Omid Scobie, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s biographer, said he had to call the cops after receiving racist comments and internet threats.
For years, Omid Scobie has been a vocal fan of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. He was well aware, however, that publishing a book on one of the world’s most famous couples would have ramifications. In an interview with Tatler, Scobie stated that he, “expected some hysteria around the book; we obviously knew what we had on our hands.” That turned out to be a gross understatement. According to Tatler, the first day that The Times released some of the excerpts, there were around 170 stories on the book.
Scobie reported the threats to the police. He told Tatler: “Have I had to call the police over racist comments and threats to burn my house down? Absolutely.”
“The publisher offered security for my parents because we’ve had a couple of unwanted visitors. I think the whole thing has spun out of control,” Scobie remarked.
The author then went on to compare his experience to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s, telling Tatler that he “experienced a sliver” of what the couple is going through.
This isn’t the first time Scobie has been picked out because of his origins. Scobie said in an interview with the Daily Mail that he had faced discrimination from within the palace. “I would not name [the] person. Someone very senior within the palace who found it really peculiar that I spoke as well as I do, and that was pretty much how they said it to me,” he told the outlet.
Scobie stated he was treated with racial “ignorance” by a palace staff member who said they never expected him to “speak the way you do,” in an interview with Insider in August 2020, a story that is included in the book.
“The reason why I felt it was important to include a small anecdote in the book was because I think over the years we’ve often heard people say, ‘Well, there wasn’t that much racism. It was just calling her ‘Straight Outta Compton’ once, that was that,” he said, referring to a Daily Mail story that used this terminology to juxtapose images of Meghan Markle’s mother’s house to Kensington Palace.
He added: “Sometimes these things fly under the radar, and I wanted to give an example of something within my own experiences within the institution that was a similar type.”
After being sworn in as senior members of the royal family last year, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are now based in the United States.
“Finding Freedom” goes into depth on Harry and Markle’s relationship, including the discriminatory abuse Markle experienced from both the tabloids and the British monarchy.
“Finding Freedom” was co-authored by biographer Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand. Because Scobie and Durand are considered to be friends of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the authors have presented Harry and Meghan in a considerably better light than, say, British tabloids. “I think that we have attempted to correct a lot of the misperceptions that we’ve seen over the last several years. I think that the book hopefully tells their honest story from their perspective,” Durand told Today in August 2020.
