Last week, Meghan Markle made a surprise appearance at Wimbledon in London with two of her close friends, Lindsay Roth and Genevieve Hillis. The trio watched one of Serena Williams’ matches in the royal box and because Meghan was off-duty, she asked her staff for a seemingly simple request: to refrain people from taking photos of her.
Of course, on the one hand, you could see why having people constantly snapping away at you from all angles could be both annoying and distracting, especially when you’re trying to catch up with old friends and take some time away from your newborn baby, but many people are pointing out that the royal family are public figures and that taxpayers fund a lot of their lifestyle.
One Wimbledon attendee, Sally Jones, told The Daily Telegraph that a royal protection officer told her not to take any pictures of Meghan because she was at the event “in a private capacity.” Jones dubbed the request “another example of silly control freaky,” and added that the officer appeared “quite embarrassed” to ask patrons to put away their phones.
Even ITV News royal editor Chris Ship weighed in on the reports, tweeting: “Police Protection Officers don’t take orders from the Communications team. I don’t know who told them to ask Wimbledon fans to stop taking photos. But they normally answer only to one person/persons: their bosses.”
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He later backtracked after seeing photos of a man standing incredibly close to Meghan holding his phone in the air, saying, “I’d say from these pictures, you could easily claim Meghan was being harassed by some members of the public and their camera phones at #wimbledon. And a police protection officer appears to be doing his job.”
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan came out swinging at the Duchess, saying on the breakfast show, “A private capacity, at Wimbledon? This is so ridiculous. It’s rankly hypocritical and they’re not private people, they’re the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. We get to pay for their mansion, we get to do all of this.”
He later wrote on Twitter, ” “It’s absurd for Ms Markle to demand privacy as she sits in the royal box on a publicly-funded jolly with her mates,” before adding: “If you want to be private, go back to America and live privately.”
The royal family is yet to respond to the drama.
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