Omid Scobie says his royal novel definitely isn’t about Meghan

But those days are far behind him. He moved to Los Angeles in 2024 and appears relaxed to have left the royal press pack behind. “You lose sight of what matters. When you’re covering the same four people every day, you’re really limited on what you can do,” says the 44-year-old. Yet some might say that he hasn’t strayed all that far from his past life.

His new book, Royal Spin, a young adult novel written with the American author Robin Benway, tells the story of Lauren Morgan, a Prada pump-wearing American press officer who goes to work at Buckingham Palace. Morgan is a fish out of water, dealing with bitchy British courtiers and being scolded for going bare-legged instead of wearing tights. There’s also a problematic relationship with her estranged father. Her first task is to handle a royal crisis: damage control for a senior member of the family who has been caught in a racism row. Is Scobie sure he made this all up?

“When dealing with a fictional royal family, you’re going to be able to draw some parallels to real royals because there are certain aspects of that life that are just a shared experience,” he says coolly when I point out the similarities. “Obviously there’s a lot of Meghan’s experience as an outsider, but I didn’t want anyone to think this is Meghan. We tried so hard to make sure that there was nothing in common other than, you know, being American.”

Scobie and Benway began writing the book in January 2024. He leaned on her for her knowledge and experience of writing fiction — Benway has published ten books — while she leaned on him for his knowledge of royal households. “I did not have a raging interest in the royals at all,” she says, “but I love writing about families, and with the royals there’s a lot of family trauma and drama.”

The exact nature of Scobie’s access to the Sussexes was hotly debated around the publication of Finding Freedom. Details in the book, such as Harry’s emoji use and Meghan’s favourite hair-highlight shades, suggest that he had closer access than most. He was one of three journalists invited to Meghan’s final solo appearance as a working royal in the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace and says he shared a “big farewell hug” with her beneath the “malachite candelabras”. “I think 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,” he later told Tatler.

Meghan in the 1844 Room during her last solo engagement as a working royal

CHRIS ALLERTON

Initially Meghan claimed she had no involvement with Finding Freedom but later, in November 2021, while in court taking on The Mail on Sunday for privacy invasion, she acknowledged that she had provided “briefing notes” for an aide before his meeting with Scobie and Durand.

“Any reports that suggest that I am their friend, that I have a direct line to them, that I’ve received notes or calls from Meghan, are false,” Scobie says. But he has previously mentioned mutual friends, “less so now because their circle is different, a lot of their team has changed… People that have been by their side for a long time are no longer by their side. My life changed too.”

Ultimately, Scobie believes that he deserves more credit for his work. “I hustled and worked so hard when Harry and Meghan were the big story… It’s always frustrated me that I am ‘the mouthpiece’,” he says. He puts much of the frosty reception he received down to snobbery: “If it was someone else, I would tip my hat to them for managing to get so far into the middle of the biggest royal story of this century. But I’ll never get that credit, the narrative has always been different for me. I was the outsider in the royal press pack. I worked for an American magazine, I dressed differently, I was younger.”

There are several reasons why Scobie’s connections with the Sussex circle may have chilled. In 2021, in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, the couple claimed that an unnamed member of the royal family expressed “concerns” about what colour their son Archie’s skin would be. Two years later, the Dutch translation of Endgame named the King and Princess of Wales as the individuals involved. The Dutch book was swiftly pulled from shelves and thousands of copies were destroyed. Scobie said he had never included the names in the manuscript. Buckingham Palace declined to respond to the book’s claims. It was “a disaster, an absolute nightmare,” he recalls. He “hated everything” about the experience, especially the accusations that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt.

Prince Harry and Meghan during their interview with Oprah Winfrey

JOE PUGLIESE/HARPO PRODUCTIONS

Scobie says he knew the book would end his days as a royal reporter, and claims he didn’t receive any dramatic pushback from his Palace sources but was gradually phased out. “Suddenly you stop receiving the palace briefing notes and months later, you open your phone and realise you’ve been removed from the royal press WhatsApp group. There’s some things I removed myself from as well,” he adds. Did it bother him? “You expect all of that stuff to happen. None of the fallout came as a shock.” Death threats from the public did though. “I think people assume that if you criticise the British royal family, you are therefore anti-monarchy,” he says. “Personally I just think that we should live in a world where we can scrutinise publicly funded figures.”

Scobie sees Royal Spin as his new era. It’s a jovial take on the years he spent observing royal life and their publicity teams including the Buckingham Palace offices, which are described in the book as “more like drab office space in a corporate park somewhere in Indianapolis”. He found the real offices “shocking. The fluorescent strip lighting, exposed pipes on the ceiling, peeling paint and bad carpet…Despite the grandeur and glamour at the front of the palace, in many aspects it’s like a shoestring operation,” he says.

It gave him empathy for the communications team: “People that are working in a not very glamorous space, just trying to get the job done and dealing with the biggest stuff. They’ve got so much weight on their shoulders.” However he is critical of their strategies. “The Palace does have a habit of burying its head under the sand until it gets really bad, we’re seeing that right now,” he says. “One could argue that, perhaps if more was done to stop the Andrew situation from spiralling, we’d be in a different position today.”

From what he knew of the Sussexes, he “would imagine they’re horrified” by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Jeffrey Epstein. “I would imagine that they’re quite relieved that they are 5,000 miles away. Certainly in the past, there was frustration from both Harry and Meghan that the way they were treated was much worse than the way people spoke and thought about Andrew.”

Scobie has mapped out a Royal Spin sequel and is developing a television adaptation. Its typical reader, Benway says, is somebody who “buys a book at Los Angeles airport and reads it on the plane to JFK. It’s not going to make you cry, it’s not going to make you sad. But you can read it and recharge a little bit.”

Once Scobie has built his new universe, he plans to abandon the monarchy. “Royal Spin will be the last royal project for me,” he states. He has high hopes for it though because, “whether you give a shit about the royals or not, it’s so relatable. That relationship you thought was leading to marriage, that job you thought was for life, the career path you thought you were on… There’s always that moment when it all comes crashing down.”