Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(70)
Finally, the man at the center of so much speculation, Meghan’s elusive father, Tom Markle Senior, was tracked down to his Mexican hideaway by an enterprising British tabloid reporter. Though he accepted a congratulatory bottle of champagne, the retired lighting director gave little in the way of illumination as to his plans. He said he was “pleased and delighted” with the news of his daughter’s engagement, later describing Harry as a “gentleman.”
The ghosts from Meghan’s past kept arriving to haunt her. A warring family was one thing, a former husband out for his pound of flesh was quite another. She was less than thrilled to learn that her ex-husband, Trevor Engelson, had sold a pilot comedy drama to Fox TV, which he was slated to produce, based on the idea of a recently divorced man whose wife has married into the royal family. The comedy conflict focuses on the estranged couple bickering over access to their children. He had the idea when he was discussing his checkered love life with fellow producer Dan Farah.
Whether or not the show is ever broadcast, Meghan will have to get used to being made fun of. She has already been introduced as a character in the no-holds-barred Channel Four comedy The Windsors. Comedian Kathryn Drysdale plays her as a relentless name-dropper, while Harry is so dumb he cannot even read. And speaking of dumb, the US cable network Lifetime announced that it would release Harry and Meghan: The Royal Love Story just before the wedding. Their previous royal offering, titled William and Kate: The Movie, which they produced in 2011, was described by the Guardian newspaper as “toe-curlingly, teeth-furringly, pillow-bitingly ghastly.”
What was no laughing matter was the decision by Meghan’s lifelong friend Ninaki Priddy, who was her maid of honor at her first wedding, to sell her photograph albums and story to the highest bidder, receiving a six-figure sum for her memories. Given the longevity of their relationship, Meghan may have expected more loyalty. Unlike Priddy and other members of the Markle family, her mother remained a publicly silent but supportive presence, advising and discussing the details of the wedding with her daughter.
Indeed, Meghan and Harry had to tune out what she calls “the noise” and focus on the job at hand—organizing their wedding. Unlike her first marriage, which she left largely in the hands of a wedding organizer in Jamaica, Meghan wanted to control every detail, the big day reflecting what their spokesman described as the “fun, laughter and love” of their “fairy tale.”
The first item on the agenda was the guest list. It was going to prove trickier than either of them expected. The first indications were when Harry was asked if his friends Barack and Michelle Obama were getting a stiff white envelope. He was uncharacteristically evasive, saying that nothing had been decided.
The elephant careering around the royal chapel was Donald Trump. When he was a Republican candidate, Meghan had made her disdain for him perfectly clear, telling talk show host Larry Wilmore in May 2016 that she would stay in Canada if he were elected. Her then publicist Ken Sunshine is a senior figure in the Democratic Party, and she herself donated to the campaign toward electing Hillary Clinton as the first female president.
Six weeks later, Prince Harry entered her life and her political world went straight to the back burner—though after their second date together she still registered her disappointment when Britain voted to leave the European Union, posting an Instagram snap of the famous placard “If EU leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me.” Fast-forward to February 2017, when a story appeared in US Weekly magazine revealing that Harry was not a fan of President Trump, not by a long shot.
The Sun newspaper went further, suggesting that Harry thought Trump “terrifying” and a “threat to human rights.” He supposedly called on the same words reportedly used by Trump’s secretary of state Rex Tillerson to describe the president of the United States: “A moron.”
While Kensington Palace refused to comment on anonymously sourced stories, alarm bells were ringing in Whitehall. By now, every diplomat in the world knows that Trump is a narcissist who bears a grudge. With Britain in a state of post-Brexit paralysis, Prime Minister Theresa May needed all the help she could get to land trade deals, and North America was a prime target.
The last thing she wanted was a popular prince taking potshots at the US president. Not that he seems to have noticed. When Trump was asked by Piers Morgan in a TV interview in January about the royal couple, he said he wasn’t aware if he had been invited to the wedding but wished the couple well. When Piers helpfully reminded him that Meghan was not a fan, accusing him of being a “divisive misogynist,” Trump seemed unruffled: “Well, I still hope they are happy.”
Closer to home, there were other ticklish decisions about whom to invite. While Meghan’s own family is fractured, there are also rifts in the royal family, which the wedding may help to heal. The Duchess of York, who is divorced from Harry’s uncle Prince Andrew, was not invited to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. She later confessed to Oprah Winfrey that the snub left her feeling “so totally worthless.” A palace source indicated that this time around, Sarah Ferguson will indeed be going to the wedding of the year. “Harry and Meghan have total control over who goes to the wedding and there was never an issue at the Palace about Sarah being invited,” noted a palace official.
The thorny issue of the guest list—St. George’s Chapel can accommodate eight hundred—was just one of the items on their wedding agenda. As they had chosen the day of the FA Cup football final to say their vows, they had to ensure that William, as both president of the Football Association and Harry’s best man or supporter, was able to attend the nuptials before driving to Wembley Stadium in North London, where he would be meeting the teams and presenting the trophy.