Not grool.
Meghan Markle has been dubbed a “‘Mean Girls’ teenager” by a former staffer who made new allegations in a bombshell exposé on the duchess and her husband, Prince Harry.
The report published Friday by Vanity Fair takes a look at the state of the couple’s personal and professional lives five years after stepping down from their roles as senior working members of the royal family. And according to unnamed sources, the couple did not always foster a congenial working environment.
One person who worked with Meghan, 43, on her “Archetypes” podcast at Spotify described the alleged experience with Meghan as “really, really, really awful” and “very painful.”
At the outset of their professional interactions, Meghan began warm, complimentary and encouraging, the source said. But went something didn’t go as she and Harry, 40, expected, the duchess, in Vanity Fair’s words, “would become cold and withholding toward the person she perceived to be responsible.”
The experience was “really, really, really awful. Very painful,” the source alleged to the magazine. “Because she’s constantly playing checkers—I’m not even going to say chess—but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board.”
“And when you are not in, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment,” the former staffer claimed, which amounted to “undermining.”
“It’s talking behind your back. It’s gnawing at your sense of self,” they continued. “Really, like, ‘Mean Girls’ teenager.”
Prior to working with the former actress, the source had a hard time believing the much-discussed and debated claims that Meghan bullied palace aides during her time inside The Firm (as the royal family is often called). Their perception changed after working with her.
“Oh, any given Tuesday this happened,” the source said, alluding to bullying.
Another person who has professional interactions with Meghan agreed. “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice,” they alleged to Vanity Fair. “[It’s] funny that people don’t differentiate between the energy of being yelled at and literally somebody screaming at you.”
According to two further sources who spoke with the magazine, a “colleague with ties to ‘Archetypes’” took a leave of absence after working on three episodes of the podcast before quitting altogether.
Still, others took “extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny,” per Vanity Fair.
However, producer Jane Marie, who also worked with the couple on “Archewell,” had a very different impression of Meghan, saying, “She’s just a lovely, genuine person.”
Meghan has faced allegations of “bullying behavior” in the workplace before.
Last September, a report from The Hollywood Reporter claimed she instills fear in her staff, with one insider describing her as a “dictator in high heels” who has reduced “grown men to tears.”
“She belittles people, she doesn’t take advice,” alleged one source, who also described Harry as “a very, very charming person — no airs at all — but he’s very much an enabler.” Of Meghan they added, “And she’s just terrible.”
A 2022 book about the couple claimed many of their former staff who labeled Meghan a “narcissistic sociopath” banded together to form the “Sussex Survivors Club.”
Another tome addressing the bullying claims published last April. The reporter alleged that one former palace aide who worked with Markle told higher ups, “I can’t stop shaking” and “I feel terrified.”
Reports that Meghan is “difficult” to work with (she has at times been labeled “Duchess Difficult” in the British press) have also been contended by some former employees.
“There have been plenty of difficult royals over the years, and I do think that after the ill-feeling of Megxit, Meghan’s bad moments were amplified and distorted and blown out of proportion,” an aide who previously worked for the couple told The Daily Beast last September.
Markle herself has admitted she could be “particular,” but has also pushed back on public perceptions of her and what she called the “angry black woman myth.”
“You’re allowed to set a boundary. You’re allowed to be clear. It does not make you demanding,” she said on an October 2022 episode of “Archetypes.”
“It does not make you difficult. It makes you clear.”
Harry has also defended his wife’s professionalism, writing in his memoir “Spare” that Meghan was a model boss who “checked on staff who were ill, sent baskets of food or flowers or goodies to anyone struggling, depressed, off sick.”
Reps for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
