During Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s early courtship, the Suits alum had a tall order ahead of her as meeting her boyfriend’s family also meant meeting the royals.
“It was all very pleasant,” the Duke of Sussex recalled of Meghan’s first meeting with Queen Elizabeth II in October 2016.
Harry and the “Archetypes” podcast host began dating that July before he drove her to the queen’s Royal Lodge in Windsor, England, for lunch. The twosome — who wed in May 2018 — were joined by Elizabeth, Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson, Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank.
Her Majesty — who died in September 2022 at the age of 96 — wanted to ask the California native about her opinion of former President Donald Trump’s first political campaign, Harry wrote in his 2023 memoir, Spare. Meghan, for her part, thought getting into a political conversation was a “no-win game,” and seemingly changed the subject to talk about her residence in Canada. (Meghan lived in Toronto while she filmed Suits.)
“Granny looked pleased. ‘Commonwealth. Good, fine,’” the Invictus Games cofounder recalled in his debut memoir, which hits shelves in January 2023, before noting that Elizabeth revealed her departure plans 20 minutes later. As the queen took the Duke of York’s arm to leave the room, she apparently turned back to say goodbye to her guests. “She locked eyes with Meg, gave a wave and a warm smile. ‘Bye,’” Harry wrote.
While Meghan impressed the long-reigning monarch during their first lunch, she “freaked out” Harry’s older brother, Prince William, by giving him a hug when they met face-to-face, the Invictus Games cofounder wrote in his book.
“He recoiled. Willy didn’t hug many strangers. Whereas Meg hugged most strangers,” Harry claimed, revealing that the Duke of Cornwall and wife Princess Kate had been “religious” viewers of Suits.
Meghan, for her part, previously recalled in Netflix’s 2022 docuseries Harry & Meghan that she met the Cambridges during an intimate Kensington Palace dinner.
“They came over for dinner, and I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot,” the Bench author said in the docuseries, which premiered in December 2022, before claiming Kate was caught off guard by her greeting. “I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger. I didn’t realize that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”
She continued: “I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside, that there is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and you go, ‘Oh, alright, OK, I can relax now.’ But that formality carries over on both sides, and that was surprising to me.”
Scroll below to read Harry’s account of introducing Meghan to the royals: