Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been estranged from most of the Royal Family pretty much since their departure from the U.K. in 2020.
But now, as Prince William and Princess Kate find themselves at the center of a huge PR debacle, might be as good a time as any for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to reconcile with them, according to one publicist.
"Meghan and Harry now have a golden opportunity to not only accelerate healing their riff with the Royal Family, but to restore some of their likability in the eyes of the public," PR expert Ryan McCormick told the Mirror.
"If I was advising Meghan, I would tell her to speak loud and passionate in defense of Kate."
For McCormick, it would be a question of Meghan sharing with Kate what she's had to learn the hard way over the years, as she's been on the receiving end of a ton of "negative press."
"Meghan may not like being on the brunt of negative press but, she's definitely more familiar with it than Kate," the expert continued. "The duchess could help the Princess of Wales tremendously by guiding her through this crisis publicly and behind the scenes."
As I'm sure you know by now, Kate and William have been the subject of speculation for a few weeks now, as Kate has been out of the public eye while she recovers from abdominal surgery.
In an effort to communicate with the public, the Wales family put out a photo of Kate with her three children on Sunday, UK Mother's Day, which turned out to have been edited.
After several news and photo agencies pulled the photo from their platforms citing doctoring, Kate issued a rare and vague apology for the "confusion" caused, and admitted to using photo editing software on the picture. This, of course, has only added fuel to the rumor fire, with social media users throwing out conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, and joke after joke about the situation—which PR experts have called a "disaster."
While I agree that Meghan could become a source of support for Kate if the latter was open to it, it's definitely arguable that the Princess of Wales isn't used to receiving bad press.
Although Kate has been largely respected and liked by the press and public since she joined the Royal Family, she was criticized a lot when she was first dating William, as exemplified by the cruel nickname "Waity Katie"—a reference to the years it took for her and the future King to get engaged.
There was also the time when a French magazine published topless photos of Kate on vacation and she had to deal with the fallout of that.
That said, it is absolutely true that the tabloids more generally have been extremely and disproportionately critical of Meghan in a way that they just haven't with Kate. We've all seen the side-by-side headlines that are so much meaner about Meghan than they are about Kate doing the exact same thing.
Anyway, perhaps McCormick is onto something here, and the unfortunate situation Kate finds herself in right now could be a way for her and Meghan to build a friendship after all these years. How likely that is to happen is a different matter entirely.
