of runaway train that nobody can take control of at the moment”.
The book, which Mr Scobie wrote with fellow royal reporter Carolyn Durand, was a sympathetic, even gushing account of Harry and Meghan’s time in the Royal Family over the past four years, yet the royal couple have distanced themselves from it.
The authors claimed in the book’s Authors’ Note they spoke to over 100 sources close to the Duke and Duchess and corroborated all the information included with at least two people.
Yet, Meghan’s lawyer Jenny Afia said in court papers yesterday that the authors had relied on creative licence to produce their best-selling book.
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Finding Freedom is a biography about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (Image: GETTY)
Finding Freedom co-author Omid Scobie (Image: SKY NEWS)
Ms Afia is representing Meghan in her court battle against Associated Newspapers, over five articles published in the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline that reproduced parts of a handwritten letter she had sent to her father Thomas Markle that Meghan claims breached her privacy and copyright.
Central to the publisher’s defence is an article that was published in People magazine several months before their own articles, in which five of Meghan’s friends spoke anonymously to the outlet to defend her, one of whom brought up the letter.
Associated Newspapers’ legal team claim Meghan breached her own privacy by allowing her friends to speak to the magazine and that their articles were simply a response to that.
However, Meghan claims she was “unaware” her friends were going to do this and had not given them consent to do so.
Meghan’s father Thomas Markle (Image: YouTube (Enternationment Tonight), originally Channel 5)
Now, Finding Freedom has been brought into the mix, with the Lawyers for Associated Newspapers arguing that the letter, as well as photographs and other personal information feature in the biography, showing the Duchess had permitted details of her life to be shared.
The couple have denied any direct involvement with the book and Ms Afia branded many of the book’s anecdotes as “either extremely anodyne and/or I understand are the product of creative licence and/or are inaccurate”.
For example, the book says Meghan and Harry stayed at the Meno A Kwena safari camp on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans national park in Botswana, but Ms Afia said Meghan has never been there, only Harry has.
She also insisted the account of their first date ‒ which included what they drank, what they talked about and what they said in follow-up texts ‒ was incorrect.
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Meghan and Harry stepped down as senior royals at the end of March (Image: GETTY)
However, this will not come as a surprise to some, given how Meghan and Harry were refuting Mr Scobie’s claims about so-called “tiara-gate” even last month in the days after the release of the book.
A royal commentator noted at the time how if even the Sussexes are rallying against some of the content in this book, which is written in their favour, it may have become a “runaway train that no one can take control of”.
Pod Save the Queen is hosted by Ann Gripper and features Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers.
Mr Myers said last month: “We’ve had sources from the Sussexes even denying that Harry shouted at the Queen in this tiara-gate outburst, which is quite interesting.
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“If even the Sussexes are rallying against some of the stuff in the book that shows you that potentially it’s become this sort of runaway train that nobody can take control of at the moment.
“And I know that the authors have been doing interviews to certain sections of the media and they’ve maybe been fanning the flames of it almost.
“And that’s why certain things have come out there that Harry was ringing the Queen and saying ‘what the hell is going on’ when speaking about Angela Kelly and the fact that she wasn’t facilitating a meeting with Meghan about tiara-gate.”
Meghan’s court case is still in its initial proceedings with the full trial expected next year.
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