Just as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were wrapping up their very successful royal tour in southern Africa—which featured speeches about women’s empowerment, conservation, and baby Archie’s first official royal engagement—it was announced that Markle was suing the British tabloid Mail on Sunday for publishing a private letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle, after the royal wedding in 2018.
“We have initiated legal proceedings against the Mail on Sunday, and its parent company Associated Newspapers, over the intrusive and unlawful publication of a private letter written by the Duchess of Sussex, which is part of a campaign by this media group to publish false and deliberately derogatory stories about her, as well as her husband,” a legal spokesperson for the couple said in a statement. “Given the refusal of Associated Newspapers to resolve this issue satisfactorily, we have issued proceedings to redress this breach of privacy, infringement of copyright and the aforementioned media agenda.”
Later in the week, it was confirmed by Buckingham Palace that Harry filed a lawsuit of his own over an alleged phone and voicemail hacking in the early 2000s.
Let’s break down what’s going on here.
What exactly are these two lawsuits?
As you probably remember, there was a lot of drama surrounding Markle’s father in the weeks leading up to the wedding. It was revealed that he had staged photos to sell to the tabloids, reportedly suffered a heart attack, and eventually pulled out of attending the wedding and walking his daughter down the aisle. Since then, he has continued to give numerous interviews to tabloids and talk shows, including one about the letter Meghan wrote to him asking him to stop going to the press, per the Guardian.
DOMINIC LIPINSKI/AFP/Getty Images
“The contents of a private letter were published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner to manipulate you, the reader, and further the divisive agenda of the media group in question,” Harry said in a statement. “In addition to their unlawful publication of this private document, they purposely misled you by strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year.”
We don’t know a lot of details about Harry’s case as of yet, but it dates back to a major phone-hacking scandal in Britain by the Sun and now-defunct News of the World that involved a number of members of the royal family, as well as other celebrities. “We confirm that a claim has been issued by the Duke of Sussex,” a spokesperson for News Group Newspapers told the BBC in a statement. “We have no further comment to make at the current time.”
This post contains spoilers for the final season of Game of Thrones. Consider yourself warned.
After weeks—well, years actually—of anticipation the Battle of Winterfell is finally over and the Army of the Dead is no more. And you know who seriously crushed it on the battlefield? The women. From Brienne of Tarth to little Lady Lyanna Mormont and Arya Stark, the female characters on Game of Thrones had some truly heroic moments during the most recent episode, and fans were here for it.
Nobody needed to be saved by the “prince who was promised” and instead took matters into their own hands. (Well, Dany did need an assist from Jorah, but then she got her battle on as well.)
Lady Lyanna Mormont
RIP to this tiny hero, who went out in an iconic death scene to rival some of the show’s best. From the moment we met her in season five, the character (played by actress Bella Ramsey) has been a major fan favorite, so her loss is heartbreaking. But she never stopped fighting, even until her last breath where she killed the (literal) giant wight by stabbing him in the eye before succumbing to her injuries.
Lyanna wasn’t intended to be such a beloved character, though. “Lyanna Mormont was just supposed to be in one scene, but Bella is such an incredible actress that we kept bringing her back because we wanted more Bella,” showrunner David Benioff says in an episode extra. Ramsey tells Entertainment Weekly that she was pleasantly surprised by the love her for Lyanna. “I didn’t think it was going to be anything. I just thought that I turned up and did it. When [the fan reaction] kicked up it was mad. I didn’t expect it,” she said.
Her death brought a strong wave of reaction on social media, naturally.
Her years of training kept her alive until that big moment when she stabbed the Night King, destroying him and his Army of the Dead instantly. It was amazing, and her family better be throwing her the largest celebration banquet Winterfell has ever seen.
Brienne of Tarth
While the newly knighted Ser Brienne may not have had a battle moment as singular as Lady Lyanna or Arya, she continued to be a key to victory on the battlefield next to the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister—taking out wights and White Walkers with incredible strength, skill, and endurance. And, lest we forget, she helped train Arya.
Daenerys Targaryen
So I definitely have some questions for Dany‘s deployment of the dragons during the Battle of Winterfell, but I must give props to the Mother of Dragons for picking up a sword to help save herself (with literal ride-or-die Jorah Mormont by her side) while Jon Snow decided to just scream in the face of a zombie dragon.
Melisandre, a.k.a. The Red Woman
Ah, Melisandre, you are a tricky one that fans love and love to hate. You killed Shireen, but revived Jon Snow—and last night, she brought her magical fire to Winterfell in aide of defeating the Night King before removing her necklace and walking out into the snow to die.
With the Night King vanquished, it would seem that Queen Cersei is next up for the ladies—and we can’t wait to watch it all go down.
Lili Reinhart continues to speak out about mental health—and on Friday, February 15, she got even more personal as a way to encourage others to seek help when they need it. The Riverdale star opened up about her battle with anxiety and depression, sharing on a series of honest and open Instagram Stories that she’s re-entering therapy.
“Friendly reminder for anyone who needs to hear it: Therapy is never something to feel ashamed of,” Reinhart wrote in a series of Stories. “Everyone can benefit from seeing a therapist. Doesn’t matter how old or ‘proud’ you’re trying to be.”
This isn’t the first time the actress has spoken about her struggle with mental health. In December, she announced she’d be taking a break from Twitter to get away from all the negativity. “Taking a break from that toxic site and the people on it who feel the need to attack me, my cast mates, my relationship, and Riverdale,” she wrote at the time.
Since then, she’s made her return to the social-media platform but hasn’t been as active—though a post or two about boyfriend Cole Sprouse have definitely snuck in her feed.
In the past, Reinhart has also been very open about other personal insecurities, including her struggles with body image and acne. “Sometimes I feel like I look like shit. Sometimes I don’t want to talk to anyone. And I’m allowed to have those days,” she told Glamour in November. “I’m not going to apologize for that.”
It was 2007 and well before Meghan McCain would be paid to have an opinion. In a New York City hotel war room, John McCain had gathered his most trusted aides to address his presidential prospects. The senator from Arizona had announced the run, but now his staff set out to extract a commitment. McCain was over 70. To bolster his bid, operatives wanted him to promise that if he was elected, he’d stay just one term in the White House. It was the prudent choice, a compromise between what he desired most and what the American people could stand.
But for Meghan, who was seated between the men and women who’d advised her father for decades, it didn’t sound like a compromise—it sounded desperate. No one had solicited her opinion, but she offered it: “Don’t do this.” Voters know the rest: The senator didn’t. After the meeting, his staff refused to speak to her.
When she recounts the fallout more than a decade later, McCain recalls their retribution with a smile. It was the first time she realized she had her own voice—and the power to wield it. In the decade since, she’s held gigs across three networks, published a memoir, and traveled nationwide with the comedian Michael Ian Black. But there’s a thick black line between the role she served in that hotel room and the one she serves as a co-host on The View and its lone conservative. Now, as then, if she wants to be heard, she’d better be loud—a mandate that finds her in near-constant battle with her five more progressive peers, Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Paula Faris.
Most of the time McCain, 33, more than holds her own. She’s persuasive because she doesn’t lean on slickness or the kind of rhetorical flourishes that sound hollow on television. When she fights, she’s the most passionate relative at the dinner table—and the best informed. “It’s not bad, though,” McCain tells me. “This show is a challenge, and I like challenges.”
McCain and her cohosts on the set of The View.
While she has appeared on television since childhood, McCain first became an on-air commentator for MSNBC in 2011. She moved to Fox News in 2015 and, just after the presidential election, was tapped to cohost the talk show Outnumbered. Had the circumstances been different, she could have remained at Fox for the foreseeable future. Executives liked her, and though she believes the women who’ve come forward with claims of sexual harassment at the network, she says she experienced none of it.
But then the curveball: John McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer that watchers of American politics know well—the same disease killed Senator Ted Kennedy and Beau Biden, the oldest son of former vice president Joe Biden. Meghan decided to quit Fox. That summer and up until he started treatment, the McCains hiked the grounds of their ranch in Sedona, Arizona. She joined her father at doctor visits. She woke up with him at 5 a.m. for radiation appointments.
It was he who insisted Meghan join The View at all. She’d spent months with him, and she had no plans to leave his side. When the show reached out, McCain dismissed it. But her father said she’d be “insane to pass it up.” The pronouncement reminded her of one of his favorite expressions: “A fight not joined is a fight not enjoyed.” (He also likes to tell her, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” perhaps the sole call to arms that John McCain and Margaret Atwood share.)
The fight does exhilarate her, not least because it has given her opinions new clout. “The White House isn’t the only platform with a voice,” McCain says. “ABC has a pretty big voice too.” On air, she has criticized President Donald Trump for his relationship with Russia, his move to separate parents and children at the border, and his dependence on personal insults to diminish his rivals (her father included). Still, she remains an ardent conservative—pro-gun, anti-abortion, and with “no middle ground” on the issue of NFL anthem protests. She is not an avowed Never Trumper, which frees her to “call balls and strikes.” And she has predicted Trump will be reelected if Democrats don’t learn from their mistakes. Sometimes she feels shut down on The View, like an outcast. But she’s not sure she’d be at home back at Fox, either. The brand of Republicanism that she shares with her father and stood for when she worked there has been not just diminished but dismantled. People like the McCains have been “ostracized,” she says. Their vision for conservatism “is not what America wants.”
It’s June when we meet in what serves as her personal greenroom, accented with an American flag mural, a framed photo of her and her father reaching the summit on one of their hikes, and shelves of stilettos. A stack of books includes the latest novels from Meg Wolitzer and CNN anchor Jake Tapper, and Real Housewives’ Erika Jayne’s recent memoir. That week the conservative columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Krauthammer announced his cancer had spread and was terminal. (He lived less than two more weeks.) The news has rattled McCain. Until then she hadn’t cried much. Now she can’t stop. There’s a sense that we’ve arrived at the end of a moment—one in which it had been possible for men like John McCain and Ted Kennedy to “fight like animals on the Senate floor and then hug each other afterward.” She pauses, stricken. “I just don’t want bipartisanship to die too.”
An hour earlier Behar and Hostin had boxed McCain out of most of the conversation. While her cohosts cheered women’s across-the-board victories in recent primaries, McCain fumed. She didn’t want political races to be a referendum on gender. In a previous episode, she’d renounced “modern feminism,” but this time, she echoed the movement when she pointed out that a woman’s election is not its own success: A candidate’s stances matter. The effects her policies have on women matter. McCain wanted her cohosts to evaluate politicians on their merits. But she couldn’t get a word in. The segment ended, and McCain stalked off set.
The taping over, she waves it off. (Fight, then hug.) Some shows are harmonious, she says. Some are like this one—not “a total kumbaya.” But despite rumors of behind-the-scenes resentment, McCain says the women know how to leave their disputes on air. She ticks off her own checklist: “Stick to the issues. Stick to information. Stick to facts.” And the ultimate litmus test: “Did I make my parents proud?”
If John McCain’s fandom is an indication, it would seem so. The show has proved a welcome distraction for both of them. The senator tunes in during at-home appointments. And her new perch has reminded Meghan that there is a kinder and more generous world out there than our polarized environment would suggest. Her cohosts have shown particular compassion. “I’m sure I make them crazed because I have a different political opinion, and I’m very tough,” she says. “But the women here are wonderful.” And not one dwells on the discord. Indeed, less than a week after the fracas over the primaries, Behar struggles to even recall that particular contention. “She and I are very similar,” Behar says of McCain. “We’re direct. We speak our minds.” The cameras beam their disputes into millions of households nationwide, and then the women move on.
A friend once told McCain that a person in anguish “is like a snake shedding its skin. You’re still the same snake, but you have new skin,” she says. “I’m not the same person I was when my dad was first diagnosed. I’m not. The innate person inside of me hasn’t changed, but I don’t look at the world in the same way.” It was he, the “maverick” in the Senate who wasn’t afraid to make enemies, who gave her license to be fearless. “My father is the sun in my universe,” she says, hugging her knees to her chest. “He’s the absolute center.” But all the stoicism she inherited from him evaporates when she realizes there will be a future to face alone. “He’s the last person who needs to be sick now because I so need him here, fighting for all the things that we believe in,” she says. “I’m scared of America without him.”
Sometimes she lets herself inhabit a pretend world in which John McCain’s presidential run had played out differently. “I have these moments where I wonder if my father could have become president if he’d had to do it [how] the Trumps did,” she says. “It 100 percent wouldn’t have been worth it to me. I would not have signed on for it. And he wouldn’t have done it. If you have to win that way, it’s not worth winning, from my perspective. Because when you’re out of office, what does your life look like?” Her father could have been savvier, she admits. He made mistakes. But this is her relief—whatever his missteps, he will leave politics with his own sense of honor intact.
Last November, McCain married Ben Domenech, a conservative writer and the publisher of The Federalist. The event was small, with around 100 guests. But countless more well wishes poured in. One stands out: Barack and Michelle Obama sent a letter. McCain doesn’t disclose its contents, but she tells me that it was hand-written. Months later, the mere fact of it still seems to awe her. Obama had beaten her father to the Oval Office. 2008 had been a hideous and contentious election. The McCains and the Obamas were supposed to be adversaries! But the letter—her voice catches. “It was such a kind gesture, you know? I disagree with him on many things, but kind gestures go far.” When Valerie Jarrett cohosted The View several months ago, McCain mentioned it to her. She’d wanted to thank someone for it, and Jarrett, who advised Obama in the White House, remains close to the former president. Far from the cameras, “we had this conversation—it’s just, that era is gone.”
Since the 2016 election, the McCains have resisted what Meghan calls “the invasion of the body snatchers”—the phenomenon that has driven once-principled conservatives to support the President’s positions over their own values. Their criticism has been strident, albeit driven as much (if not more) by Trump’s disdain for the norms of the office as his actual policies. “There are people I know who love President Trump and think that he’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to America. I understand those people. I’m not shocked by them. I defend their right to love him,” McCain says. “But I do think character and rhetoric matter. What’s put out into the world and the universe matters. I’m just glad I don’t have to reconcile with those kinds of demons.”
John and Meghan McCain at her wedding; Meghan McCain joins her father on the trail in 2000.
And whatever loneliness she feels, McCain has her comrades. She is in near constant communication with HLN host and conservative S.E. Cupp. (The two are “an island,” Cupp says. Women without a tribe.) And she has come to treasure Joe Biden, who consoled her on live television for close to five viral minutes in December. The former vice president and her father have known each other for decades, but his on-air reassurance ushered in “a different kind of relationship” between Biden and her. “I talk to him all the time, and he checks in on me all the time.” It’s not quite the bipartisanship revival she craves, but it’s a personal salve.
The admiration is mutual. “There is no manual to consult when it comes to dealing with a seriously ill parent,” as Biden puts it via email. “But if there was, Meghan McCain would be the one to write it…. Publicly she has been fierce as John’s advocate, and privately her love and encouragement have sustained him. The way the entire McCain family has handled the cards they have been dealt is worthy of our admiration, and I know John is so incredibly proud of his daughter.”
In late April John McCain was sent back to the hospital. He would have to have another serious operation, and doctors wanted to prepare Meghan: If there were conversations she needed to have with him, it was time to initiate them. Meghan hesitated, then told her father’s team, “We’ve done that. He knows I love him more than anything, and I know he loves me more than anything. There’s nothing else. What’s next?”
In that moment, she remembers, she’d been flooded with the memories of a childhood indignation. Her father had been as strict with her as he was with her brothers. Why hadn’t she been given special status—a daughter’s reprieve? But his relentlessness, she knows, made her resilient. “I realize now he did it so I could survive this.”
A version of this article appears in the September 2018 issue of Glamour.
Cher Horowitz is back. Four years after Iggy Azalea cosplayed as Alicia Silverstone‘s character in Clueless for her “Fancy” music video, Silverstone’s returning the favor. The American Woman actress appears on this week’s episode of Lip Sync Battle, and she performs—you guessed it—”Fancy.” And not just that: She wears Cher’s classic yellow plaid outfit—the one Azalea wears in the “Fancy” video—in the performance. So, essentially, Silverstone is tributing Azalea’s tribute to her. Meta!
The fateful homage-within-a-homage will air this Thursday’s on Lip Sync Battle, where Silverstone goes head to head with her American Woman co-star, Mena Suvari. According to a press release, the battle immediately follows an episode of American Woman on Paramount Network.
In the preview clip, below, Silverstone walks down a set of makeshift stairs while mouthing the opening to Azalea’s “Fancy.” Her back-up dancers are all made up as era-appropriate extras from Clueless, too. One dancer even dressed as Cher’s best friend, Dionne, in her equally-famous blue plaid skirt suit and straw top hat.
The crowd, of course, eats it all up, as does Lip Sync Battle‘s co-host, Chrissy Teigen. “Modern-day Cher,” she says in the clip. “This is amazing. I had no idea how badly I needed to see that. Again!” (Same.)
Check it out for yourself, below:
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We got a sneak peek of Teigen’s fangirling last October, when the episode was actually filmed. At the time, the Lip Sync Battle host and Twitter sage tweeted a photo of herself and her daughter, Luna, posing with Silverstone. “How am I supposed to sleep?” she wrote in the caption. “I think I’ve asked for 2 photos in my entire life. @AliciaSilv and beyonce.”
Given how long we’ve been waiting for this pop cultural milestone to happen, it’d better knock our knee socks off. Based on Teigen’s reaction, though, it seems like it’ll be everything we hoped for, and then some.
Lip Sync Battle returns this Thursday, June 14 at 10:30 P.M. ET on Paramount Network.
Tonight’s Big Bang Theory tackled a topic that seems to come up a lot lately: what it actually means to support other women. We’ve all read articles about the value of lifting each other up and been told to follow “girl code,” but it’s easy to be there for your peers when things are going well. The real work comes in the hard times—when your colleague bypasses you for a promotion or a friend constantly humblebrags about her many accomplishments, for example.
It’s especially difficult to be supportive when you’re not feeling supported yourself, something Amy and Bernadette faced on tonight’s episode. Amy was already dealing with her fiancé, Sheldon, acting like a jealous child when she confided that she got special lab equipment at work, when a conversation with Bernadette turned into an uncomfortable battle of who’s more successful. Yikes.
But let’s back up and talk about Sheldon and Amy first: As much as we’d like to see them start planning their wedding, they’ve got bigger problems to figure out than what kind of card stock to use. Amy might be used to Sheldon’s childish and obnoxious responses to her success—he was downright awful at her work dinner last week—but we’re not. It’s nice that Amy doesn’t want to brag about her recent funding, knowing that he’s struggling a bit with his own career, but she shouldn’t have to completely hide it from him, either.
But Amy’s not alone in this: Bernadette confides to Amy that she often hides aspects of her success from Howard. (Seriously?!) When she went on a company retreat to Tahiti last year, she told Howard it was to Boise instead. For the sake of a sitcom joke, it was funny, but in the real world it’s frustrating. Bernadette also admits she kept last year’s bonus check a secret from her husband—and here we thought raising two children under two was going to be their biggest issue.
PHOTO: Richard Cartwright/CBS
In an attempt to find a temporary solution to their problems, Bernadette and Amy agree to tell each other about their own successes because apparently telling their significant others is out of the question. (Yet in one moment of clarity, Amy notes that “the guys are never shy about bragging.”) With that, the ladies start sharing their achievements, but the whole thing goes off the rails within seconds:
Bernadette: “There’s so much money in pharmaceuticals, we don’t even wash out our old test tubes. We just throw ’em out and get new ones!” Amy: “I just got a brand new state-of-the-art fMRI machine!” Bernadette: “Wow, those things are so expensive!” Amy: “I know! Sometimes I just lie down in there and take a nap. It’s like a million dollar bunk bed!” Bernadette: “At the office, I have two assistants! I don’t even know their names. I just call them thing 1 and thing 2.” Amy: “I don’t have assistants.” Bernadette: “I guess that’s one of the benefits of being in the private sector. That and all the money I make!” Amy: “Yeah, you’ve got that. I’ve got my integrity. Hard to say which one is better without making you feel bad. I may not be making as much money as you, but at least I’m doing something that I know makes people’s lives better.” Bernadette: “Hey! My work makes peoples lives better. Especially if you have moderate to severe eczema and don’t mind if you lose teeth.” Amy: “You’re right. We both do important work. I’m trying to map the structures of the brain and you’re trying to convince people that itchy hair is a real thing.” Bernadette: “It is a real thing! It happens to be a side effect of our cholesterol drug.” Amy: “I’m just saying that my research may actually change the world forever.” Bernadette: “I hope it does. ‘Cause I’m going to see that world from a yacht so big you could land a helicopter on it!”
So…not only do we have two successful women who can’t tell the men in their lives about their accomplishments, but now they can’t even figure out how to be excited for one another without turning it into a game of who’s living their best life? At a time when women really do need to stick together and support each other in life and in work, this was a missed opportunity. Same for their partners, who have turned into mopey, outdated stereotypes of men who can’t handle a woman’s success. Then again, maybe I’m hoping for too much from a bunch of guys who basically got drunk on mouthwash in the same episode.
