Meghan Markle Encouraged to Hire a 'Rent-a-Crowd' After Failing to Draw Fans to Swiss Speech and Australian Tour — 'She's Just a Laughingstock'
No fans lined the barricades to hear Meghan Markle's speech in Geneva.
May 19 2026, Published 2:45 p.m. ET
Meghan Markle has been advised by critics to hire "rent-a-crowd" for future appearances after the ex-royal failed to attract attendees to her recent speech in Switzerland, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The 44-year-old made the 18-hour round-trip flight from California to deliver a 10-minute speech in a Geneva plaza on May 17 about creating safer online spaces for children, but only a smattering of onlookers appeared interested in sitting through the lecture.
Fans Don't Turn Out for Meghan Markle Speech
People were seen pushing strollers and walking past Markle's speech.
Royal expert Tom Sykes made the trip to Geneva to witness the speech firsthand and estimated the crowd topped out at less than 100 people, with approximately 50 invited guests, including "random ministers" in town for a World Health Organization event.
"It didn't seem like a particularly starry crowd, let's put it that way," he shared on The Royalist podcast, adding there were "another kind of 50 people watching around the edge" and that Markle's speech "had almost no pickup in the global media, to be really honest. Virtually no international journalists had traveled there."
In video and photos of Markle's speech, there were numerous empty seats in the audience, while pedestrians and bicyclists breezed through the plaza as she spoke.
Barriers had been erected around the area in the Place des Nations, as only a handful of curious onlookers were seen pausing to check out what was going on.
No Crowds for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Faux-Royal Australia Tour
Prince Harry and Markle attracted some local media attention but few crowds on their recent Australian tour.
The low turnout came on the heels of Markle and her husband Prince Harry's recent pseudo-royal tour of Australia.
The two were humiliated when they turned up at the Sydney Opera House to find the plaza barricaded off to hold crowds back, only to discover there was no one there to welcome them.
It was a stark contrast to the throngs of well-wishers who packed the area in 2018, when the couple toured Australia as royal newlyweds.
The duo also failed to sell out separate paid speeches down under, despite only about 300 tickets being made available for the events.
Meghan Markle Is 'Just a Laughing Stock'
Despite giving her speech on a prominent plaza, Markle failed to attract and audience.
Markle's failure to draw crowds, both as part of a couple with Harry and as a solo star in Switzerland, led some users on X to claim she may need to pay people if she wants to pack a house.
"Dear Meghan Markle, for your next engagement, perhaps include 'rent a crowd' in the planning. Those wide-angle shots have been rather unforgiving lately," one user wrote along with side-by-side videos showing the lack of attendance in Geneva and Sydney.
"She won't go away, will she? She is relentless, though. She has to know by now how much she is despised internationally. How could she not know?!" a second person asked, while a third joked, "Don’t give them any ideas! AI, maybe next time?!"
"She's just a laughingstock!" a fourth sneered about Markle, who quit the royal family with Harry in 2020 in hopes of finding greater fame and fortune.
"Their name should bring a crowd if they truly had fans, and it’s clear no one likes them," a fifth person observed.
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Markle shared a video of Prince Harry presenting her with an anniversary cake following her poorly attended Switzerland event.
Some royal watchers speculated Markle might go all out on social media for her eighth wedding anniversary to Harry on May 19 to help erase the low turnout in Switzerland two days prior.
Not only did the Los Angeles native share multiple Instagram carousels featuring never-before-seen photos of their wedding and reception on her Instagram page, but Markle also included a video of Harry serenading her with a "Happy Anniversary" song while presenting her with a frosted lemon elderflower cake with candles on top for his wife to blow out.
