Bethenny Frankel criticises Meghan Markle for being ‘sanctimonious’ and talking about the Royal Family

Bethenny Frankel shared her candid thoughts about Meghan Markle, claiming that the Duchess is “sanctimonious” and “mimicking” Princess Diana in how she sends a message.

In an episode of her Just B With Bethenny Frankel podcast, the 51-year-old reality star discussed Meghan and the recent release of her podcast, Archetypes. During the discussion, Frankel claimed that one of the reasons why people don’t like the Duchess of Sussex is because she “talks down to people” and believes that she is superior to them.

“I think she’s sanctimonious and I think there’s this subtext of elevation. She’s up there, we’re down here,” Frankel told her podcast listeners. “She has institutional knowledge on life and has experienced more than any of us.”

“She’s very self-important and she’s very much like a Housewife,” Frankel added, referring to her reality show The Real Housewives. “In that she can’t stop talking about the very thing that she wants to be irrelevant.”

Frankel went on to accuse Markle of trying to “take down” the royal family and noted that while it’s important to talk about some of the racism within it, that’s not something that “people are surprised by”.

This comment appears to be a reference to Markle’s recent interview with The Cut, where she claimed that British tabloids used a racial slur when addressing her two children, Archie, three, and Lilibet, one.

Frankel then acknowledged how Markle and Prince Harry stepped down from their royal duties in 2020, adding: “So you wanted out of there? OK you got out but it is your husband’s family and you keep beating the same storyline.”

“You want to be a voice for change, a woman for female empowerment, to talk about racism and how unacceptable it is, what it’s like to be a woman of colour? So do that. So do that in the future,” she continued.

After saying Markle’s past with the royal family is “not relatable,” Frankel took issue with the way in which the 41-year-old duchess presents herself and how similar it is to Princess Diana.

“I think there’s a non-relatable factor in the day that we’re being spoken to ,” she said. “That poised, orchestrated elegance, in that mimicking of Diana, in that Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy-style intentional, very natural, very slow speech.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Frankel claimed that Markle isn’t making a change in the royal family by talking about them so publicly and frequently.

“When you leave the royal family, leave the royal family. It’s behind you. You learned something, you said it, we heard you,” she continued. “You say the same thing five times five different ways, you’re probably not changing the royal family.”

“You left the royal family and in every single interview you do, you are talking in some nuanced, subtext, or slightly direct way about the royal family,” she added. “Let it go, Elsa. Move forward. Create change in the future.”

This isn’t the first time Frankel has criticised Markle. She wrote about the former royal on Twitter in March 2021 when it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had filmed their tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey.

“Cry me a river...the plight of being a game show host, fairly unknown actress, to suffering in a palace, w tiaras & 7 figure weddings for TWO WHOLE YEARS to being a household name w @Oprah on speed dial, fetching 7 m for interviews, hundreds of millions in media deals,” Frankel wrote at the time.

After dropping the first episode of Archetypes on 25 August, the podcast is already the Number One spot on Spotify’s US podcast ranking, unseating The Joe Rogan Experience from the top position.