Meghan Markle Backpack Lesson With Archie Couldn’t Be ‘Weirder,’ Commentator Says

A backpack anecdote described in Meghan Markle’s August 2022 interview with The Cut has some commentators scratching their heads. Ahead, learn why one royal commentator called the lesson with Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor strange — plus, another quote the Duchess of Sussex made involving her and Prince Harry’s son.

Meghan Markle keeps backpack ‘kits’ in car to pass out

While promoting the Archetypes podcast premiere in an August 2022 The Cut interview, Meghan talked royal life and starting over in California. At one point, journalist Allison P. Davis described Meghan’s lesson to Archie about varying living situations. 

Davis wrote: “At a stoplight, she reaches into the trunk and produces a brand-new black backpack and hands it to her security detail to give to an unhoused man on the corner. They are teaching Archie that some people live in big houses, some in small, and that some are in between homes.”

Davis described the backpacks as “kits” they made to “pass out with water and peanut-butter crackers and granola bars.”

Commentator ‘cannot think of a weirder way’ to teach Archie about his ‘privileged position’

Jonathan Sacerdoti, a royal commentator and regular contributor to the U.K.’s Spectator magazine, slammed Meghan’s backpack anecdote. He described it as “one of the most telling stories in the whole piece” to Express.

“The story of how at the traffic lights she reached into the boot of the car to pull out a pristine new backpack and give some granola bars to a homeless person via her security detail in order to teach their son about his privileged position in the world and how other people have less than them,” he began.

“[I] cannot think of a weirder way of teaching a child that” on a car ride “in which you get your security guard to give healthy snacks to a homeless person, without you having necessarily to go near them yourself,” Sacerdoti said.

He also likened the “constant mentions” of gifting “giant baskets of fruits and vegetables as if they were organic Mother Theresas” as “so out of touch” with what he believes “most ordinary people are dealing with.” 

Another anecdote involving Archie came under scrutiny involving school drop-off and pick-up

Other comments from Meghan were scrutinized in the wake of the interview’s release. One of them involved school drop-off and pick-up for Archie. 

Meghan invited Davis to join her as she collected the 3-year-old from school. The former Suits star remarked if her son were going to school in the U.K., it wouldn’t happen without, as Davis wrote, “a royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures.” 

“Sorry, I have a problem with that,” Meghan was quoted as saying. “That doesn’t make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child.” 

A number of U.K. journalists and commentators pushed back against Meghan’s comment. Some made references to U.K. press standards. Meanwhile, others remarked it’s not how things are done with the royal children.