Meghan Markle Suffers Major 'Mask Slip' & Gets Territorial Over Harry In Australia
Meghan Markle is no stranger to online chatter. That's good for her because her trip to Australia with her husband, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, isn't silencing her critics. Just days before they left for the land down under, Meghan committed an inappropriate fashion faux pas at a party celebrating Season 2 of Netflix's hit show, "Beef." Following that controversy, the Duchess of Sussex has found herself facing a different but unfortunately familiar controversy: the way she treats staff.
A series of images captured at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne on April 14 paints a picture of what happened. A woman who is believed to be a member of Harry and Meghan's staff put her hand on Harry's back, likely to get his attention during a loud event. The Duchess responded by giving what many have perceived as a deadly stare that has disturbed some people.
Meghan Markle has a serious mask slip and for a moment you see how she REALLY treats her staff and others while pretending to care about sick children https://t.co/UfZkdVgLFc
— MeghansMole©️ (@MeghansMole) April 14, 2026
Social media jumped on the moment, believing that Markle had just let her guard down and revealed her true off-camera self. One commenter noted, "She was ready to rumbleeee that woman. In her head [she was thinking] 'what you doing? Don't touch my man, [peasant]'!" Another person added more of Meghan's imagined thoughts in the photo, writing, "Excuse me this might be your stomping ground but I'm the Duchess of Sussex .... hands off!!" Meanwhile, someone gave Meghan a new nickname, "the Duchess of nastiness," as another feared for the unnamed woman, commenting, "Yikes! Run, lady! RUN!"
Meghan Markle has been accused of mistreating staff in the past
Her supposedly "mask-off" moment in Australia isn't the first time Meghan Markle's treatment of the staff has come up. In 2021, the Daily Mail reported on the so-called "Sussex Survivors Club," or people who claim to have worked for Meghan and Prince Harry and lived to tell the tale. They happen to be tales of terror, too, which allegedly happened while the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were at Kensington Palace. These include claims that Meghan drove a number of people to quit and suffer PTSD of different sorts.
Talk of Meghan's bad behavior and how she treats others popped up again when the Hollywood Reporter spoke to unnamed sources who opened up about the woman they dubbed "Duchess Difficult." There were claims that Meghan had become known for having meltdowns, with one source claiming, "She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I've watched her reduce grown men to tears."
Stories about Meghan's treatment of restaurant staff were no better. Restaurateur Michael Cecchi-Azzolina painted a picture of a woman who saw herself as superior to others in his book, "Your Table is Ready." Plus, the staff who worked on Meghan's short-lived podcast "Archetypes" contributed to a bombshell Vanity Fair article that depicted her in a pretty harsh light. That's the same staff who apparently gave Meghan the nickname "Eva," according to Fox News, after Joan Crawford's character in "Queen Bee." In that film, Crawford's character, Eva Phillips, pushes people to their breaking points, even to suicide. Clearly, the nickname wasn't intended to be endearing.