Do we like Meghan Markle?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and a record of backing women and LGBTQ+ causes, but a denied bullying allegation and a thin trail on trans issues keep it off the top shelf.
Meghan Markle went from TV actress to the most talked-about woman in the royal family, then walked away from it with Prince Harry and tried to build a media business in California. Her Oprah interview, and the fights that followed, made her one of the most scrutinised people on the planet. Most of the noise around her is tabloid churn, so this card sticks to what established outlets actually reported.
The Netflix chapter has gone cold. In March 2026 Netflix ended its partnership with her lifestyle brand As Ever, with Netflix saying she would take the brand independently and As Ever saying it was ready to stand on its own. The Star reported that the first season of her show was widely panned. That's a business bruise, not a moral one.
The family fights are where the legal stoushes are. Her half-sister's US defamation suit was dismissed with prejudice in March 2024, after a judge found no defamatory statements, and earlier versions had been thrown out in 2022 and 2023. A London judge also ruled in 2021 that the Mail on Sunday invaded her privacy by publishing a private letter to her father.
The nastier allegation is from March 2021, when The Times reported that a former adviser had complained she drove two personal assistants out of the household. Her side denied it, saying she was saddened by the attack and calling the report a “calculated smear campaign”. I couldn't confirm how the palace review ended, so it stays an allegation, not a finding.
On harm, the record is clean. In 2018 she and Harry spoke out in support of LGBTQ+ rights, and in 2019 she featured Laverne Cox in British Vogue. At a Colombian women's conference in 2024 she spoke about boys being raised to listen to women; the trans-rights heckler that day was aimed at the vice-president, not her. Honest gap: I found no direct statement from her on trans rights, and nothing on climate either way.
The good stuff is real. She has been a patron of the UK charity Smart Works, and the couple's foundation launched the Welcome Project, built around dinners to ease the isolation of refugee women resettled from Afghanistan. Critics grumble about the commercial side of her brand, but that's taste, not harm.