Royal family made ‘irritating’ changes to Meghan Markle’s Suits script, says creator
Buckingham palace made ‘irritating’ objections to the show’s script in the early days of Meghan Markle’s relationship with Prince Harry.
The creator of Suits, the American legal drama which launched the acting career of then-unknown Meghan Markle, says that in the early days of her relationship with Prince Harry the royal family had influence over the scripts.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Suits creator Aaron Korsh said that the royal family “weighed in” on the dialogue delivered by Markle, who played the paralegal Rachel Zane for seven seasons. Markle left the show in 2018 after giving up acting to become a full-time royal.
He said that while the royal family did not change many things, there were “a few things that we wanted to do and couldn’t do, and it was a little irritating,” he said.
Korsh recalled that the royal family objected to Markle’s character saying the word “poppycock” on screen.
“The royal family did not want her saying the word,” said Korsh. “They didn’t want to put the word poppycock in her mouth. I presume because they didn’t want people cutting things together of her saying cock.”
He said that the word is an inside joke he shares with his in-laws, and he planned to have Markle deliver it to her co-star Patrick J. Adams, who played Mike Ross. The line was ultimately amended to “bulls**t.”
Korsh said that while he “was aware” that the royal family was reading the unfilmed scripts, he did not know how they obtained them. He added that Markle was not responsible for delivering the edits. “It might have been the directing producer at the time, or her agent” he said. “Whoever it was, they didn’t like having to tell me any more than I liked having to hear it.”
Prince Harry wrote about the royal’s intervention on the show in his memoir Spare, detailing that Markle left the show because life had become ‘untenable.’
“Meg packed up her house, gave up her role in Suits. After seven seasons. A difficult moment for her, because she loved that show, loved the character she was playing, loved her cast and crew – loved Canada,” wrote Harry.
“The show writers were frustrated, because they were often advised by the palace comms team to change lines of dialogue, what her character would do, how she would act,” he added.
Suits, which aired from 2011 to 2019, has become an unexpected streaming hit in recent months, largely due to TikTok hype. According to Nielsen, re-runs of the show have experienced a resurgence, dominating streaming charts and achieving record viewing figures. In July, the show accumulated 18 billion viewing minutes.