Meghan Markle Recalls Being Bullied During Her Pregnancies With Archie & Lilibet

Meghan Markle has really been through it for the past several years, and she’s decided to talk about her experience. During an event at the South by Southwest festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas last Friday, the mom of two opened up about how she was bullied on social media during her pregnancies and how that’s affected her today.

Markle, who married Prince Harry in May 2018 and has since gone on to welcome two children, 4-year-old son Archie and 2-year-old daughter Lilibet, with her husband, spoke to the crowd about the dangers of social media and how it has affected her own life. “I keep my distance from [social media] right now just for my own well-being,” the former Suits actress said.

Markle went on to share that she suffered greatly from being bullied online during her two pregnancies. “The bulk of the bullying and abuse that I was experiencing in social media and online was when I was pregnant with Archie and with Lili, and with a newborn,” Markle said at the event. “And you just think about that and you have to really wrap your head around why people would be so hateful. It’s not catty. It’s cruel.”

This is, of course, not the first time Markle has addressed the bullying she has experienced on social media. She and Prince Harry both spoke openly about their struggles with social media and at the hands of members of the British press in their Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, with Prince Harry blaming the stress from that bullying for causing his wife’s miscarriage in 2020. The Duchess of Sussex also talked about struggling with suicidal ideation during her pregnancy with Archie in the documentary, noting that Prince Harry found her a therapist to help her through even as the bullying on social media continued unchecked.

The couple famously stepped away from their senior royal roles in early 2020 and have since moved to California to live as private citizens, but the bullying did not stop there unfortunately. Markle and Prince Harry filed a lawsuit to stop the paparazzi from sharing photos of their son Archie in July 2020, and just last year were chased through the streets of Manhattan by members of the paparazzi intent on getting photos of the couple.

Any kind of bullying is awful, but to try to deal with the relentless level of bullying on social media Meghan Markle experienced during her pregnancy and with a newborn? She’s right, it’s “cruel.”