Prince Harry had something else to “worry about” upon witnessing Prince William and Kate Middleton’s reaction to his dating Meghan Markle. The Duke of Sussex revealed to his brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales, that he’d been seeing someone “new” in the months after he and his now-wife, the Duchess of Sussex, met in July 2016. Ahead, how William and Kate’s reaction “baffled” Harry.
Harry’s ‘new woman in my life’ comment to William and Kate
In his best-selling memoir Spare, which hit shelves on Jan. 10, 2023, Harry recounted telling William and Kate about his new girlfriend, Meghan.
“They knew something was going on with me, and they wanted to find out what it was,” he wrote, sharing that at the time, in late September/early October 2016, he “wasn’t sure” if he “was ready to tell them.”
However, after dinner, with William and Kate’s children Prince George and Princess Charlotte “tucked into bed, the moment felt right.”
“I casually mentioned that there was … a new woman in my life,” Harry recalled. “They surged forward. ‘Who is she?’ ‘I’ll tell you, but please, please, please, I need you both to keep it a secret’.
“Yes, Harold, yes, yes — who is it?” William and Kate asked.
Harry realized he’d ‘been worrying about the wrong thing’ upon seeing William and Kate’s ‘mouths’ fall ‘open’ in shock
Harry continued, recalling how when he finally revealed Meghan’s identity, William and Kate were beside themselves.
“She’s an actress … She’s American …On a show called Suits,” Harry said. “Their mouths fell open. They turned to each other. Then Willy turned to me and said: ‘F*** off! No way … Impossible!”
The now-father of two explained his immediate response was to be “baffled.” That is “until Willy and Kate explained that they were regular — nay, religious — viewers of Suits.”
Meghan played the role of Rachel Zane, a paralegal turned lawyer, and Mike Ross’s (Patrick J. Adams) love interest.
“Great, I thought, laughing. I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing,” Harry wrote. “All this time I’d thought Willy and Kate might not welcome Meg into the family. But now I had to worry about them hounding her for an autograph.”
Meghan’s acting career ‘clouded’ the royal family’s ‘judgment,’ according to Harry
Despite William and Kate being big Suits fans, Meghan’s career as an actor became a “problem” when she met the royal family. Looking back on the introduction in Netflix’s Harry & Meghan, the Duke of Sussex explained Meghan’s being an actor “clouded” some of his relatives’ “judgment.”
“I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed,” Harry said. “Some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves. Because, I think, they were surprised. They were surprised that a ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman.”
“But the fact I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else at the beginning,” he continued. “‘Oh, she’s an American actress; this won’t last.’”
“The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough,” Meghan, who has no plans to return to her past career, added. “There is a big idea of what that looks like from the U.K. standpoint — Hollywood — and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.”
