'Endgame' Author Had The 'Lead' In Covering Meghan Markle, Prince Harry's Royal Romance
Omid Scobie opened up about how he started covering Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in an interview over six years ago.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been linked to Scobie, who dropped his new royal book "Endgame" last week. The royal correspondent and biographer has been dubbed as the Sussex's unofficial "mouthpiece," and in a 2016 interview that has since resurfaced, Scobie talked about how he started covering reports about Prince Harry and Markle.
"A friend of mine called me. They were in Canada, and they said, 'I'm sorry I could have told you this earlier, but they are together. They are here right now.' I was like, 'Okay, it's all right. Fine.' And so we started to write [about the Sussexes]," Scobie said when he appeared on the "Full Disclosure with James O'Brien" podcast.
According to Scobie, since they were able to confirm some details about the royal romance, they followed through with the reports. He added that while others were figuring out who Markle was, they didn't have a hard time writing about her because she reportedly visited Us Weekly with her publicist two years earlier, and her legal drama "Suits" was "a huge thing for our magazine."
Scobie used to work at Us Weekly, but he wasn't around during Markle's visit. He noted that the former actress was "very much on the radar, even if she wasn't up there with the big-name celebrities."
"We really had a lead. I had the lead on covering those early days of their relationship, so when I left that magazine in 2017, I was like, 'They are my focus for this beat' because every royal correspondent has a niche, either King Charles' go-to or Queen Camilla's go-to, so I thought this is the story that appeals to me."
Scobie talked about building his career as a royal correspondent by following the Sussexes, and he was asked about his relationship with Markle when he worked on the Sussex's unofficial biography "Finding Freedom," released in 2020.
"She had picked the people she wanted to cover it, not to hang out with," Scobie said. "We were there to cover a piece of work, but I would say working on a book and overseeing those other jobs at the same time, at the time when things were so intense in the British press, I was able to be that one that provided different perspective or something I felt was closer to the story and so while there was never been a moment when I stepped into a room with her and had a private interview or any of the things that people might have [speculated] due to the narrative that exists, I certainly was known as like the safe face at least."
The Sussexes' critics have dragged Prince Harry and Markle into the controversies surrounding Scobie's newest publication after it brought back the racist royal scandal. However, Scobie insisted they had nothing to do with "Endgame" and stressed that he wasn't Markle's friend and never interviewed her for the book.
