The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are all but estranged from the Prince and Princess of Wales – but there was a time that the two women seemed to be developing a friendship
It’s no secret that the Princess of Wales and Meghan Markle aren’t close. Despite Prince Harry’s attempts to reconcile with the royal family, the gulf between the Duke and his older brother William is bigger than ever. And it seems there is no love lost between their wives, either.
But that wasn’t always the case. Meghan previously had nothing but kind words to say about Princess Kate during a rare interview with Harry.
Prior to the Sussexes’ decision to quit royal life and air all their grievances in public, it seemed the ‘Fab Four’ would be close.
Meghan and Harry announced their engagement in November 2017 in an official statement from Clarence House, before sitting down for an interview with ex BBC journalist Mishal Husain.
And during the conversation, Meghan praised the Royal Family, the Queen and her future sister-in-law Kate for all being so welcoming.
Describing how there was a period of time where they kept their romance under wraps, Harry said Prince William was desperate to meet his girlfriend.
He said: “William was longing to meet [Meghan] and so was Catherine, so you know, being our neighbours, we managed to get that in quite a few times now and Catherine has been absolutely -“
Meghan interrupted Harry mid-sentence to describe Kate as “wonderful”. However, the Duchess later went on to claim there was one major difference between herself and Kate from the very start.
In her Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, after the couple’s self-exile from royal life, the Duchess said: “Even when Will and Kate came over and I was meeting her for the first time I remember I was in ripped jeans, I was barefoot. Like I was a hugger, I have always been a hugger I didn’t realise that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.
“I started to understand 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 think ‘OK, we can relax now’. But that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me.”
In his 2023 memoir, Spare, Harry expanded on Meghan’s account of her first meeting with Kate, describing how both she and William had seemed to like his future wife after introducing them at dinner.
“We’d had them over for dinner during one of Meg’s visits, and Meg cooked, and everything was good,” he wrote. “Willy had a cold: he was sneezing and coughing, and Meg ran upstairs to get him some of her homeopathic cure-alls.
“Oregano oil, turmeric. He seemed charmed, moved, though Kate announced to the table that he’d never take such unconventional remedies.”
Harry added: “The only possibly discordant note I could think of was the marked difference in how the two women dressed, which both of them seemed to notice,” he said. “Meg: ripped jeans, barefoot. Kate: done up to the nines. No big deal, I thought.”
Elsewhere in their Netflix series, Meghan also hit out at their engagement interview, likening it to an “orchestrated reality show.” She claimed she was told to “show the ring” and said, “We weren’t allowed to tell our story.”
Mishal Husain, who conducted the interview, responded to Meghan’s comments in Saga magazine, saying, “When the Duchess of Sussex said that my engagement interview with her and Harry was an ‘orchestrated reality show’ I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular. There was nothing that pointed to what would happen. It was two people who were full of joy in each other and life.”
Just five months after the interview, Meghan and Harry got married on May 19, 2018, with many royals and celebrity friends present. Less than two years later, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex shocked fans as they announced their decision to step down from the royal family.
