Prince Harry on How Prince William and Kate Middleton First Reacted to Him Dating Meghan Markle: ‘F*ck Off’
While Prince Harry’s memoir Spare isn’t due out until Tuesday, excerpts from the book have leaked, and British and U.S. outlets alike have extensively covered Harry’s splashiest claims from the memoir, starting with the jarring allegation Harry made that William physically assaulted him in 2019 over his then-new wife Meghan Markle.
But years before that fight, when Harry and Meghan first started dating in 2017, William had a very different reaction to the news that Harry was with then-Suits actress that he would go on to marry in May 2018.
Per Page Six, Harry wrote that William allegedly told him to “f*ck off.” Harry had told both him and Kate he was dating Meghan.
“Their mouths fell open. They turned to each other. Then Willy turned to me and said: ‘F*ck off?’,” Harry shared. “I was baffled, until Willy and Kate explained that they were regular—nay, religious—viewers of Suits,” He joked he was worried “about the wrong thing” and didn’t expect them to “barrage” him with questions.
“I was baffled until Willy and Kate explained that they were regular—nay, religious—viewers of ‘Suits,’” he added. “‘Great,’ I thought, laughing. I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing. All this time I’d thought Willy and Kate might not welcome Meg into the family, but now I had to worry about them hounding her for an autograph.”
He himself added that he looked up Meghan’s sex scenes for Suits when he first started seeing her. “[I made] the mistake of Googling and watching some of her love scenes online,” he recalled. “I’d witnessed her and a castmate mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room. I didn’t need to see such things live.”
Harry spoke in Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan about how Meghan’s star power eventually brought out a darker side of the royals, who he would allege briefed against them to media.
“The issue is, when someone who’s marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight, or is doing the job better than the person who was born to do this, that upsets people,” he said. “It shifts the balance, because you’ve been lead to believe the only way that your charities can succeed, the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved, is if you’re in the front page of those papers. But the media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page.”
Harry recalled Remembrance Day 2018, one of the first times Meghan appeared more prominently in tabloids than other royals and how he saw his late mother Princess Diana’s experience being reflected. “She was like, ‘But it’s not my fault,’” Harry said, “and I said, ‘I know. And my mum felt the same way.’”
Senior News and Strategy Editor
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
