On Easter Sunday, the Duchess of Sussex posted an adorable video of a mother duck and her ducklings. In the sweet video, Meghan is seen off to the side, watching the mama duck waddle across the Sussexes’ driveway, with all of the little ducklings following. Meghan didn’t make any claims about when the video was filmed or anything, she just posted it with a “happy Easter” message and left it at that. Ever since she posted it, the British and Australian media has been crashing out. Like, they’ve invented two dozen “conspiracies” about ducks, I sh-t you not. For several days, this has been one of the top stories at the Daily Mail: “Internet conspiracy theorists accuse Meghan Markle of ‘staging’ her Easter duckling video after noticing key detail.” The key detail? The position of the camera!
Internet conspiracy theorists have accused Meghan Markle of ‘staging’ a sweet Easter video that shows her watching a flock of ducks crossing a road in Montecito. The Duchess of Sussex, 43, looked overjoyed on Easter Sunday when she was filmed reacting to the adorable mother duck and her seven ducklings waddling together as a pack by a woodland.
Meghan, who was dressed in an elegant white sleeveless midi frock for the occasion, observed the animal waiting for its young in the middle of the road as she watched in, visibly open-mouthed that she was able to experience a special moment on Easter, as hatched ducklings are symbolic of spring and new life – and, therefore, strongly associated with the holiday. She captioned the post, ‘An Easter weekend surprise’, and added the message, ‘Wishing you a Happy Easter full of love….and surprises!’
The short clip was posted on the mother-of-three’s Instagram account and has since racked up more than five million views.
But some viewers weren’t convinced that the Duchess came across the ducks by chance, with some claiming she had ‘set up’ the video after saying the camera is ‘set up in the centre of the shot’. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one person wrote: ‘You just know this was a set up. Poor ducks had to be filmed with Megs. She just happened to be there with a cameraman when the ducks crossed. Sure!!!’
Another penned: ‘Oh look the camera is set up to have Meghan right in the centre of the shot and the ducks are slightly off camera. She literally just got dolled up for that five seconds of just herself with some ducks’
A third said: ‘Oh I don’t believe her, it’s a scam, the ducks were brought in to record Markle’s ad.’
GB News, Sky News Australia and multiple other outlets ran similar versions of the “Meghan staged the duck video” story. My God. Have none of these people ever encountered ducks before? They’ve never seen a mother duck and her ducklings cross a street or a driveway? My guess is that Meghan and Harry (or someone else at the house) already saw the ducks somewhere on the Montecito property, so Harry took out his phone and they were already tracking the ducks to see where they would go next. I say Harry because we know he’s a bird-watcher and he seems like the one who would have been aware that some ducklings were on the property. Anyway, it’s funny that the duck video already has millions of views. The Princess of Wales’ “Scouts walkabout” video only has 63K views. Hahahaha.
Meghan watching mama duck and her ducklings walking around
pic.twitter.com/tVRPgtb4Yx
— Katerina
(@Le__Katerina) April 20, 2025
This is footage I shot with my phone when I was going on a walk a few years ago.
So to all the people saying Meghan faked the duck video you need to understand you can stage many things but not the behaviour of animals in the wild.
Stop being so vile about an adorable videopic.twitter.com/B48ek093mc
— Lorraine King (@lorrainemking) April 21, 2025
Photos courtesy of Instagram, Netflix.
