Since marrying into the royal family in 1986, Sarah Ferguson has found herself at the center of
a number of controversies. Some of those come with the territory of being a member of such a famous
family, but others were more self-inflicted. Here are Fergie's most controversial moments.
Sarah Ferguson had only been a mother for a matter of weeks when she felt the wrath of
the British press. Reporters had learned that she planned to leave baby Beatrice in the U.K.
while she joined her husband on a royal tour of Australia, and according to the Express,
the decision drew lots of negative press. The outlet also noted that things got even worse
for the redheaded royal when tabloids began claiming she had left her daughter earlier
than necessary to spend some alone time with Prince Andrew prior to the tour commencing.
It wasn't just reporters that were outraged by six-week-old Beatrice being left behind,
either. Former MP Rosie Barnes told the Express at the time that it was a, quote,
"extraordinary" decision on the part of the duchess,
who later attempted to explain the reasoning behind it during an interview with Barbara
Walters. Basically, she was making Prince Andrew a priority, saying -
"After nine months of looking enormous and big and your poor husband has had to look at you
like that. It was his turn. Just to make sure that he knew he was very important."
During a 1989 chat with People, a friend of Sarah Ferguson said that the duchess, quote,
"just isn't the totally committed mother type." Yet, the following year she was
expecting baby number two. As Harper's Bazaar noted, her marriage to Prince Andrew was
already strained when she became pregnant with Eugenie. And according to reports,
she had moved on with a new man before the second York princess was born.
David Leigh, co-author of "Fergie: The Very Private Life of the Duchess of York,"
claimed Fergie fell for American millionaire Steve Wyatt when she
met him at Houston Grand Opera's British Opera Festival in 1989. He called Wyatt the,
quote, "main reason for the breakdown of her marriage" in an interview with the Express.
The apparent fling hit the headlines when a cleaner discovered over a hundred photographs
of Fergie and Wyatt in an apartment formerly occupied by the latter. The snaps are said to
have infuriated both Prince Andrew and the queen, who reportedly banned Fergie from ever contacting
Wyatt. The Sunday Mirror would later claim that the duchess slept with him during her pregnancy.
Sarah Ferguson biographer David Leigh told the Express that the duchess was left, quote,
"totally broken" when things didn't work
out for her and Steve Wyatt, going onto say - "She dreamt that one day they would be together,
hopefully living in America. She was forever making dreams in her head."
How did Fergie get over it? Evidently, she hooked up with his friend.
The pictures of Sarah Ferguson and Steve Wyatt holidaying together in Morocco
were nothing compared to the ones of her and John Bryan, another Texas millionaire.
In 1992, around five months after the Palace revealed that the Duke and Duchess of York
intended to separate, the tabloids got hold of some intimate photographs of Fergie and Bryan,
and they would mark the beginning of the royal's time in the cold.
The snaps appeared to show Bryan sucking the royal's toes as she sunbathed
in the French Riviera, though he disputed that, telling royal reporter Richard Kay -
"I wasn't sucking her toes, I was kissing them."
As Richard Kay recalled in the Daily Mail, Sarah Ferguson was staying at Balmoral with
the royal family when the press got hold of those intimate pictures of her and John Bryan.
"I um, I remember seeing it and just going, 'Oh no, Sarah.'"
The royal correspondent said he was present
when a panicked Fergie called Bryan for comfort, writing -
"Bryan promised her everything would be fine,
but I could see in his face that he didn't really believe it."
The scene that unfolded at breakfast the following day is a thing of royal legend.
Royal correspondent Jennie Bond said in a Channel 5 documentary -
"There were her brothers-in-law turning over the pages and staring at her naked top half
of her body. It was excruciatingly embarrassing and she went to the queen,
and the queen was livid. She was absolutely furious with Sarah."
According to the Daily Mail, the late Prince Philip was just as angry with his son's ex,
who reportedly slipped out quietly and flew back to London with her two kids.
As Windsor expert Katie Nicholl said -
"It spelt the end of Fergie's life as a royal."
Sarah Ferguson ditched the United Kingdom for the United States after her exit from The Firm,
intending to promote the tell-all "My Story." In a statement obtained by The Guardian,
the royals made it clear that she was to be considered, quote,
"a separate, independent, ordinary person" following her separation from the Duke of York,
though that's not to say her activities weren't being watched closely back in London.
As The Guardian reported -
"Every time she remarks on her treatment [...] the
royals fume but can do nothing. She has comprehensively beaten the code of silence."
Releasing a book was controversial enough, but Ferguson even participated in an interview with
Oprah Winfrey years before Meghan Markle did the same. She went into detail about what life was
like for her inside Buckingham Palace and how it wasn't exactly a magical place to live, saying -
"You fell in love and married a man, and then you have to come to terms with the fairytale."
"Now, it's not a fairy tale, it's real life in there — well, so to speak."
"It's real life in there." "They think it's real life in there."
Things started to go downhill for the duchess when she launched her own lifestyle company. In 2006,
the royal opened Hartmoor LLC in New York for all her business ventures, per the Daily Mail.
Just three years later, Hartmoor closed down, with an insider telling the outlet -
"I cannot say precisely how much is owed to creditors but it's fair
to say it is substantially more than $1 million but less than $2 million."
The British press had a field day, and reports on the other side of the Atlantic were equally
as damning. ABC News dubbed Ferguson the "Duchess of Debt," while the New
York Post proclaimed her "down and out" in a damning report. A source told the tabloid -
"This company was not run well,
there were many problems so the interested parties decided to go their separate ways."
"A lot of people say I went bankrupt, well I was very close to it, and I'm very
proud about it, in a very sort of bizarre way."
Before long, reporters were digging into the finances of the Sarah Ferguson Foundation,
and what they found did not paint the duchess in a flattering light.
According to the Post, the foundation's tax return from 2007
revealed that while it managed to raise $508,620, it only paid out $22,600.
Not long after the collapse of her New York-based lifestyle company,
the full extent of Sarah Ferguson's money troubles were laid bare for the world to see.
In what The Guardian described as, quote, "probably her most personally damaging
mistake throughout a somewhat gaffe-strewn career," the duchess was caught in a sting
by the now-defunct tabloid News of the World. Exposé specialist
Mazher "Fake Sheik" Mahmood posed as an Indian businessman to obtain a meeting with Ferguson,
who was recorded asking for half a million pounds in exchange for access to her ex-husband.
At the time, Prince Andrew was the U.K.'s special representative for Trade and Investment,
and per The Guardian, Fergie promised Mahmood that the cash would, quote,
"open any door you want" during their now infamous meeting. She added -
"Look after me and he'll look after you."
According to the outlet, the duchess issued a swift apology and made it
clear that Andrew had no knowledge of the meeting.
In a piece of footage that's perhaps just as well known, the duchess stormed out of
an interview with "60 Minutes Australia" when questioned about the incident.
In 2009, Sarah Ferguson took part in an ill-fated documentary called "The Duchess on
the Estate," which placed her in the heart of Manchester's Northern Moor. The premise alone
was enough to anger residents of Northern Moor, who staged a protest in advance of the premiere.
As the Daily Mail noted, the protests came after a disastrous radio interview
in which Fergie was accused of damaging the estate's reputation for her own gain.
She was hit with a series of awkward questions when she went on BBC Radio 5
Live to promote the two-part doc, and she didn't exactly handle the criticism well, saying -
"Every time you open your mouth you get shot down.
I'm just thinking I'd like to go and live in a hole and be quiet."
Unsurprisingly, the backlash intensified after the show aired.
Royal fans the world over rejoiced when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
announced that they were expecting their first child in 2018, though the timing of
the announcement apparently didn't go down very well with one member of the family.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex reportedly revealed that they were going to be having a
baby during the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, and, as reported by The Sun,
the official announcement was followed by a, quote, "flurry of pointed tweets"
from the mother of the bride, Sarah Ferguson. The tabloid went onto note -
"By choosing the wedding day to share the news with their family,
the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will have broken an unwritten rule
of sharing big news at a wedding, and possibly taking attention away from the bride."
The Duchess of York began tweeting almost immediately after the official Kensington
Palace account broke news of the Sussex baby, praising her dress designer and
sending several messages of love and support to the newlyweds with no mention of the baby.
Meghan Markle has had more than her fair share of critics in the British press, but chief among them
is Piers Morgan. The journalist and TV personality stormed off the set of "Good Morning Britain"
when challenged by colleague Alex Beresford over his treatment of Markle after her
tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Immediately after, Morgan announced he was leaving the show.
Morgan later claimed that a certain member of the royal family was supporting him,
too. Morgan wrote in his Daily Mail column -
"'People have said how much they miss your morning joy and humour,' texted Sarah,
Duchess of York, 'get back out there!'"
Sarah Ferguson neither confirmed nor denied that
she had sent a message of support to Morgan. A few weeks later, it appeared as though an
olive branch was extended when Fergie praised Markle for writing her first children's book.
Sarah Ferguson has released dozens of books over the years, the vast majority of them
aimed at children. In January 2021, it was revealed that the duchess was venturing
into a new genre of fiction, inking a deal with the romance fiction publishers Mills
and Boon. Members of the press were left practically speechless when the news broke,
particularly because "Her Heart for a Compass" is based, in part, on Fergie's own life experiences.
The main character in "Her Heart for a Compass" is Ferguson's real life
great-great-aunt, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott. As she told Tatler -
"Digging into the history of the Montagu Douglas Scotts,
I first came across Lady Margaret, who intrigued me because she shared one of my
given names [...] I drew on many parallels from my life for Lady Margaret's journey."
Prince Andrew stepped back from public duties over his association with convicted sex offender
Jeffrey Epstein in 2019, though the royal's relationship with the American financier and
socialite dates back to the 1990s. As Town & Country noted, the press took another look into
the Duke of York's dealings with Epstein after his arrest on sex-trafficking charges and some quotes
from Sarah Ferguson soon resurfaced, part of a forgotten article published in The Telegraph in
2011. The article revealed that Fergie also had a financial relationship with Epstein,
who is said to have given the duchess thousands of dollars towards her debt.
Knowledge of Epstein's crimes were not as widespread back then, though,
as The Telegraph pointed out in its headline, it was known that he pleaded guilty to a felony
charge of solicitation of prostitution involving a minor. Ferguson told the British broadsheet -
"I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in
any way with me. [...] I am just so contrite I cannot say."
She went on to apologize to her ex husband, who she said had arranged the whole thing.
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