Omid Scobie today insisted that Harry and Meghan did not brief him for Endgame – but revealed ‘people around them’ were happy to tell all about ‘the ins and outs’ of their rows with the Royal Family.
Mr Scobie appears to be in New York for a series of US TV interviews to promote his latest attack on the Royal Family, calling much of the criticism ‘nonsense’.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, the Sussexes’ preferred royal reporter said that he had met Meghan on a number of occasions. But he has insisted that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had not helped him with the new book.
He said: ‘There’s enough people around them and in their orbit who know the ins and outs of things’, adding: ‘If there’s ever been a private encounter with Meghan, I’ve spoken about it’.
Mr Scobie has also denied Endgame is biased in favour of the Sussexes, with one pithy review claiming the main chapter on Harry and Meghan is more like a press release sent from their team. Another critic said ‘he paints Meghan and Harry in a relentless saintly light’.
Instead Mr Scobie says he is not close to the former Suits star and her royal husband, only drawn to ‘injustice’ and aims to highlight what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Windsors trying to be a ‘perfect example of traditional family values’.
Omid Scobie appears to be in New York today (pictured) for a series of US TV interviews to promote his latest attack on the Royal Family – but Palace insiders have ignored it
King Charles III (L) and Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (C) speak with CEO of Nissan Makoto Uchida (R) at Buckingham Palace to mark the conclusion of the Global Investment Summit yesterday
Prince William, Prince of Wales, onstage during the 2023 Tusk Conservation Awards at The Savoy Hotel last night
Scobie’s ‘depressingly poisonous’ Endgame was today written off as just another book by those inside Buckingham Palace, can reveal. Omid is particularly cruel to Prince William and his wife, who he says is dubbed ‘Katie Keen’.
He also appears to blame them, especially Kate, for pushing Meghan out: ‘There was a coldness towards Meghan from the very early stages that I always found quite surprising.
‘I always found it interesting that when Meghan was going through the sort of toughest days of her life, and struggling with mental health issues… someone within the family who’s experienced that glare as a newcomer for the first time herself… wasn’t able to turn around and help a family member. To me, I think that speaks a lot to someone’s character.’
He also said to the Evening Standard that as a ‘woman of colour’, Meghan becoming a royal is a ‘really important moment in British history’.
He said the Windsors should have tried harder to keep her close, ‘regardless of whether she’s likeable’. Not keeping her in The Firm sends a ‘strong message about the institution’s attitudes towards people from different backgrounds’.
He told the Standard that Prince William is now ‘very consumed, very hot tempered, quick to react’ and staff needing to ‘check which way the wind’s blowing before talking to him’.
Mr Scobie also told the Standard: ‘It makes me wonder how happy he is in his role’, adding that he believes there is a ‘widening divide between father and son’.
In the same interview he admitted to being 42, having previously lied about his age.
He said: ‘I work in an industry where I’m surrounded by people who are, let’s say, conservative with telling their age, particularly in television’, claiming it is ‘par for the course’ to ‘swipe’ years from your age.
Mr Scobie blamed a ‘little insecurity’ about turning 40 and thought ‘no one would ever know’ – but journalists checked.
‘You learn from those mistakes. I can’t do much more than own it’, he said.
He also hit back at criticism of his journalism defending his experience and revealing he is a good lip-reader and that has helped with some of his royal scoops.
He added: ‘I have had to deal with envy, I’ve had to deal with prejudice,’ he says. ‘I’m okay with it, at this point, it’s just all noise’.
Royal sources described wild claims that Charles, Camilla and William conspired to undermine Harry and Meghan as ‘depressingly poisonous’
Today hit back at his critics on Instagram – and ignored some of the reviews – to declare: ‘After all the nonsense written by people who haven’t seen the book, I’m looking forward to everyone actually being able to read Endgame for themselves’.
Buckingham Palace has kept a contemptuous silence but a royal source has dismissed Scobie’s Endgame as just another book on the Windsors that is not worthy of official comment.
The insider told when asked if there were truth in claims made by Mr Scobie: ‘There are hundreds of books written about the Royal Family’. Endgame was released today but some of the reviews been poor. Even the Sussex-sympathising New York Times was withering.
The new book on the royals was branded ‘vicious’ and ‘plain nasty’ last night. Well-placed sources described wild claims that Charles, Camilla and William conspired to undermine Harry and Meghan as ‘depressingly poisonous’.
Omid Scobie’s book also takes aim at the Princess of Wales, branding her ‘cold’ and lambasting her for backing mental health causes while ‘ignoring Meghan’s cries for help’.
It tries to stoke a row over the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s jokey bid to deflect questions about the Sussexes’ bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview by saying: ‘Oprah who?’
He says this made Edward and Sophie seem ‘casually bigoted’. Endgame, which was published in yesterday and hits shelves here today, paints an almost comically negative view of the monarchy, with royals depicted as pantomime-style villains.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have declined to comment, believing they have nothing to gain from engaging with the claims. Charles and William were both instead out on public engagements close to their hearts – the King hosting a global investment summit and his son attending the Tusk Conservation Awards.
Those in royal circles describe the book as ‘plain nasty’, ‘vicious’ and a ‘skewed’ retelling of family events ‘in the Sussex style’. Endgame claims:
- Charles’s ‘ineptitude’ in handling Harry and Meghan – and refusal to give them the apology they demanded – has turned them into ‘disruptors’;
- Harry tried to ‘reach out’ to his father after the publication of his vitriolic memoir, Spare, earlier this year by calling his father, but felt the King’s response was ‘cold and brief’;
- Senior royals turned a blind eye to aides leaking details about the Sussexes as part of their power games and subjected them to ‘institutional cruelty’;
- William and his father are at loggerheads about the future of the monarchy and the handling of family issues;
- Their ‘distrust and simmering animosity’ resulted in Charles deriving ‘schadenfreude’ from his son’s supposedly disastrous tour of Caribbean last year;
- William is ‘colder’ – but also inexplicably more ‘hot-headed’ – than his father and ‘has no problem taking prisoners on the way’;
- Camilla colluded in stories being leaked about other royals and has ‘no relationship’ with Harry. The book says she has ‘great sympathy’ for what Meghan went through but ‘no respect’ for the way the Sussexes handled themselves;
- The King was so indecisive about how to treat his beleaguered brother Andrew that William had to step in to insist he lose his privileges;
- Charles ‘stumbled’ through his first 100 days as King and Queen Elizabeth had so little faith in him she made a former spymaster her ‘CEO’.
Despite Scobie’s claims to be independent from the Sussexes, they are the only ones spared his sharp words, rumours and tittle-tattle. He claims senior royals were jealous of Harry and Meghan’s success and undermined them.
Meghan suffered because she was too dynamic, he says, ‘insufficiently reverential’ as a woman of colour working in an ‘entitled, exceedingly white space’ and reminded the royals of Princess Diana.
As a result he says palace aides refused to defend her against the negative stories that had begun to emerge about her, while being happy to take action against a publication that suggested Kate had undergone ‘baby Botox’.
By contrast Queen Elizabeth liked the fact that ‘Katie Keen’ – a moniker said to have originated on social media – was ‘coachable’ as a future royal.
Yet Scobie claims her lack of patronages, engagements and insistence on spending time with her three young children in the school holidays makes her technically a ‘part-time working royal’.
Scobie says the statement following Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview that ‘recollections may vary’ was deliberately drafted to ‘plants seeds of doubt in people’s minds’ about their claims.
William, Harry, Meghan and Charles speak together at Westminster Abbey in March 2019
Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame about the Royal Family is released today
Wiliam, meanwhile, displays ‘indifference’, ‘harshness’ and continues to ‘stonewall’ Harry when all his brother wants is ‘honest conversations and accountability’. William’s attempts to promote racial harmony are branded ‘opportunistic’ giving his refusal to talk to Harry about ‘unconscious bias’ in his own family.
The book says Charles and Meghan discussed the issue in an exchange of letters – in which she named two people she claims expressed concerned about her son Archie’s skin colour – but William has failed to respond to the King’s requests for him to talk about it with Harry too.
While aides had expected the book to be a ‘hatchet job’ based on Scobie’s previously flattering tome about the Sussexes, Finding Freedom, it has still upset many.
One source said that while much of it is a ‘rehash’ of well-known events from a ‘decidedly Sussex skew’, the almost pantomime nature of the protagonists calls much of what Scobie claims into question.
Another said there was a ‘fairytale’ air to the book. ‘It just shows how little he actually knows. It’s quite embarrassing really,’ they remarked.
The book does however contain some insights over the letters exchanged by Charles and Meghan and on the Sussexes’ daily family routine.