Vanity Fair was the first major magazine that introduced Meghan Markle to the world as Prince Harry‘s lady.

The magazine printed a feature after sitting down with Meghan in 2017 titled Wild About Harry. Eight years later, the same publication ran a lengthy feature about the Sussexes for its February 2025 cover story and spoke with dozens of Meghan’s former employees who alleged that working with her was “really, really, really awful.”

One staffer who was part of the team when Meghan did her Archetypes Spotify podcast revealed they had to take a “leave of absence after working on three episodes.” Several others claimed that they, too, had to take “breaks from work to escape scrutiny,” leave their job altogether, or undergo “long-term therapy” after having Harry’s wife as a boss.

Now, the person who headed Vanity Fair when Meghan was first featured in the magazine is revealing how she behaved at that time and why she’s being described as “adrift of reality and facts.” 

Former magazine boss reveals how ‘adrift’ Meghan acted during first interview

Graydon Carter ran Vanity Fair for 25 years and shared what Meghan was like when the publication did a cover story on her before she and the prince announced their engagement.

“Jane Sarkin, who booked our covers, came in and said: ‘We should do a cover on Meghan,” he recalled per Page Six. “I said: ‘I have no idea who that is.’ She said: ‘She’s on Suits.’ I said: ‘I have no idea what that is, why should we do a story on her?’ So she said: ‘Because she’s going to marry Prince Harry.’”

Carter also remembered how Meghan challenged one of his reporters when she was asked about her future husband because she thought the interview was just going to focus on charitable work.

According to Carter, Meghan said: “Excuse me, is this going to all be about Prince Harry? Because I thought we were going to be talking about my charities and my philanthropy.”

At that moment, Carter opined that “This woman is slightly adrift on the facts and reality.”

Vanity Fair’s former editor-in-chief has also criticized the duchess

Carter is the only former high-up at Vanity Fair to criticize the Duchess of Sussex. The magazine’s ex-editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, has as well.

In addition to Vanity Fair, Brown served as the editor-in-chief for Tatler, The New Yorker, and was the founding editor of The Daily Beast. She was also one of Princess Diana’s confidants who met with the royal mere weeks before Diana died following a car crash in Paris. Brown later authored the princess’s biography titled The Diana Chronicles.

Brown has never been shy about saying exactly what she thinks of some of Meghan’s decisions ever since the duchess stepped down as a working royal and moved back to America.

During an appearance on The Ankler podcast with Janice Win, Brown insisted that the duchess has terrible judgment.

“The trouble with Meghan is that she has the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world,” Brown said. “She’s flawless about getting it all wrong. She really is … She does what she wants to do and all of her ideas are total crap.”