The distinction between Meghan Markle’s ‘fact’ and ‘the reality’ – as royal knowledgeable claims Duchess remains to be ‘enjoying a component’ eight years after quitting Suits

Before she married Prince Harry, Meghan Markle was best known for playing paralegal Rachel Zane on Suits. 

Her seven-season run on the smash-hit procedural remains Meghan’s only major acting credit as she quit Hollywood after her engagement to the Duke of Sussex was announced in 2017. 

Its influence on the Duchess of Sussex, 44, cannot be understated, according to royal expert Tom Quinn, since her years ‘acting may have deepened her need to tell “my truth” rather than “the truth”‘ about her life.  

In his book Gilded Youth, Mr Quinn suggested that Meghan wants ‘complete control’ over her public image and ‘seems to see living life as equivalent to playing a part’ in a movie or TV show. 

He pointed to Meghan’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey that was separately described as an ‘astonishing unburdening’ of family secrets not seen since Princess Diana’s Panorama interview. 

‘How do you feel about the Palace hearing you speak your truth today?’ Ms Winfrey asked the Duchess, who replied she and Harry needed to speak out against those who had ‘perpetuated falsehoods’ about the couple. 

It would later emerge that many of these ‘truths’ – from Meghan’s naivete about the Royal Family and the Sussexes’ secret ‘wedding’ to Princess Catherine ‘making Meghan cry’ over the flower girls’ dresses – were at least partially untrue. 

‘Whatever the objective truth, we are in the territory staked out in Meghan’s interview with her friend Oprah Winfrey,’ wrote Mr Quinn, ‘where the phrase “my truth”, like the phrase “alternative facts” can be used to legitimise any amount of factual inaccuracy.’

One of these ‘factual inaccuracies’ is believed to be Meghan’s assertion that she went into her relationship with Harry without any understanding or context about the British Royal Family. 

During her interview with Ms Winfrey, the Duchess claimed she knew ‘nothing’ about Prince Harry – a claim that he repeated in his memoir Spare when he noted ‘she definitely hadn’t Googled us’ before the couple’s first date at Soho House in London. 

Shortly after their engagement was announced, however, a photograph showing Meghan, then 15, posing outside Buckingham Palace with her childhood friend in 1996 was unearthed. 

Nanaki Priddy, who was photographed alongside Meghan, told the Daily Mail she has ‘always been fascinated’ by the royal family and dreamed of being ‘Princess Diana 2.0’.

Commenting on her engagement, Ms Priddy added: ‘I’m not shocked at all. It’s like she has been planning this all her life.’

Whether she knew about Prince Harry or not, Meghan was certainly aware of his older brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales.

A blog post from the Duchess’s now-defunct website The Tig revealed her feelings about royal princesses as she reflected on Prince William and Catherine’s wedding, writing: ‘Grown women seem to retain this childhood fantasy.

‘Just look at the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal wedding and endless conversation about Princess Kate.’  

 Her own nuptials were no less glamorous as Meghan walked down the aisle at St George’s Chapel in Windsor on May 19, 2018.   

The bride wore a custom Givenchy gown worth an estimated £200,000, and the diamond-encrusted Queen Mary Bandeau tiara valued at £2 million, as their televised wedding drew an audience of 17 million Brits. 

When she reflected on her big day during the Oprah interview, Meghan revealed she and Prince Harry actually ‘got married’ in secret three days prior. 

‘No one knows that,’ she told the broadcaster, before explaining how she and Prince Harry phoned Reverend Justin Welby, then Archbishop of Canterbury, and asked him to marry them in private before the Windsor ‘spectacle’. 

The couple revealed that they exchanged vows during the private backyard ceremony at Nottingham Cottage and have a photograph from that day framed in the bedroom of their Montecito mansion.

‘So, like, the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ she continued.

Harry then jokingly interjected by singing: ‘Just the three of us, just the three of us.’

Two weeks later, the General Registrar Office revealed their wedding certificate which showed they were officially married on May 19, 2018 at St George’s Chapel.

 Mr Welby also denied marrying the couple before the ‘legal wedding’, claiming he simply met with them ‘in a private and pastoral setting’ beforehand.

‘The legal wedding was on the Saturday,’ he told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper. ‘I signed the wedding certificate, which is a legal document, and I would have committed a serious criminal offence if I signed it knowing it was false.’

U-turning on their story, a spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex later told The Sun that the ceremony before the wedding only involved ‘privately exchanged personal vows’.

There are also a number of contradictions between Meghan’s version of the wedding preparations – including the selection of the tiara – and what others have said. 

In a film released in October 2018, the newly anointed Duchess said she was ‘very fortunate to be able to choose’ the Bandeau tiara since it was both ‘incredibly timeless’ yet ‘still modern’. 

She described an audience with the late Queen at Buckingham Palace on ‘what was an incredibly surreal day’ before finalising the glittering tiara for her bridal look. 

It was later reported that the Duchess actually had her ‘heart set’ on a completely different, emerald-encrusted tiara but was told she couldn’t wear it because the origin of the stones could not be determined. 

Meghan’s claim that she selected the ‘art deco bandeau tiara’ was also called into question when a royal insider relayed Queen Elizabeth’s stern warning to Prince Harry after his future wife’s tiara request was denied. 

‘She gets what tiara she’s given by me,’ the Queen is said to have told Harry. 

Meghan also addressed one of the biggest controversies to emerge in the run-up to the royal wedding when Ms Winfrey asked her to set the record straight about her and Princess Catherine’s infamous row about flower girl outfits. 

At the time, it was reported that Meghan left the future Queen ‘in tears’ over her ‘strict demands’ when it came to her daughter Princess Charlotte’s flower girl dress. But when speaking to Oprah, Meghan claimed that ‘the reverse happened’.

‘A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something pertaining – yes, the issue was correct – about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings,’ the Duchess explained. 

What was particularly upsetting, she continued, was ‘being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do but that happened to me’. 

Mr Quinn later clarified what really happened in his latest book, Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, which was released earlier this year.  

‘During the discussions about the bridesmaid’s dress, Meghan said a few things she regretted, and Kate said a few things she later regretted but it was all in the heat of the moment. 

‘Both women were crying their eyes out!’  

Meghan also told Ms Winfrey that she turned over her official documentation, including passport and driver’s licence, after her marriage, before the broadcaster said it sounded like she was ‘trapped’.

But royal experts have since questioned this, saying that the protocols were likely in place for her own protection.

Robert Finch, Dominion Chairman of The Monarchist League of Canada, said: ‘One assumes that Royals’ valuable personal documents are kept in a safe or safes – under the eye of the overall palace security. 

‘It sounds as if it fitted Meghan’s narrative of being trapped and isolated, but really it was routine, and probably anything would be accessible to her if she wanted it.’

While Meghan may not have seen her passport when she was on official royal tours as her equerry likely dealt with border security on her behalf, she would have certainly needed it when travelling for the various personal trips she made during her time as a working royal.

 In August 2018, actor George Clooney and his wife Amal sent a private jet to pick up Harry and Meghan for a party at his Lake Como villa, according to The Sun. 

The following February, Meghan jetted out to New York for her £300,000 baby shower before Prince Archie’s birth. 

In September 2019, she joined Prince Harry as they flew to Rome to attend fashion designer Misha Nonoo’s wedding. 

Since the Oprah interview, Meghan has been profiled for five magazine covers – including The Cut which in 2022 declared she was ‘ready for her next act’ after settling into life in California. 

A large portion of the cover story was dedicated to her time as a senior royal in London, however, as Meghan reflected on the significance of marrying into the British royal family as a mixed-race woman. 

Meghan recalled how she was at the 2019 London premiere of the live-action version of The Lion King when a ‘cast member from South Africa’ compared her and Prince Harry’s union to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. 

Days later, the only South African actor in the film production told the Daily Mail that he did not attend the Leicester Square premiere and has never met the Duchess.

Acclaimed thespian Dr John Kani, who voiced the mandrill shaman Rafiki, was ‘baffled’ by Meghan’s comments and suggested she had made a ‘faux pax’.

Dr Kani, who was a friend of the legendary anti-apartheid leader, added that Mandela’s walk to freedom after 27 years was a ‘landmark moment’ for South Africa, whereas Meghan and Harry’s wedding was ‘no big deal’.

The Daily Mail also reached out to the South African music composer who scored the 2019 live-action movie, but Lebohang Morake insisted he did not remember discussing Nelson Mandela with the royal couple.

Mr Morake, whose professional name is ‘Lebo M’, said he spoke to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for ‘less than a minute’ at the West End launch of the movie.

Representatives for the Duchess did not comment on Mr Kani’s claims at the time. The Cut declined to comment. 

Meghan also regurgitated another of her ‘truths’ during her most recent magazine profile when she recalled the ‘cinematic’ Los Angeles race riots of 1992 in comments that were branded ‘tone-deaf’. 

Meghan was living with her father Thomas Markle, now 81, at the time and told Harper’s Bazaar: ‘It was scary, but LA survived it.’ 

She described scenes of smoke, ash, and fire and recalled seeing ‘people running with boxes of diapers’ – but, according to Thomas, Meghan didn’t witness the worst of the riots. 

Royal author Tom Bower in 2022 revealed that Meghan’s father, by then divorced from her mother Doria, took immediate action to protect his ten-year-old daughter.

‘During the afternoon that the riots started he drove with her to Palm Springs,’ he wrote. 

‘There are serious doubts that Meghan saw any violence, not even the minor looting near the ABC studio (where Markle worked as a TV lighting engineer),’ Mr Bower wrote in his book Revenge. 

‘After five days, the curfew was lifted, and they returned to Los Angeles.’

When the late Queen commented on Meghan’s Oprah interview, she famously said ‘recollections may vary’ without perhaps realising how fitting it would continue to be in the years after her death.