Meghan Markle dumped her first boyfriend after movies snub
The author of a new biography about Meghan Markle has revealed how movie star Alicia Silverstone came between the Duchess and her first boyfriend.
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Meghan Markle dumped her first boyfriend after he ditched her for his friends when they were seeing the movie Clueless together, a new book reveals.
Celebrity author Sean Smith, who has also written biographies on Kylie Minogue, Ed Sheeran, The Spice Girls and J.K. Rowling, has delved deep in the Duchess of Sussex’s upbringing to provide a new perspective on one of the most talked about women in the world.
His new book Meghan Misunderstood follows her from when she was a child growing up in Los Angeles and explains how her mixed race had a profound impact on her life.
And he also uncovers how it all went wrong for Meghan’s first boyfriend Joshua Silverstein when they met at a drama camp for her mother’s Agape church in 1995.
They would talk for hours at the end of each day on the phone but the teenage romance didn’t last.
“After camp was over, the group got together and met up at the promenade next to Santa Monica beach,” Smith wrote.
“Meghan and Joshua held hands as they walked along before they all went to the local cinema to watch the film Clueless, a big summer hit in 1995.”
But Silverstein was not interested in the film starring Alicia Silverstone about high school dating.
He left with his male friends before the end of the movie, ditching Meghan who was then 14.
“That evening, Meghan let Joshua down gently during their long evening phone call. She explained to him why he shouldn’t have done that,” Smith wrote.
“She was, he acknowledges, a little ahead of him in understanding how a relationship worked.”
Smith is based in Norfolk, north eastern England, near the Queen’s summer estate at Sandringham.
However, he travelled extensively just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit for the research of the book, trampling around the Los Angeles streets where Meghan, 39, grew up.
The book traces the family history, including the periods where Meghan would move between her parents’ houses and the tensions with her older half-siblings.
Smith said he was inspired to write the book because of Meghan’s comments in Nyanga, the murder capital of Cape Town, in 2019 on what became the couple’s final royal tour.
Meghan, who was speaking at The Justice Desk charity for young women, said at the time it was “quite a struggle when you grow up as a mixed race child”.
Smith was critical of the way Meghan was portrayed in the press, particularly in Britain, which Prince Harry called out when they first started dating.
He said that the “complete hypocrisy” of the way Meghan and Prince Harry were treated was evident when the couple were criticised for encouraging people to vote in the recent United States election.
In that case, it was claimed that royals do not get involved in politics.
But at the weekend, Buckingham Palace refused to lay a wreath on behalf of Prince Harry at a Remembrance Sunday service in London because he was no longer a working royal.
Smith said that there were racist undertones in the coverage of Meghan, including a column written by Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel in the Mail on Sunday that labelled her mother Doria as a “dreadlocked African-American lady from the wrong side of the tracks.”
The article, however, also went on to praise the Duchess of Sussex’s humanitarian work with World Vision and her trips to Afghanistan and Rwanda.
He also took umbrage at a report in The Sun, which detailed that some of Meghan’s scenes from Suits were on the website Pornhub.
Smith said the reporting on Meghan was unfair: “What has Meghan done wrong, there’s no sex, drugs and rock and roll.”
He pointed to a letter signed by 72 female members of British parliament, from across both sides of politics, who had criticised reporting of Meghan as having “outdated, colonial undertones”.
“It was 72 MPs, it wasn’t just two or three,” he said in an interview with News Corp Australia.
Rachael Bletchley, a commentator in the left-wing Daily Mirror, had written after Meghan’s tour of Africa that she should stop complaining.
“And especially, the outrageous suggestions that any criticism of her is racist. They can bugger off to Canada.”
However, English writer Hilary Mantel, cited by Smith, disagreed.
“I do think abominable racism has been involved. People who say that’s got nothing to do with it – well, they need to check their privilege,’ she said.
Meghan Misunderstood was a forensic examination of her treatment since she met Prince Harry, but its real value lies in her often untold upbringing which has informed her campaigning.
It seeks to analyse the millions of words already written about Meghan already, which will surely continue as they build their new life in America.
stephen.drill@news.co.uk
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