Meghan

by Andrew Morton

  Thanks to Meghan’s dedicated selling and her star power, the Meghan Markle Collection virtually sold out on day one. Eat your heart out, Kate Moss. Meghan was thrilled especially as the company were so enthused about sales that her second capsule collection, to be released in the fall of 2016, was a done deal.

  The actor barely had time to finish her glass of bubbly before she was one of the celebrity guests at luncheon to honor ten game-changing women under the age of twenty-five. Meghan along with Olympic athletes and successful internet startup founders were designated mentors of the finalists at the fifty-ninth anniversary of the Glamour College Women of the Year. Now a grizzled veteran, Meghan was asked about the most common misconception about college girls. “You realize there is so much depth, there is so much incredible inspiration, and that young women are thinking outside of the box in a way that we haven’t seen before. It is the biggest sign that we are in good hands, that our world is going to be just fine, and that these are the women who are going to be the players changing the game.”

  She wasn’t so confident of the future a couple of weeks later when she agreed to appear on Comedy Central and join a panel discussion on Larry Wilmore’s The Nightly Show.

  With the presidential election just six months away and Republican candidates dropping like flies, Donald Trump looked like the front-runner. On the night she appeared, his endless attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, calling her “sick” and “overrated,” had finally engendered a response from the Republican-leaning channel. In a statement backing Kelly, they said: “Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks against Megyn Kelly and his extreme, sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate who wants to occupy the highest office in the land.”

  Wilmore asked his guests: “Do you think the momentum surrounding Mr. Trump could be stopped?” Meghan joined in the banter with the host and his correspondents, laughing wryly, “It’s really the moment that I go, we film Suits in Toronto and I might just stay in Canada. I mean, come on, if that’s reality we are talking about, come on, that is a game changer in terms of how we move in the world here.”

  A few minutes later she jumped in to make other points, “Yes, of course Trump is divisive. Think about just female voters alone. I think it was in 2012, the Republican Party lost the female vote by twelve points. That’s a huge number.” She went on to label Trump a “misogynist” and suggested that voting for Hillary Clinton was made easier because of the moral fiber of the man she was up against. “Trump has made it easy to see that you don’t really want that kind of world that he’s painting,” she argued.

  It would not be long before Trump’s long shadow would affect her life in ways that she could never have contemplated even in her wildest dreams.

  9

  When Harry Met Meghan

  Sometimes timing is everything. If Meghan Markle had met the man standing before her, casually dressed, hand outstretched in greeting, a couple of years earlier, she would have smiled, made friendly small talk, and moved on. Prince Harry would not have impressed—except as an anecdote to tell her friends.

  Of course she would have noticed his ginger hair and beard—her father, half brother, and former husband, Trevor Engelson, are all strawberry blonds—and that at 6 foot 1 he is not far off her father’s height, although skinnier and fitter, with the rangy, loping gait of a young man who’s spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. But Meghan would have found the early Harry hard work, something of a lost soul.

  Looking back, Harry would be the first to admit that during his twenties, his life had descended in to “total chaos,” the prince struggling to process the black cloud of grief that had enveloped his life since the moment he had been awakened from his bed in Balmoral in the summer of 1997 and was told that his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, had died in a car accident.

  Though millions of tears had been shed as people around the globe watched the prince, then only twelve, walk behind his mother’s coffin in the televised funeral, only he had been left to pick up the pieces of his life. Not even his brother, Prince William—sober, pragmatic and sensible—had been able to reach him at times.

  Without a mother, without a steadying, nurturing influence in his life, Harry had gone off the rails. He became notorious as an angry drunk who lurched out of London nightclubs, ready to throw a punch at the loathsome paparazzi who dogged his every footstep. For years he was carefully protected by highly paid public relations professionals who smoothed over his public escapades. So when, in February 2004, Harry was branded a “horrible young man” by influential columnist Carol Sarler over his late-night escapades, Prince Charles’s communications director, Paddy Harverson, swung into action, defending the prince’s behavior during this gap year.

  Harry flew to Lesotho and was photographed with an orphan named Mutsu Potsane, Harry speaking of his deep shock about the impact of AIDS on the country. The trip was followed up by royal aides helpfully releasing a letter he wrote to patients in a hospital unit dealing with the victims of rape and abuse. It was a classic public relations exercise, using Harry’s evident personal qualities—an easygoing manner, fundamental decency, and sense of fun—together with his mother’s humanitarian legacy to project a different narrative about a young man best known for his nightclubbing.

  For many years this was the go-to template for the prince, any nighttime indiscretions more than compensated for by his charity work and his life as a professional soldier, serving for a time in Afghanistan before training to fly Apache helicopters. In Prince Harry’s world there has always been someone to do the sweeping up. When he dressed up in a Nazi uniform for a Colonials and Natives fancy dress party shortly before Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005, his minders accepted that it was a “poor choice of costume” but that there was no malice in his decision. Similarly, when he was caught on video referring to a fellow officer cadet at Sandhurst as “our dear little Paki friend” and another as looking like a “raghead,” a pejorative term for an Arab, once again his PR minder Paddy Harverson came to the rescue.

  If Meghan had been in his life at that time, she would not have been impressed by his casual racism. Nor were others. “He was a very lost young man,” a former royal official told me. “Harry was deeply troubled, unhappy, and immature, imbued with the slanted, quietly racist views of those from his class and background.”

  Perhaps the low point in Harry’s party lifestyle came in 2012, when he was pictured cavorting naked in a Las Vegas hotel room during a game of strip billiards with a bunch of strangers, some of whom had camera phones and uploaded his antics for the startled world to watch. “Too much army not enough prince,” was his rueful response.

  In spite of the uproar, by and large the prince retained the affection of the public, who instinctively sympathized with the emotional difficulties he and his brother had gone through with their parents’ bitter divorce and their mother’s untimely death. The difference was that William’s more grounded temperament and later on having the support of a sensible and stable wife helped to see him through the dark nights of the soul. The younger brother found a curious respite from his demons and a sense of purpose during his time in the Army. He is not the first nor will he be the last person who has been given direction and discipline by the military.

  One episode in particular has had a profound impact on the course of his life. At the end of his first tour of duty in 2008, on a flight home from Afghanistan, he traveled with the coffin of a dead Danish soldier, which had been loaded on board by his friends, and with three British troops all in induced comas who were being transported with their missing limbs, wrapped in plastic.

  “The way I viewed service and sacrifice changed forever,” he recalled. “I knew it was my responsibility to use the great platform that I have to help the world understand and be inspired by the spirit of those who wear the uniform.” That flight set him on the trajectory that would culminate in the Invictus Games. His mother would have been proud.

  The p
rince’s idea was to combine his royal connections, his lifelong interest in the Armed Forces, and his passion for humanitarian causes into one focused event. The Invictus Games are an international multisport jamboree in which sick, wounded, or injured servicemen and women compete in a variety of sports, such as indoor rowing and wheelchair basketball. In September 2014, after a year of planning and meetings, the first games, which involved three hundred army personnel from around the world, were held in London. The games were a triumph, giving the prince, who was due to leave the army in 2015, new focus and impetus. He was fully committed to using his unique position to help and encourage those who were at the sharp end of modern warfare, veterans who had been damaged and injured but who were prepared to fight on, albeit on a basketball or tennis court. The Invictus Games were the making of Harry. “Since then he has become the man he is today,” observes a former royal courtier. “It has not been an easy process. He has become more open and developed into someone who genuinely cares about social issues.”

  The experience opened up something in Harry, and increasingly, he became happy to talk about his personal hopes and dreams, too. His conversations, public and private, were peppered with talk of the princely problem of finding a partner, of settling down and raising a family. It was clear that he had reached a crossroads in his life and that his days of sowing wild oats were coming to an end. As the rest of his friends were settling down and starting families, it seemed that Prince Harry was in danger of becoming the last man standing. He had seen his brother enjoying the simple joys of family life and wanted that experience for himself.

  At a birthday party in February 2016, he told TV presenter Denise Van Outen: “I’m not dating and for the first time ever I want to find a wife.” It became a familiar refrain. Three months later when he was in Orlando, Florida, for the Invictus Games, he again brought up the subject of love and marriage. “At the moment my focus is very much on work, but if someone slips into my life then that’s absolutely fantastic. I am not putting work before the idea of family and marriage. I just haven’t had that many opportunities to get out there and meet people.”

  The difficulty of finding someone “willing to take me on” was an issue that was always at the back of his mind every time he met someone new. Were they attracted to him for his personality or his title? As one of his friends pointed out: “You have to be a very special girl to want to be a princess.”

  As Meghan Markle nestled back in her seat in preparation for landing at Heathrow Airport, she had love and marriage on her mind. The actor was returning from a long weekend on the Greek island of Hydra, once home to the lugubrious poet and singer Leonard Cohen. It had been several days of wine, red mullet, hummus, and incredible yoga moves as Meghan; her best friend from college, Lindsay Jill Roth; and Lindsay’s bridesmaids discussed wedding dresses, veils, flowers, the past, and the future. Her relationship with celebrity chef Cory Vitiello had ended recently, withered on the vine as both their lives became busier and busier, and Meghan relished time away from Toronto and the house they had shared there.

  As matron of honor to Lindsay, who since leaving Northwestern had embarked on a career as a TV producer and novelist, Meghan had taken her role very seriously, considerately organizing the bachelorette party on this beautiful Greek resort island rather than some raucous downtown club. “There is something wholly cathartic about being able to turn it all off—to sunbathe with no one watching, swim, eat copious amounts and toast to the day,” she wrote in her blog, The Tig. The mini vacation was a triumph, as was her earlier surprise invitation asking Lindsay to Toronto, where she had arranged a wedding dress fitting at the upmarket Kleinfeld Hudson’s Bay bridal boutique (its New York sister store was made famous by the TV show Say Yes to the Dress) with the help of another of her great friends, Jessica Mulroney, who worked in public relations for the bridal shop. Lindsay, who was marrying a British actuary, viewed a selection of dresses and fell in love with a wedding gown from fashionable Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad, who has dressed many of the Hollywood’s elite, including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Katy Perry.

  Having executed her duties as the impeccable bridesmaid, once she arrived in London Meghan now went looking for her own prince charming.

  With more than 300,000 Twitter followers, a morning breakfast show, and a friendship with then Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Simon Cowell, media royalty Piers Morgan was a favorable catch for an up-and-coming actor seeking her name in headlines. After all, her week-long visit to London was mainly to promote the upcoming season of Suits and to dress to impress at Wimbledon, where her sponsor Ralph Lauren held (center) court.

  Already Twitter buddies who had enjoyed an energetic back-and-forth online, she contacted Piers on June 29 while she was sitting in the stands watching her friend, tennis legend Serena Williams, at Wimbledon. She suggested they meet. They arranged an early evening drink at his local pub, the Scarsdale Tavern in Kensington. Piers was a Suits aficionado, but this was the first time he had met “Rachel Zane” in the flesh. He recalled: “She looked every inch the Hollywood superstar—very slim, very leggy, very elegant, and impossibly glamorous.” Or as the landlord put it, “a stunner.”

  As she sipped a dirty martini they chatted about Suits, her background, her days as a briefcase girl, gun control in America, her passion for calligraphy, women’s rights, and her one-time ambition to be a TV presenter. Piers was duly flattered and impressed; “Fabulous, warm, funny, intelligent, and highly entertaining,” he later recalled. “She seemed real, too. Not one of those phony actress types so prevalent in California.”

  At eight o’clock, she left for her dinner date at the private members’ club 5 Hertford Street amid a flurry of texts, observing that she was recently single, “out of practice” with the dating scene and trying to fend off “persistent men.”

  Was Meghan leaving a media prince to meet the real thing? Though Piers has a track record as a celebrity Cupid—I was at the lunch where he first introduced Paul McCartney to Heather Mills, whom he later married—it is doubtful a woman as socially careful and perkily camera ready as Meghan would have downed a couple of stiff martinis before meeting the queen’s grandson.

  Professionally, the reason for her visit to London in the first place was to promote the new season of Suits and designer Ralph Lauren. Her big day was June 30, so she had to be bright eyed, bushy tailed, and ready for another afternoon of dazzling smiles—and the odd glass of champagne.

  With her networking hat on, Meghan was working closely with Violet von Westenholz, a Ralph Lauren PR executive, who had organized her “Suits Day” and her marketing efforts on behalf of the RL fashion brand. “How much more can I adore this gem,” an effusive Meghan wrote of her new bestie. It’s worth noting that not only is Violet a well-connected fashion maven but her father, Baron Piers von Westenholz, an upmarket interior designer, is a friend of Prince Charles while her sister, Victoria, was once seen as a possible match for Prince Harry.

  For years Violet and Victoria had joined Princes Charles, William, and Harry on their annual skiing trips to Switzerland. While she has been modest about her matchmaking skills—“I might leave that for other people to say,” she told the Daily Telegraph—it seems likely that she set up Meghan and Harry on their famous blind date timed to coincide with his return from a World War One commemoration in France.

  Meghan has always been very careful to emphasize that they met in July, insisting that Vanity Fair magazine, which had published a flattering article about her, print a correction when they indicated that the couple first met in May 2016 in Toronto. If Violet had the royal connections, then Meghan’s friend Canadian-born Markus Anderson, the brand ambassador for the exclusive Soho House, who had just returned from a holiday in Madrid with Meghan, was on hand to rustle up a private room at the members’ only club for an intimate evening away from prying eyes.

  The scene was set, Cupid’s arrow was aquiver, and the stars, as Harry observed during his engage
ment interview, were aligned. Not that Meghan had much of an opinion about the man she was about to meet. When she was asked during a TV quiz to choose between William and Harry, she appeared nonplussed and the presenter had to encourage her to choose the prince who was still single. Meghan, it appeared, preferred the actor Dennis Quaid, in any case.

  Harry had his work cut out. That said, Meghan was meeting a very different Harry from the young man who made a profession of falling out of bars. On July 1, he had just returned from France, where he had joined the then prime minister David Cameron, Prince Charles, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and other dignitaries at a service to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest day of warfare in British history. At an evening vigil for the fallen, Harry had read “Before Action,” a poem penned by Lieutenant W. N. Hodgson, who died in action the following day. The event had been a somber and moving reminder of the enormity of that day. And Harry returned in sober spirits.

  Meghan was meeting a grown-up, a man with focus and resolve, a sense of who he was and what he could achieve. She had asked her friends before their meeting if he was kind and nice, and the answer lay in his blue eyes. As they say in the movies, they had each other at “hello.” She was immediately sensitive to him, aware that this was a man who, beneath the banter and the surface chatter, was looking for a safe harbor. The question she asked herself after that first intoxicating meeting was could she provide it—and all that entailed.

  They were mesmerized by one another, Harry enthralled by her beauty, sophistication, and perceptiveness. She understood him as a man, not a title. In that subtle one-upmanship of a first date, he realized that while his grandmother might be the queen, Meghan had given a speech at a UN forum. As he subsequently confessed, he realized that he would have to up his game.