What's Going on With Meghan Markle and Her Staff

Someone wants you to believe that something strange is going on in the office of the Duchess of Sussex.

It's been nearly seven months since, in front of the entire world, Meghan Markle wed Prince Harry in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, joined the royal family, and became the first person to hold her title. And from the outside looking in, it seems as though she's taken to life as a princess of the United Kingdom—including all the responsibilities that come with the appointment—like a duck to water. 

She's kicked off the first of what will surely be many charitable endeavors by throwing her support behind and writing the foreward for Together: Our Community Cookbook, a charity cookbook to benefit the Hubb Community Kitchen, which has helped the survivors of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire and has seen regular visits from Meghan since January 2018.
She, alongside her husband, embarked on a successful tour of Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand in the fall, just in time for the Invictus Games, held in Sydney in October, where she delivered rousing speeches and undertook her first solo event. Sure, there's been the incessant public squawking from her father Thomas and half-sister Samantha, two people who've never come across dirty laundry they didn't want to air out in public, and the bubbling rumors regarding a feud between her and new sister-in-law Kate Middleton, but on the job front, it's felt as though she's acclimated to the role quite nicely, which tracks for someone who's always held ambitions of changing the world.

And yet, the press seems intent on painting a different picture of Meghan's first months as Duchess—one with unusual (at first glance, at least) staff turnover amid rampant rumors over an allegedly difficult and demanding boss.

On Sunday, Dec. 9, U.K. publication The Sunday Times reported that Meghan was set to lose a key member of her Kensington Palace staff as Samantha "The Panther" Cohen, the Duke and pregnant Duchess' interim private secretary, has decided she has no intention of making the job permanent and "has let it be known that she intends to leave after Meghan's baby is born next spring." 

And while the loss certainly marks quite a blow to the Duchess, as Samantha was the one who's been guiding Meghan through "the complexities of protocol" as she's worked to find her place amongst the royal family these last few months, it's not entirely surprising. After all, she only began working for Meghan and Prince Harry on a temporary basis following her resignation last summer after 17 years spent working for the royal family, most notably as Queen Elizabeth II's assistant private secretary and communications secretary. Despite how keen Meghan and Harry might've been to keep her on permanently—and despite a source assuring Vanity Fair just last month that she was "working on long-term projects and is staying put for the time being"—it seems the Australian civil servant was true to her word.

"She's not leaving because of any drama with Meghan," an insider told Us Weekly. "She agreed to stay for six months...and knew they needed extra help. Samantha has a lot of respect for Harry and Meghan and enjoyed working for them. But her time is now up." And it's hard to fault the Brisbane native who, in 2001, spotted an ad in the paper for a media assistant at Buckingham Palace while visiting London, applied, and stayed put for nearly 20 years, for wanting to return home to Australia after all her years of service. If she really didn't like Meghan, would she have even agreed to stick around? The odds seem slim to us.





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