Meghan Markle’s BFF seen ‘laughing’ backstage as Chris Rock mocks racism claims

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Janina Gavankar, one of Meghan Markle’s longtime pals, was spotted laughing backstage at Chris Rock’s live Netflix show as the comedian roasted the Duchess of Sussex Saturday night.

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During his special, which was titled Selective Outrage, Rock sounded off on a number of topics, including the infamous Oscars slap, woke and cancel culture, the Capitol Riots, abortion, the Kardashian clan, Beyonce, our incessant need for attention and Meghan’s claim that she didn’t know about racism in the royal family when she sat down with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.

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“You didn’t Google these motherf—ers?” he asked. “What the f— is she talking about, she didn’t know? It’s the royal family! They’re the original racists. They invented colonialism. They are the OG’s of racism … They invested in slavery like it was Shark Tank.”

Some of Meghan’s issues with the royal family were not racist, the 58-year-old comedian continued. “Sometimes it’s just some in-law s—. She’s complaining … ‘Oprah they’re so racist, they wanted to know how brown the baby was going to be’ … that’s not racist … even Black people want to know how brown the baby is going to be.”

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Gavankar, who has staunchly defended Markle in the past, was spotted enjoying the jokes backstage with comedian Dave Chapelle in the VIP Green Room at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theater.

“Janina looked to be enjoying the show very much, she was standing up by the TV screens and laughing,” one eyewitness told Page Six.

According to Page Six, Rock’s Markle dig has been a regular part of his stand-up show and so it wasn’t an unexpected joke in his hour-long set.

In a 2021 interview with Winfrey, Meghan and her husband Prince Harry claimed a member of the royal family shared “concerns” about how “dark” their son Archie’s skin would be.

Buckingham Palace issued a response on the allegations calling the issues around race “concerning.”

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Gavankar later said that “the family and staff were well aware of the extent of it.”

“We’re all happy we are in a new era. You know, we get to tell the truth. Things are different now,” Gavankar said during an interview with Britain’s This Morning.

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“Didn’t she hit the light-skinned lottery,” Rock asked about Meghan. “And she’s still going off complaining?”

After months of silence on Will Smith’s shocking assault against him at the 94th Academy Awards, Rock also took aim at the infamous Oscar winner, who stormed onstage and slapped him after he made a joke about the actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Telling the crowd that Smith’s slap left him hearing “Summertime ringing in my ears”, Rock blamed Pinkett Smith’s “entanglements” for the actor’s outburst.

“His wife was f—ing her son’s friend. I normally would not talk about this s— … But for some reason, [they] put that s— on the Internet. We all been cheated on. Everybody in here’s been cheated on. None of us have ever been interviewed by the person that cheated on us on television. ‘Hey, I was sucking somebody’s d—. How did that make you feel?’” Rock said, referencing the couple’s decision to publicly address infidelity in their relationship on a Red Table Talk episode.

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“He played Muhammed Ali,” Rock further scolded. “I played Pookie in New Jack City.”

He added that her extramarital relationship with singer August Alsina “hurt [Smith] way more than he hurt me.”

“I love Will Smith. Now I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped,” Rock jabbed.

But despite the slap, Rock said he’s “not a victim.”

“You will never see me on Oprah or Gayle crying. You will never see it. Never going to happen,” Rock said.

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