Did Kate Middleton’s Press Connection to Camilla Tominey Help Create the “Meghan Made Kate Cry” Story?

Camilla Tominey, the royal reporter criticised for sympathetic coverage of Prince Andrew, sat on her Telegraph podcast and retold a familiar story. Back in 2007, when the tabloids reported that Prince William had dumped Kate Middleton, her news desk told her to follow up. Somehow, she said, she got hold of Kate’s private telephone number. She called, and Kate answered, and what followed was a polite conversation. Kate said she had never commented on the relationship and would not start now.

Tominey told the anecdote as a harmless bit of royal nostalgia. But it landed differently in 2026. Because Tominey is not just any royal reporter, she is the journalist who first reported the bridesmaid dress dispute that became the infamous “Meghan made Kate cry” story, one of the most damaging headlines Meghan Sussex ever faced.

Her own account of having direct access to Kate’s phone number during the dating years makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that the “well‑sourced” story Tominey later published came from Kate’s camp, and that the press was never interested in Meghan’s side.

The Story That Refused to Die

The “Meghan made Kate cry” saga began in 2018. Tominey, then at The Telegraph, reported that Kate was left in tears after a fitting for Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress. Her two separate sources were enough to print the story. The story might have stayed a low‑level tabloid item if not for what happened next. Jack Royston of The Sun turned Tominey’s original claim into a brutal front‑page splash: “MEGHAN MADE KATE CRY.” The headline was mass‑market, relentless and devastating, as it cemented a narrative of Meghan as the difficult duchess who bullied the future queen.

Years later, during the Oprah interview, Meghan gave her version. She said the reverse happened and that it was actually Kate who made her cry. Then Kate apologised with flowers and a note. The palace never publicly corrected Tominey’s original story. The Sun never apologised. And the headline remained fixed in the public memory.

The Access Question

The time when Camilla spoke to the Princess of Wales over the phone…

Tune in now to today's Royal T where @CamillaTominey and Deputy Royal Editor Vicky Ward are joined by historian Kate Williams to discuss the future of the monarchy. Drawing on her new book Regina, they… pic.twitter.com/LUvpgjLiSj

— The Daily T (@DailyTPodcast) June 14, 2026

Tominey’s 2026 podcast anecdote does not prove that Kate or her family leaked the bridesmaid dress story. There is no public evidence that Kate personally briefed Tominey. But the anecdote does confirm something significant: Tominey had a direct line to Kate’s private world long before the engagement, at a time when the Middletons were still a relatively unknown middle‑class family dating the heir to the throne.

It is striking that Tominey says Kate took the call at all. One possible explanation is that Kate or her circle already knew who Tominey was, and that the Middleton circle had already built relationships with certain reporters in the tabloid ecosystem. So when Tominey published her “Kate cried” story, she was not an outsider guessing, even though she herself believed the information was well‑sourced and true. She was a journalist with reported access to Kate’s private number and, by extension, her circle, including one of the subjects of the story, Kate herself.

Whether Tominey’s source was a Middleton family member, a palace staffer or someone else entirely, the story entered the press through a channel that had every reason to protect Kate’s image and none to protect Meghan’s.

From Praise to Suspicion

Before Meghan became a royal, Tominey was an admirer. In 2016, she broke the story that Harry was dating Meghan. On This Morning, she called Meghan “confident,” “self‑assured,” and “just what we need in 21st‑century royal life.” She praised Meghan’s humanitarian work, her UN speech, and her social media savvy.

Those same traits were later reframed as threats when it became certain that Prince Harry intended to marry Meghan and make her the mother of his future children. Meghan’s confidence became “difficult.” Her humanitarian voice became “political.” Her American energy became “disruptive.” Tominey herself did not cause this shift alone, but she was part of a press ecosystem that turned Meghan’s strengths into weaknesses the moment she entered the palace.

The most striking example came when Meghan guest‑edited Vogue’s “Forces for Change” issue, which became the fastest-selling in the magazine’s history. She featured fifteen women, including activists, politicians and artists. Only five were white. Tominey wrote that Meghan had shown “bias,” asking: “If I was pale, male and stale, I’d be feeling pretty discriminated against right now.”

When Royal Access Changed, Meghan Became The Target

That framing treated a modest effort to include more women of colour as an attack on whiteness. Put that nonsensical racist framing to one side. The deeper problem is the sheer whiplash of Tominey’s transformation, and she is not alone. Piers Morgan, believe it or not, also spoke warmly of Meghan in 2016. He called her “very intelligent, very smart, very charming, very warm,” praising her concern for the planet, women’s rights and humanitarian issues. He later became one of her most vicious critics. What changed? Not Meghan. The press access did.

Tominey’s anecdote suggests she had some route into Kate’s circle, including direct contact with Kate herself. One cannot help but wonder whether her sudden shift toward denigrating Meghan may have been shaped, encouraged or rewarded by those connections. Or whether Tominey felt she had to tear Meghan down to keep her access to the future queen. Prince Harry wrote in Spare that Kate felt threatened by Meghan. If sources sympathetic to Kate wanted her protected, Tominey was well placed to receive that version. The criticism of Meghan’s Vogue cover was never good‑faith commentary. It looked like a journalist doing favours for her royal source.

Morgan followed the same playbook. He later claimed that “several members of the Royal Family” thanked him for “standing up for them” and criticising Meghan. Some reports suggest it was Queen Camilla who personally thanked Morgan. The palace never denied it. The pattern is consistent: praise Meghan before she marries Harry, then attack her, with royal encouragement, once the palace access shifts.

Whose Tears Mattered

The “Meghan made Kate cry” story was never really about a dress fitting. It was about who the press believed, whose pain was protected and whose reputation was sacrificed. Kate’s alleged tears, reported through unnamed sources with access to her circle, were treated as fact. Meghan’s tears, recounted by Meghan herself years later, were treated as revisionism. The palace stayed silent on Tominey’s original story. It said nothing when The Sun ran its brutal headline. But when Meghan spoke her truth, the same palace machine that had ignored the story briefed against her.

Meghan told Oprah that Kate apologised with flowers and a note. That detail was never contested by Kate. But it never ran on the front page either. The original story had already done its work.

And here is the detail that damns Kate further. She has a history of demanding corrections when she feels misrepresented. In 2020, royal journalist Anne Pasternak wrote a Tatler profile describing Kate as “perilously thin”, a comment Pasternak intended as a compliment in the context of fashionable slimness. William and Kate threatened to sue. The palace denied it, but Pasternak later revealed that the leak of the story to the Mail on Sunday, which spun it as “Kate’s victory over Tatler”, came directly from Kensington Palace. William himself, she said, had rung the editor that Friday morning.

So Kate and William will deploy their office to correct a mildly critical profile. They will plant a front‑page victory narrative. But when a far more damaging story, “MEGHAN MADE KATE CRY”, circulated globally, they said nothing. They issued no denial. They did not pick up the phone and demand a correction. That silence was not weakness or ignorance on the Wales part. It was a strategy, becuase Kate knew the story hurt Meghan, not her. And she let it stand.

The “Meghan made Kate cry” story was never just gossip. It was a test of whose tears mattered, whose sources were protected, and how quickly the press could turn a mixed‑race woman into the villain of someone else’s palace drama.