Meghan Markle is the second most disliked celebrity in America. The only person above her is a man in federal prison.
That’s according to Ranker’s crowd-sourced poll, where over 95,000 users have cast votes in real time. The list is live — rankings shift as votes come in. For most of 2025, Markle and Sean “Diddy” Combs have traded the top spot. Right now, he’s #1. She’s right behind him. By the time you’re reading this, she may have reclaimed it.
Diddy is in federal prison. He was convicted in July on two counts of transporting people across state lines for prostitution. Testimony at his trial included surveillance footage of him kicking and dragging his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura through a hotel hallway.
He got four years.
Meghan Markle left the royal family. She started a jam brand. She has a Netflix lifestyle show where, in one much-mocked segment, she transferred snacks from their original packaging into a clear plastic bag and tied it with a ribbon.
And yet.
On the same list, Bill Cosby — accused by over 60 women of sexual assault — ranks below her. So does Amber Heard. So does Ellen DeGeneres, who faced allegations of fostering a toxic workplace. Prince Harry, Meghan’s husband, sits at number six, making the Sussexes the only couple to both land in the top tier.
This isn’t about defending Meghan Markle. The criticism of her isn’t invented from nothing. Staff turnover at her organization has been constant — her 11th publicist in five years just departed. Former staff have described her to The Daily Beast as “a demon” with “psycho moments”, and to The Hollywood Reporter as “a dictator in high heels”. Whether those descriptions are fair or exaggerated is beside the point. The point is this:
When did being difficult to work for become worse than being a convicted abuser?
Ranker’s methodology doesn’t measure morality. It measures reaction. And Markle generates reaction like almost no one else — steady, sustained, and remarkably durable. She’s been in the top ten since 2023. Unlike Amber Heard, whose ranking has faded as she retreated from public life, Markle keeps showing up. New projects. New headlines. New opportunities to vote.
One commenter on Bored Panda put it plainly: “To have Meghan Markle more hated than P.Diddy or Bill Cosby is crazy work.” Another added: “I detest both the Sussexes… but I agree. They’re not rapists, paedophiles or have otherwise broken the law. As much as I would love to try and justify having Megs on the top of the list because I just intensely dislike her… she doesn’t deserve to be on the top of this list.”
That’s the strange part. Even people who don’t like her recognize something is off about this.
So what is it?
Maybe it’s that “disliked” isn’t really about harm. It’s about irritation — the kind that builds when someone keeps appearing in your feed, keeps winning awards you think they don’t deserve, keeps insisting on a title after leaving the institution that granted it. Meghan Markle doesn’t threaten anyone’s safety. But she seems to threaten something else — something harder to name.
Or maybe the poll tells us less about Meghan Markle than it does about the people voting. Hating her has become a hobby for some, a community for others. There are entire corners of the internet dedicated to parsing her body language, dissecting her outfits, and cataloging her alleged lies. The engagement is its own reward. The dislike sustains itself.
Diddy’s crimes were specific, provable, and finite. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced. There’s an endpoint. Meghan Markle’s offenses, whatever they are, seem to exist in an endless present tense. She’s always doing something — and for a certain audience, that something is always wrong.
The Ranker poll will keep updating. The votes will shift. But for now, the numbers say what they say: a woman who puts jam in jars is nearly as disliked as a man who put women through hell.
That’s not a defense of her. It’s not an attack on the people who voted. It’s just a question worth sitting with.
What, exactly, are we measuring?
