Andrew Morton publishes new biography of Meghan Markle ahead of royal wedding
THE inside story of how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s cover was blown has been revealed in a new book. Here are the best bits from inside.
Books
Don't miss out on the headlines from Books. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE man behind an explosive biography of Princess Diana in which she revealed her unhappiness inside her marriage to Prince Charles has published a new book on Meghan Markle, available in Australia this week.
Meghan, A Hollywood Princess, recounts the life of the newest member of the royal family, from growing up in California to climbing the ranks of Hollywood and falling in love with Prince Harry.
While Mr Morton did not speak to Meghan herself for the book, it is based on interviews with friends and former teachers. Here are the best bits from inside:
***
BABY “BUD” ARRIVES
The arrival of Rachel Meghan Markle transformed her father’s life. ‘He was just so, so happy,’ recalls [half-brother] Tom Junior. ‘He spent every single minute he could with her. My dad was more in love with her than with anyone else in the world and that included Doria. She became his whole life, his little princess. He was just blown away by Meghan.
HER HUMANITARIAN STREAK
By the time she was 10, Meghan was fiercely switched on and loved to debate an issue, taking part in discussions about racism in America, most notably after the notorious beating of Rodney King by LA cops in 1991, the Gulf War that same year and the build-up to the 1992 presidential contest between Bill Clinton and George Bush.
Her most memorable coup was when she wrote to the household products company Procter & Gamble for making a sexist commercial that used the tag line “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans” to sell its dishwashing liquid.
More than 20 years later, in 2015, Meghan reflected on this chapter of her life while giving a speech as the newly minted UN Women’s Advocate for Political Participation and
Leadership. “It was at that moment that I realised the magnitude of my actions. At the age of 11, I had created my small level of impact by standing up for equality,” she said.
ON BEING BI-RACIAL
When she was in seventh grade she was asked to fill in a form during an English class, on which one of the questions related to her racial background. There was no box for bi-racial.
Instead, she put her pen down and left the box empty, not wanting to offend one of her parents. “So, I didn’t tick a box,” she later recalled. “I left my identity blank — a question mark, an absolute incomplete — much like how I felt.” When she discussed her experience with her father that night she could feel his impotent fury wanting to protect his daughter. He told her: “If that happens again, you draw your own box.”
‘DIANA 2.0’
She and her friends watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in early September 1997, tears coursing down their cheeks at the poignant moment when the cameras zoomed in on the royal coffin. Perched among the white flowers was an envelope with the one word, “Mummy”, containing Prince Harry’s last note to his beloved mother.
Inspired by the princess, she and her friend Suzy collected clothes and toys for less privileged children. In fact, such was her interest in the princess that Suzy’s mother Sonia even gave her a copy of my biography, Diana: Her True Story, which remained on her bookshelves for the next few years. As her childhood friend Ninaki Priddy observed: ‘She was always fascinated by the royal family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0.”
A STRUGGLING ACTOR
Like other girls doing the rounds, she had a gym bag containing the essential wardrobe for every possible part she might be called for: red for feisty Latina, pastels for the girl next door, mustard yellow for African-American. Short skirts, long skirts, blazer, bikini and tops; everything she needed was in her trusty tote. As she acknowledged, being ethnically “ambiguous” allowed her to go for virtually any role.
“Sadly, it didn’t matter,” she later wrote for Elle magazine. “I wasn’t black enough for the black roles and I wasn’t white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn’t book a job.”
‘BRAND MEGHAN’
For a girl who would end up living her life on Instagram, it is remarkable, too, that she never posed for a silly picture, mugging for the cameras like the rest of her colleagues. Meghan knew her angles — after all, she had been taught by the best, her father — and always posed sweetly. If caught with a drink in her hand, it was only ever champagne, and she was never heard to swear.”
ON HOLIDAY PEEPING TOMS
She vividly remembers the extraordinary night [she and former husband, Trevor] pulled up at a campsite in Akaroa, a tiny village surrounding a dead volcano. As she later recalled when she talked to ZM radio in New Zealand: “I was washing my hair and I hear something and I open the shower curtain and there is this 13-year-old boy who had crawled under the stall and was trying to steal my underwear. I grabbed my towel and I had shampoo in my hair and I yelled, ‘Where is your mother?’ I found his parents and they were mortified of course. And to this day, oh my God, that kid will be sitting at home going, ‘That’s the girl from Suits, I saw her naked!’”
THE ‘MEGHAN CHILL’
What once endeared, now irritated. Meghan, a self-confessed perfectionist who was as fastidious as she was controlling, had tolerated Trevor’s scattered approach to life for years. He was notorious for arriving late, his clothes rumpled, his hair dishevelled, and often as not with a new stain on his seersucker jacket. “Sorry bro,” was a constant refrain as he hurtled from meeting to meeting, always just behind the clock.
He was not the only one experiencing the Meghan chill. Her friends in Los Angeles noticed the change in her now that she was on the way up. She no longer had the time for friends she had known for years, cancelling lunches at short notice or expecting them to rework their own schedules to accommodate the busy life of the rising star. A networker to her fingertips, she seemed to be carefully recalibrating her life, forging new friendships with those who could burnish and develop her career.
MARRIAGE BREAKUP
Trevor went from cherishing Meghan to, as one friend observed, “feeling like he was a piece of something stuck to the bottom of her shoe”. A wealthy entrepreneur friend claimed that the marriage ended so abruptly that Meghan sent Trevor her diamond wedding and engagement rings back to him by registered mail. Another confirmed that the decision to end the marriage was made by Meghan and that it had come “totally out of the blue”.
The breakup also fractured her 30-odd-year friendship with jewellery designer Ninaki Priddy. After listening to Trevor’s side of the story, she decided she no longer wished to associate herself with Meghan. Exactly why is a close-kept secret. As she described it in the Daily Mail: “All I can say now is that I think Meghan was calculated, very calculated, in the way she handled people and relationships. She is very strategic in the way she cultivates circles of friends. Once she decides you’re not part of her life, she can be very cold. It’s this shutdown mechanism she has. There’s nothing to negotiate, she’s made her decision, and that’s it … The way she handled it, Trevor definitely had the rug pulled out from under him. He was hurt.”
MEETING PRINCE HARRY
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 harbour. The question she asked herself after that first intoxicating meeting was, could she provide it — and all that entailed?
They were mesmerised 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 realised that while his grandmother might be the Queen, Meghan had given a speech at a United Nations forum. As he subsequently confessed, he realised that he would have to up his game.
At the end of the evening, they said their goodnights and went their separate ways, he to Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace, she to a room at the Dean Street Townhouse in Soho. Both were buzzing. As she relived that fateful evening in her mind, she perhaps wondered if she had been too eager to accept his invitation to meet again the following day. Stay classy, Ms Markle.
INTO AFRICA
There may have been a slight raising of eyebrows inside the royal palaces when the news percolated through that Prince Harry was taking yet another girlfriend on a safari holiday to Botswana. Those who monitor these things would have noted that this was his seventh holiday in Botswana with the fourth female companion to join him for a few romantic nights under the stars in a southern African hideaway. The young man certainly had style.
MORE: Prince Harry’s signature move
During the days, the couple were able to choose from walking tours or day-long safaris deep into the Kalahari Desert. Along the banks of the river, crocodiles are a common sight, while sharp-eyed visitors can occasionally see lions and cheetahs. After a dusty safari the couple could relax in the natural rock swimming pool overlooking the river — crocodiles excluded.
It was here, in this natural idyll, that the couple cemented their relationship, both of them realising that they had found something special. As Harry later described: “It was absolutely
amazing to get to know her as quickly as I did.”
COVER IS BLOWN
Overnight Meghan Markle went from being a moderately well-known actor to one of the most famous people on the planet. When the story became public, Harry was staying with Meghan in Toronto. After he took a call from [royal press officer] Jason Knauf to tell him their cover had been blown, he and Meghan poured themselves a glass of wine and toasted each other. But the celebration came with a sober warning, Harry telling Meghan, “Our lives will never be the same again.”
In a matter of days, Meghan experienced racism and sexism on a level beyond any she had
come across before. While she had been discussing and writing about such issues for the last few years, nothing came close to the onslaught. It was neither pleasant nor accurate, Meghan the campaigner, the humanitarian and the woman being reduced to a two-dimensional caricature.
The coverage was Harry’s worst nightmare come true. Meghan had made the mistake of falling in love with him. Now she, her family and her friends were destined to suffer. Through it all, neither Harry nor Meghan had made any statement. Kensington Palace also remaining tight-lipped.
Harry decided to act. He contacted his brother, who had faced similar hysterical coverage during his courtship with Kate Middleton. They chewed over the problem and though William was cautious about issuing a statement, especially as it would confirm Meghan was Harry’s girlfriend, he felt that matters had gone too far for them to remain silent. Unlike their father, William and Harry are not of the old royal school whose motto was “never complain, never explain”. They have a track record of aggressively using the law to seek redress against intrusive photographers and other media outlets that invade their privacy.
PUBLIC DEBUT
Two days after the [Invictus Games] opening ceremony, a posse of photographers who were snapping the wheelchair tennis match between Australia and New Zealand were approached by a Kensington Palace press officer.
Without naming Harry or Meghan, she whispered to them, “When they arrive, stay in your seats and don’t move out of them. If you do they will leave.” A few minutes later the waiting press pack watched with eyes bulging as, hand-in-hand, Meghan and Harry walked in to Nathan Phillips Square and sat down at the side of the court. In the choreography of their romance, this was a showstopper. They laughed and joked, stroked each other’s arms, whispered sweet nothings and chatted to the families and friends of the competitors. When Meghan was handed a bottle of water, Harry advised her to put it on the floor and not drink it in view of the cameras. Pictures of celebrities drinking can look awkward and clumsy.
TEA WITH THE QUEEN
It was the most important audition of Meghan’s life. No rehearsal, no script, no second takes. This was live and improvised. When she was driven through the gates of Buckingham Palace on an overcast, drizzly Thursday in October in a black Ford Galaxy with darkened windows, the actor was about to give the performance of her career. Even though she has often said that she is not a woman who gets nervous, she could be forgiven for being a tad dry-mouthed. She was about to meet the Queen for afternoon tea. Gulp. Of course she had Prince Harry by her side, holding her hand, telling her it would be fine, just be yourself. Still, it was tea with the Queen of England.
If he had come to see Grannie a few years earlier when he had an unenviable reputation as an angry drunk with poor judgment, it would have been doubtful that the Queen would have agreed to him marrying a divorced American actor. “It would have been a grim, unhappy confrontation,” a former senior royal official told me.
As a courtier told me: “The Queen trusts her grandsons. She has confidence in them in a way that she never has had with her eldest son. They have really established themselves as being in touch with the public. William and Harry have star quality, believable and authentic heirs to the monarchy.”
Meghan, A Hollywood Princess by Andrew Morton, published by Michael O’Mara Books, $29.99, out April 19.
Originally published as Andrew Morton publishes new biography of Meghan Markle ahead of royal wedding
Cher: Teen arrest, drugs and a demon
Showbiz icon Cher reveals the true story behind her arrest, how drugs derailed her career (not how you think) and how she fell for an “asshole” rocker – but wouldn’t kiss him.
Star exposes secretly dark marriage with ex
They were one of Hollywood’s most famous couples, but Cher has revealed her secretly dark relationship with the late Sonny Bono in her bombshell new memoir.