If you were scrolling through a newsstand in September 2017, you couldn't miss it. There was Meghan Markle—then mostly known as "that actress from Suits"—staring out from the cover of Vanity Fair. The headline was loud: "She’s Just Wild About Harry."
It looked like a triumph. A Hollywood starlet finally confirming the world's worst-kept secret. But behind that glossy, Peter Lindbergh-shot exterior, a massive storm was brewing. Honestly, the fallout from that single interview probably set the tone for the next seven years of royal drama.
Most people think it was just a standard celebrity profile. It wasn't. It was a "punch to the solar plexus" for the Palace, a PR disaster for Meghan’s team, and a source of lingering bitterness that still gets talked about today.
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The Interview That Broke the Royal Rules
When Sam Kashner sat down with Meghan in her Toronto home, he wasn't just interviewing an actress. He was interviewing the future Duchess of Sussex. At the time, she was still filming Suits, but the heat around her relationship with Prince Harry was reaching a boiling point.
Meghan’s team at Sunshine Sachs had a specific goal. They wanted her to be seen as a philanthropist and a serious activist. Basically, they wanted the "UN Women" version of Meghan.
But Vanity Fair is Vanity Fair. They don't put you on the cover to talk about dish soap—even if that soap story is your favorite origin myth.
The magazine's editor at the time, Graydon Carter, later admitted he didn't even know who she was. When the cover booker suggested her, the reasoning was simple: "Because she's going to marry Prince Harry." That was the hook. Meghan, however, reportedly asked Kashner early on: "Is this going to all be about Prince Harry? Because I thought we were going to be talking about my charities."
The "Wild About Harry" Fallout
When the issue actually dropped, it was a mess. The headline "Wild About Harry" didn't just annoy Meghan; it reportedly sent her into a tailspin.
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According to Tom Bower’s book Revenge, Meghan was "hysterical" when she saw the piece. Why? Because Harry had supposedly given her strict instructions: don't talk about us, don't talk about race, and don't talk about politics.
Instead, she gave the world the quote of the year: "We’re two people who are really happy and in love."
The Palace was blindsided. Usually, royal engagements are handled with the precision of a military operation. This felt like "Hollywoodisation." It felt like she was using the relationship to boost her own brand, which is a cardinal sin in the world of the Windsors.
What the Fact-Checkers Found (and Cut)
One of the most fascinating parts of the Meghan Markle and Vanity Fair saga isn't what made it into the magazine, but what was left on the cutting room floor.
Meghan has often told the story of how she, at age 11, wrote a letter to Procter & Gamble to get a "sexist" dish soap commercial changed. It’s her go-to anecdote for showing she was born an activist.
Vanity Fair fact-checkers, however, couldn't verify the details. They reportedly contacted P&G and advertising historians and couldn't find the evidence to back the scale of the story she was telling. So, they cut it.
Meghan was furious. To her, that story was her identity. To the magazine, it was a detail that didn't pass the smell test. This clash between her personal narrative and the cold reality of traditional journalism was a sign of things to come.
The Sam Kashner Controversy
Years later, the drama resurfaced when Tom Bower claimed in his biography that Kashner felt "manipulated" by Meghan during the interview.
Bower wrote that Meghan used her "theatrical skills" and even commented on Kashner's speech (he has a slight stammer) to create a false sense of intimacy.
Kashner actually fired back in a letter to The Times. He defended Meghan, calling her "exceptionally warm and gracious." He even clarified that he doesn't have a stutter—just a "stammer" when he's nervous. It was a weird, meta-moment of a journalist defending his subject against a biographer who was using the journalist's own words as a weapon.
Why It Still Matters in 2026
You might wonder why we're still dissecting a magazine cover from nearly a decade ago.
It’s because that Vanity Fair moment was the first time we saw the "Sussex Strategy" in action—and the first time it failed to land the way they intended. It showed the tension between Meghan’s desire to control her image and the media’s desire to sell a romance.
Even now, as the couple navigates their life in California, that interview remains a case study in PR.
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- The Lesson in Control: You can't give a "tell-all" and then get mad when the journalist tells all.
- The Power of the Headline: No matter how much you talk about charity, the public usually just wants the gossip.
- The "Checkers vs. Chess" Dynamic: Sources in recent years have described Meghan as being hyper-aware of how she’s perceived, yet often surprised when the media doesn't follow her script.
If you’re looking to manage your own brand or just curious about how celebrity narratives are built, look at the 2017 Vanity Fair cover. It’s the blueprint for everything that followed.
To understand the current state of royal relations, you have to look back at these early "breaches" of protocol. They weren't just mistakes; they were the beginning of a completely different way of "doing" royalty.
If you want to dig deeper into how these media relationships evolved, your next step should be comparing this 2017 interview with the 2021 Oprah sit-down. You'll see the exact same themes—control, narrative-building, and the struggle against "the Firm"—just on a much larger stage.
Actionable Insight: When engaging with major media outlets, remember that you rarely have final say over the headline or the "hook." To protect your brand, ensure your core message is so integrated into every answer that it's impossible to edit out. Meghan's mistake wasn't being "wild about Harry"—it was giving the magazine enough "Harry" content to make her philanthropy feel like a footnote.