There's no denying Omid Scobie is close – very close – to the Duchess of Sussex. Take the duchess’s last solo appearance as a working royal, on the day she finally flew out of England. Scobie, who is co-author of the best-selling, if critically derided, Finding Freedom, was one of only three journalists invited to the engagement – an engagement the duchess (or ‘Meg’, as Scobie says ‘her close friends and husband call her’) found so emotional, she and Scobie shared ‘a big farewell hug’ beneath the ‘malachite candelabras’ of the 1844 Room in Buckingham Palace. And as they hugged, the duchess said: ‘It didn’t have to be this way.’
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Wow! That’s quite a scoop. How did Scobie score that invitation? ‘I think,’ he says, his voice a model of received pronunciation, ‘she wanted to share that last moment because it is a moment in history. But also to do it in an environment she felt safe in.’ And how did she know Scobie would provide that safe environment? ‘I guess my work [for US Weekly and Harper’s Bazaar, both American publications] spoke for itself – I was always careful what I reported.’ It is, he adds, something he enjoys about covering the royal beat for a US audience: the attitude in the States is ‘celebratory – I enjoy the more positive take on things. There are a lot of people who say I only write positively about the Sussexes. I would challenge anyone to find a negative story I’ve written about the Royal Family full stop since I started.’ Post-Finding Freedom, the Cambridges would probably not agree. Meanwhile, Scobie’s book – which shot straight to the top of The Sunday Times book charts, selling 31,000 copies in the first five days of publication – is its own reward.
Scobie is telling me all this across a table in my north London garden. He’s drinking coffee with almond milk, and it is for him something of a dress-down Sunday – washed-out light blue jeans and a fawn Represent T-shirt. The chain around his neck is by Thomas Sabo, the rings on his fingers by Chrome Hearts and David Yurman – the Yurman has onyx set into it. His teeth are as shimmeringly white as they need to be for his frequent appearances on Good Morning America. By his feet is his French bulldog, Yoshi, who’s named after a Super Mario character and is clad in a Julius-K9 jacket; he’s lapping up water from a bowl his master has produced from a Burberry man bag. Scobie’s just back from a weekend hiking with friends in the Brecon Beacons – his idea of fun – and dropped in on his parents in Oxfordshire on the way back to London.
It was in that house that he lay low in the aftermath of the three-day serialisation of his and Carolyn Durand’s book in The Times. He had, he notes, ‘expected some hysteria around the book; we obviously knew what we had on our hands’, but there were 170 articles about it in the first five days alone. He tried not to look at social media, but did, of course: ‘The support comes from the usual group – the Sussexes have a very big following and they’re keen to see a book that perhaps humanises Meghan in a way we haven’t seen before.’ There had, though, been ‘efforts to discredit me as a journalist and I think I’m pretty qualified to write a book like this’.
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So that hadn’t fazed him – although he was upset about being called a social climber. ‘At the same time, 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.’ But the book’s success seems itself uncontrollable.
It must have been rather an eye-opener for Scobie’s parents – his father owns a marketing business, his mother works in child welfare (he prefers not to give their names). Scobie is the elder of two brothers; he was brought up in Oxford, where he went first to Magdalen College School and then to sixth-form at Cherwell, a state school that was ‘lovely – I’m still in touch with many friends from there’.
His father’s family is Scottish, while ‘my mum’s side are Persian, and slightly aristocratic’. Scobie is keen I use the term ‘Persian’ rather than ‘Iranian’, ‘because to Persians there’s a big difference. My mum’s side of the family is not Muslim and has no connection to the Islamic Republic of Iran. I remember the first sentence of the first Daily Mail story about the book: “British-Iranian author”. I was, like, “I see what’s happening here.”’
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Gosh. Arson, racism: have these experiences made him feel even more empathetic towards the Sussexes? ‘Having witnessed what they’ve gone through, I already felt for them. But have I now experienced a sliver of what they’re up against? Absolutely.’
That included some mockery about his age. A profile in The Times by Andrew Billen had Scobie as having just turned 33 – cue howls of mirth and people pointing out that he was 39 or 38 or all sorts of ages. What had he made of that? ‘I wish someone would ask me, firstly.’ Ask what? ‘My age! I’m 38 years old, not 33. There’s a celebrity website that says I’m 30, there’s another website that says I’m 34, and one that says I’m 20!’
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Didn’t Billen ask him? ‘He referred to my birthday: July 4.’ But did Billen not ask how old Scobie was? ‘He was trying to insinuate that I was the same age as Andrew Morton [when Morton wrote the Diana book], and I could see the path he was trying to go down. But we never discussed my date of birth.’
Which came as news to Billen when I checked with him. Because there, on his professionally transcribed page, is the question: ‘How old are you?’ Answered by Scobie with: ‘I’m 33, I just turned 33.’ To which Billen replies: ‘Wow, Omid... congratulations, aged 33. I was just checking: Andrew Morton published Diana’s...’ Scobie interrupts: ‘Oh, how old was he?’ ‘He was 40.’ ‘Oh, OK. Not that it’s a competition or anything. I’m a big fan of what he did.’
Well, everyone’s vain about something, but it’s odd of Scobie to get into such a tangle over who said what to whom and when. Particularly when he’s so insistent that everything in Finding Freedom has been checked twice. And even more so when he and Durand (and indeed the Sussexes) have all firmly declared that there has been no cooperation from, or collaboration with, Harry and Meghan. That’s a claim that has raised eyebrows. There is, critics observe, so much detail – not all of it flattering – about the Sussexes, and so many direct quotes, that the notoriously privacy-seeking couple would surely have kicked off if they were not to some degree in cahoots.
Scobie has his answers. He and Durand had, he says, planned a softer book when they first (‘out of courtesy’) notified Kensington Palace that they were writing it – a book chronicling the romance, the marriage, the pregnancy and the birth of Archie. ‘When we were finishing the book and waiting for Archie’s birth so we could include his first days at home, we were, like, “This book will warm everyone’s hearts, it will just be a beautiful love story.” And of course, it completely changed.’
That change – symbolised by the brouhaha over exactly when and where Archie was born; the photographs that barely showed the infant’s face; the private baptism that ‘broke tradition’; and the refusal to tell the public who the baby’s godparents were – was, Scobie thinks, helpful to the co-authors. ‘After the birth of Archie, I remember nothing Meghan could do was ever right. When members of staff were let go, the narrative would always be twisted to her being the cause of this person walking out. [Scobie blames two NDAs for preventing him giving the damning lowdown on two Sussex staff dismissals.] No matter how she would try and deal with the press, there would always be something to come out to dull her shine. I think around the time of Archie’s birth, both she and Harry realised there was no moving on from there.’
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Or was there, via Scobie and Durand? ‘One of the things we’re very lucky with is that the friends around Meghan, from past and present, have been really concerned to see her struggles throughout this, and also the way the person they know is being presented in the press. I think [it was useful] for them to be able to share some insight into how she was feeling. People who said no at the beginning, as they saw things getting worse, suddenly replied to an email we’d sent six or seven months to a year earlier – people who’d just grown increasingly frustrated with the stuff they’d seen and how far [different] that is to what really goes on.’
Scobie doesn’t, he says, have ‘the impression’ that people have been encouraged to speak to him. But it has resulted in some remarkable horse’s-mouth stuff: for instance, he and Durand quote Meghan telling a friend: ‘The same people who have been abusing me want me to serve my child on a silver platter. A child who is not going to be protected and doesn’t have a title. How does that make sense? Tell that to any mother in the world.’ That seems, I say, a very precise quote. But, says Scobie, ‘Things are shared in front of two or three people. We were very transparent in the way we were reporting. Whenever we reached out to someone, we did that via email or letter. Because if they wanted to share that with someone, they could.’ Share that with someone? Who could that be?
Scobie also points to his own reportorial smarts. He studied journalism at the London College of Communication; spent eight months at Heat, which was not for him and where, as a biracial man, he says he suffered racism from a superior; helped with the launch of a women’s magazine; then joined the entertainment title US Weekly, where he ‘ended up launching the [London] bureau’. Around the time of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding, he realised the magazine had a great new group of young royals to cover, but no contacts at the palace. ‘The royals in the US are big business. And US Weekly being the second most read weekly in the US was appealing to [the royals], too.’
So he joined a not entirely ecstatic royal press pack. ‘The first words I remember hearing were that this guy was going to come and write puff pieces and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’ Instead, he earned his stripes, got great colour – he’s a glutton for detail – and great quotes, helped by his ‘natural knack for lip-reading’. It’s a skill he picked up at all those red-carpet events for US Weekly, just as he clocked the importance of asking staff for insider information: ‘When we covered Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s wedding, all those details, do you think that came from Kim and Kanye? No, it came from the people working there.’ Which explains how he was able to write of the Sussexes that: ‘Theirs was a love that took hold in Africa – where now Meghan stretched her body into the perfect warrior pose.’
What Scobie is clear on, though, is that Meghan has had a raw deal. That there has been othering and racism from the British press – the infamous ‘Straight outta Compton’ headline would, he says, have led to an American newspaper being burnt down. That Meghan is more vulnerable than you might think, and that her prince will do anything to protect her – he couldn’t protect his mother, but he will protect his bride. That Harry did not say: ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.’ That Meghan is a ‘calming’ influence on Harry who, in the book, comes across as ferociously thin-skinned and forever on the cusp of rage. That Meghan is not a terrible boss but a hyper-engaged one whose work is her redemption – not that she needs redemption. That he doesn’t ‘even know if the Sussexes like me, to be honest. Press is press, and there will always be that distance between the Sussexes and the press – I think the relationship with the tabloids is completely dead and I don’t see that ever working.’
There’s more: that the senior courtier who made a racist remark to him – and Princess Michael of Kent, who wore a ‘blackamoor brooch’ to meet Meghan – ‘might want to revise their outlook on the world’. That ‘there’s some diversity at the palace, but not much’. That Harry and Meghan can be hot-headed and impulsive – but that the Royal Family has squandered a great asset in the Sussexes, an asset that appeals to a whole new demographic. That senior courtiers were fools to constantly stall the Sussexes’ plans. That though Kate and Meghan have little in common, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t get on – but that relations between Prince William and Prince Harry will take time to heal. ‘Have things progressed with Prince William? Not really.’
Indeed, he says that, for Harry, the pandemic has been helpful: ‘It’s a pause he’s needed and wouldn’t have had if he’d arrived in LA and gone straight into launching the non-profit.’
As for the book, he hopes ‘it’s a catalyst to some sort of change and that we can stop talking about the bloody dress fitting that didn’t leave Kate in tears. These things get beaten to death. Can they expect total privacy? No, and they shouldn’t. If they want that, they can do something else.’
As Scobie might, too. He’s single, and work has taken up his life so far, but he’ll be making some time for himself. He lives in a ‘not groovy’ part of east London, and he’s a sucker for amenities such as pools and gyms. So, I suggest, some vastly basemented townhouse may be his reward for the book and its umpteen reprintings, its topping of the UK’s best-seller charts. ‘Ha!’ he cries. ‘I wish those royalties were as much as people expect. Publishing is not what it used to be.’ He smiles. ‘I know it sounds cheesy, but for me, it’s more important to get a New York Times best-seller.’ Which will, of course, earn him dollars by the lorry load. But won’t, alas, change his age.
Finding Freedom by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand is out now with a new epilogue, published by HQ, HarperCollins in hardback, ebook and audiobook.
This article was first published in the November 2020 issue of Tatler.