by Omid Scobie
“We grew up together over the course of the show,” he explained. “There was this natural sense that we both knew that the time had come for both of us. It went unspoken and we just enjoyed the hell out of the last few episodes that we got to shoot. We both knew that we wouldn’t be coming back. It made every one of our scenes that much more special. We had a great time. We could laugh through it. Even the things that might have frustrated us about the show, they became things that we could have a good laugh about and compare notes on just how crazy this thing had become.”
Her last few weeks of shooting, culminating in a wedding scene with Meghan’s and Patrick’s characters, Rachel and Mike, finally tying the knot, had been filled with nostalgia. But she had known for some time that she was ready for a new chapter.
Wendell Pierce, who played her father on the show, gave his on-screen daughter some advice before wrapping on her final scene. “I just wanted her to know that even if we lose touch because of the new life she was about to take on, I would always have her back and be there for her,” he said. “We all felt like that. It was emotional to see her leave but also very exciting . . . like sending a child off to college. This was her graduation.”
Being on a hit show for seven years was the kind of achievement few in the industry could boast.
“Once we hit the one-hundredth-episode marker, I thought, you know what—I have, I have ticked this box,” Meghan said. “I feel really proud of the work I’ve done there.”
She knew that the moment she gave up her role on Suits and moved to London, her acting career would be over. Forever. No turning back. In some ways, it came as a relief. As she got older and saw more of the world and saw she had more power to help change it with her platform, she began to think about moving away from acting and toward a career that was more meaningful.
Leaving acting, something she had spent so long working to achieve, was also “terrifying,” as she admitted to friends. At one point she had dreamed of moving into movies and meatier roles. As she moved into her mid-thirties, however, her dreams and aspirations started to change. A voice inside her kept telling her she could be doing so much more with her platform. That was one inspiration behind The Tig. But she also looked up to actresses like Angelina Jolie, who had become a force of her own in the charitable space, focusing mostly on humanitarian projects that she interspersed with the more commercial ones, and funding her life with the occasional brand deal. At one point that was Meghan’s career model. But then she met Harry. If she was going to have a real future—and family—with him, she had to give up acting altogether.
Meghan was ready now, especially since a month earlier she had cleared the first hurdle: a formal meeting with the Queen.
Despite a very brief encounter with Her Majesty earlier in the year (“she and Harry literally bumped into her,” a source laughed), Meghan was still nervous to meet his grandmother—it would be the first time she was sitting down with the monarch as Harry’s fiancée. Though Harry had already obtained formal permission from his grandmother to marry, history had not been kind to divorcées in the royal family. King Edward VIII caused a constitutional crisis in the House of Windsor when he abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American who captured his heart. When Princess Margaret asked for permission to marry the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend in 1955, shortly after Elizabeth had ascended the throne, the Queen was advised by senior courtiers that her sister marrying a divorced man was untenable now that she herself was not only Queen but also head of the Church of England.
Townsend, an accomplished RAF pilot, had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and later served both King George as an equerry and Queen Elizabeth. He also spent time as deputy master of the household. Still, his honors did not change the fact that he was divorced. Princess Margaret was asked to postpone any engagement while Townsend served as an attaché in Brussels, and she later abandoned her plans to marry him.
It was by no means a certainty that Harry’s grandmother would grant approval of Meghan but much had changed since the fifties. Three of the Queen’s four children have gone through divorces, and Charles was even able to marry Camilla, who was also divorced in 2005. The truth was that the sovereign was simply delighted for Harry.
Days before the October 12 meeting, Meghan and Jessica had discussed what an appropriate outfit would be for the all-important meeting with Her Majesty. As they often did, they went back and forth over iMessage, with photos and voice memos. At one point Jessica kept a second phone only Meghan had the number for—it meant they could chat safely and securely without any worries about hacks. After reviewing dozens of ideas, they settled on a conservative pastel dress.
Meghan, in the middle of filming Suits, had flown in and out of London for this meeting only. (A couple of days later she was back on the set in Toronto.) With the paparazzi often staking out the gates of Kensington Palace, Harry and Meghan took no chances getting caught visiting the Queen. Instead of riding in one of the usual Range Rovers, they hopped in a blacked-out four-door Ford Galaxy, a minivan more consistent with moms than with the Firm.
The couple made the one-and-a-half-mile drive to Buckingham Palace. After being waved in by the armed Scotland Yard police guards that man the front gates, the car drove discreetly to the side of the palace and pulled up next to the glass-covered sovereign’s entrance. The hundreds of tourists who were gathered outside were none the wiser.
Harry and Meghan rode the Queen’s elevator—a stunning wrought-iron lift from the previous century—up to the monarch’s private entrance. Exiting the elevator, Meghan saw Paul Whybrew, one of Her Majesty’s closest aides.
Page of the Backstairs, tall, slender, and with prominent cheekbones, Paul had been serving the Queen for more than forty years. Meghan recognized him immediately as the man who escorted Daniel Craig (as James Bond) to see the Queen in the video that was created to open the 2012 London Olympics.
The inner sanctum of the Queen’s private apartment was not at all what Meghan expected. Not that she really knew what to expect. Harry kissed his grandmother on both cheeks as they walked into her sitting room. Meghan knew she needed to curtsy and had practiced a dozen times before that day.
The maroon-and-cream Aubusson carpet accented with a floral-and-scroll pattern complemented the gilded picture frames around the Old Master paintings hanging on eggshell blue walls. It was a paler shade of Tiffany blue with the most spectacular ornate crown moldings that Meghan had ever seen. Was she really meeting with the head of the Commonwealth?
Today, however, it was just “Granny,” as Harry called the Queen, who sat down on the silk, upholstered straight-back chair. Two crescent-shaped wooden tables sat on each side of the white fireplace. On top of one was William and Kate’s engagement photo. Other family photos along with stunning displays of white and pink blooms in crystal vases sat beneath the gorgeous paintings.
The meeting took place at 5:00 p.m., the Queen’s favorite time to have tea. Meghan loved afternoon tea in Britain. It was a tradition she had come to adore. The Queen always drinks her own blend of Darjeeling and Assam tea, nicknamed the Queen Mary’s blend.
Whatever insecurities Meghan had were put to rest when the Queen’s corgis took to her right away. Nestled at her feet, Willow realized he had a friend in Harry’s future wife. Vulcan and Candy, the Queen’s two dorgis (a mix of dachshund and corgi), who also followed Her Majesty around wherever she went, soon followed Willow’s lead. Harry would later share in his engagement interview, “I’ve spent the last thirty-three years being barked at. [Meghan] walks in, absolutely nothing.”
As the dogs lay at her feet and wagged their tails, Meghan was also put at ease by the Queen, as warm and loving as Harry had told her his grandmother would be. The conversation flowed naturally before Meghan had to leave—a full ten minutes after their one-hour time slot. The Queen, arguably the busiest woman in the country, never ran over schedule. It was a good sign.
On
November 20, a little over a month after her meeting with the Queen, Meghan landed in London, knowing the British capital was no longer just where her partner lived. It was now her home. While the past few weeks had been challenging, this felt right. She was excited.
Harry felt guilty that she had to give up so much—her home, her career—to fit into his world. He was always worried about disrupting her life. Privately he harbored fears about the road ahead. What would the press be like? Would he have to deal with prejudice from more people in his own circle and the institution? He wanted to protect Meghan, to wrap her up and shield her from all the negativity, but he knew that was impossible. He worried about her turning to him one day to say, “I love you, but I can’t live like this.” Meghan assured him she was strong and ready to “become a team.”
After she moved her things into her new home with Harry, the cozy three-bedroom Nottingham Cottage, the plan for the days ahead were shrouded in secrecy. For Harry, as a working member of the royal family, it was business as usual as he continued to attend regular engagements, including a reception for Walking with the Wounded on November 21, the day after she arrived, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, which was just a few minutes up the road from the home he now shared with Meghan. A big supporter of the veterans charity since 2010, having taken part in their treks to the North Pole in 2011 and the South Pole in 2013, Harry told the organization’s co-founder Simon Daglish after he delivered his remarks to the room, “Life is very good.”
There was work to be done on the domestic front. During her previous stays in London, Meghan left clothes and a few decorative touches, but now she had to find room for all her belongings. Her natural eye for design had gone a long way toward dressing up the house, but there wasn’t really anything she could do to change the size. There were parts of the second floor where the drop ceilings were so low that Harry was forced to stoop his six-one frame to avoid hitting his head. And Meghan’s wardrobe nearly filled one of the bedrooms. But a little crowding was hardly a problem. After months of long-distance, Meghan was thrilled to finally be sharing a zip code, W8 4PY, with her partner.
Meghan extended her personal touch beyond the walls of their cottage. She kept a box of disposable hand warmers she ordered from Amazon in the house so that whenever she went past the security gates on cold winter days, she could give a few to the guards.
Meghan always liked to make the places she lived in as comfortable and chic as possible, and she’d moved often due to the nature of her work. This time, however, her domestic bliss was partly a way to cope with the major shift her life had taken, both geographically and internally. She felt at home at Nott Cott with Harry—she’s always been able to bloom where she was planted, but she hadn’t moved to London to start a new job. She had moved to London to start a new life. And although she was used to living thousands of miles from her mother, her constant source of support, there was something about being in London that felt just that little bit farther away. They spoke on the phone or via text message most days, but it wasn’t as easy because of the eight-hour time difference. Plus, she hadn’t moved to the UK like any typical member of society; she was going to become a member of the royal family, and that was a change that no one can truly be prepared for.
With Harry and Meghan holed up in their love nest, rumors of their engagement hit a frenzy—chatter not quieted by the fact Kensington Palace aides were more tightly lipped than ever. Media requests for comment on their engagement status were met with “no response” or a promise of “nothing to report.” But the evidence was mounting. When Harry and Meghan took a sudden two-hour meeting with Jason, Harry’s head of communications, and Ed Lane Fox, his private secretary, on November 22, it was clear that something was happening.
Media speculation continued to mount when BBC staff members and cameramen started to spread the word that they had been contacted by the Palace to capture the couple’s first interview as future husband and wife.
Something had happened. But one thing was for sure: no one in the couple’s circle was about to leak the news early—especially after keeping it secret for so long. The only ones who Meghan had explicitly told were her parents and her best friends, including Jessica, Markus, and Lindsay. To some of her closest girlfriends, she had more recently announced the news simply with a photo of her hand bearing her engagement ring.
“Keeping it a secret was easy for Meghan,” a longtime friend said. “It was something she could keep to herself with Harry. And an opportunity to enjoy the moment before it became public news.”
If the rest of the world was eager to know the status of Harry and Meghan’s relationship, the couple was content to spend most of their time at home at Nottingham Cottage, enjoying, as a friend described it, “cozy nights in front of the television, cooking dinner.” They socialized with friends, including Charlie van Straubenzee and his girlfriend, Daisy Jenks, sometimes heading over to the London home Lindsay shared with her husband, Gavin Jordan, for dinner. But the couple spent the majority of their time doing ordinary things like shopping for groceries at Whole Foods, picking up flowers at Kensington Flower Corner, cooking favorite dishes together like pasta with zucchini and “lots of parmesan.” (Their laundry, however, was taken care of—and they had a regular housekeeper.)
Nottingham Cottage might have been a quiet space where Harry and Meghan mainly enjoyed every day of domestic life. But it was also where Harry popped the question.
Meghan later revealed during her engagement interview with the BBC that the prince proposed as they were “trying” to roast a chicken for dinner, with Harry adding, “Here at our cottage; just a standard typical night for us.”
“It [was] just an amazing surprise, so sweet and natural, and very romantic,” she said. “He got on one knee.”
“She didn’t even let me finish,” Harry said with a laugh.
“Can I say yes? Can I say yes?” Meghan said, interrupting and hugging him.
Meanwhile, Harry hadn’t even given her the ring yet.
“Can I . . . can I give you the ring?” he said to her.
“Oh yes, the ring!” she said.
Marriage proposals are hard to carry off as planned, but Harry was pleased with how the whole thing went down. “It was a really nice moment,” he said. “It was just the two of us, and I think managed to catch her by surprise as well.”
Meghan loved the ring—a two-and-a-half-carat cushion-cut conflict-free diamond from Botswana flanked by two roughly three-quarter-carat diamonds from Diana’s collection. It was not only a gorgeous piece of jewelry but a meaningful nod to his late mother. “Just the level of thought that went into it,” she told one female pal. “I can’t get over that.”
Harry felt that Meghan and Diana would have been “thick as thieves, without question,” he said. “She would be over the moon, jumping up and down, you know, so excited for me.”
The thought of his mother, however, turned the happy moment bittersweet.
“Days like today,” the prince said in the interview, “[are] when I really miss having her around and miss being able to share the happy news. But you know with the ring and with everything else that’s going on, I’m sure she’s with us.”
Once Harry asked Meghan for her hand in marriage, he had talked to her about how the entire process of marrying a royal would work. He guided her through the necessary protocol that would follow their engagement—including Her Majesty’s public declaration of her approval of the union.
Although the Queen had already privately given their engagement her blessing, the Queen’s approval wasn’t formalized until the following year, when she signed the Instrument of Consent, which read, “Now Know Ye that We have consented and do by these Presents signify Our Consent to the contracting of Matrimony Our Most Dearly Beloved Grandson Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales, K.C.V.O., and Rachel Meghan Markle.”
The rule that the monarch must approve marriage for the first six in line to the throne has existed since the Royal Mar
riages Act of 1772, which was ordered by King George III, whose younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, secretly married Lady Anne Horton, considered to be the disreputable widow of a commoner.
Queen Elizabeth II’s declaration approving Harry and Meghan’s marriage was made at the meeting of the Privy Council on March 14, 2018, but was not publicly announced until early May.
As Harry explained all of this to Meghan, they also discussed the roles she might take on as a future duchess. Meghan, always a high achiever, was ready and willing to jump to whatever her platform as Harry’s wife afforded her. Wanting to attend engagements with Harry immediately after the announcement, she quietly began researching British charities and organizations where she would have the most impact. At the beginning, it was simply her aim to understand the UK’s philanthropic landscape rather than just the organizations that dealt with issues close to her heart. This was a chance for the woman who had spent her life up to that point doing work in areas she felt passionately about—to effect real change—and she saw no need to delay the process until after they’d been named husband and wife.
Harry had shared the details of these conversations with Doria while both were in Toronto to attend the Invictus Games.
He hadn’t done anything as conventional as ask Meghan’s father for her hand in marriage. Meghan, after all, was a strong-willed, independent woman in her mid-thirties whose feminist ideals centered around the simple fact that both genders should be on an even playing field. The only person who had a say in whether she could marry Harry was Meghan herself.
As the days after Meghan’s move to London ticked by, a group of dedicated media outlets had permanently gathered outside Kensington Palace. The press set up cameras and lighting equipment starting at 6:00 a.m. every day, waiting for that much-anticipated moment.