Meghan Markle is coming back to Instagram…maybe!
In a new profile for The Cut, the former actor and current podcaster revealed that she’ll no longer be sitting on the sidelines when it comes to social media. “I’m getting back…on Instagram,” she divulged to writer Allison P. Davis. But before you get your hopes up, Davis then explains that, later in their interview, Markle hedged that maybe she was “no longer sure she would actually return to Instagram.” (Hey, we all jump the gun sometimes.)
For the uninitiated, Markle was required to deactivate her personal social media accounts after marrying into the royal family in 2018. As senior royals, she and Harry kept a joint Instagram account, @SussexRoyal, where they regularly updated subjects and fans alike about their activities. Like the Instagram account of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Sussex Royal functioned more as a PR newsletter than the kind of personal scrapbook a millennial like Meghan is used to.
“There’s literally a structure by which if you want to release photos of your child, as a member of the family, you first have to give them to the royal rota”—the UK media pool—she said of royal protocol for social media. “Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the n-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child? You tell me how that makes sense and then I’ll play that game.”
“I don’t remember feeling the negative connotation behind the word ambitious until I started dating my now husband."
At 41, Markle is a digital native, an OG blogger from the days before they were called influencers. She launched The Tig, about her life and philanthropy, before meeting Harry in 2016, but the platform was wiped from the internet after she became engaged to the most famous redhead in the world.
On shutting down the open line of communication she’d had with fans, she tells Davis, “It was a big adjustment—a huge adjustment to go from that kind of autonomy to a different life.”
In 2020 she told Fortune that she would not be returning to social media, given the constant bullying she’d faced at the hands of the British tabloid press and trolls. But she’s since appeared to change her tune, becoming more comfortable returning to a public-facing role—especially given the launch of her podcast, Archetypes, which she just released on Spotify.
TBD on whether they'll visit Harry's family.
“It’s so real,” she says of the podcast. “I feel different. I feel clearer. It’s like I’m finding—not finding my voice. I’ve had my voice for a long time, but being able to use it.”
Elsewhere in the profile, which features cameos from her three-year-old son, Archie, and husband Prince Harry (whom she refers to as “H”), Markle opens up about her dream home in Montecito, California - purchased for $14.65 million (£12.5 million) - running her and Harry’s business Archewell (a “startup”), and being rescued by Tyler Perry, who had offered up his own personal safe house in Beverly Hills—security detail included—to the couple after they stepped down as senior royals.
Regardless of whether she does, in fact, return to social media, Meghan Markle has made one thing clear: “I’m, like, so excited to talk.”
Article originally appeared in GLAMOUR US.
Lights, camera, action!
