Kate Middleton’s pal has rubbished Meghan Markle’s suggestion that the Princess of Wales didn’t reply warmly to her “hug” after they first met.
In a not-so-veiled snub at Kate, 40, the Duchess of Sussex, 41, claimed within the first instalment of Netflix’s Harry & Meghan that she was stunned when she realised William and Kate’s “formality” continued away from cameras.
“[I’ve] always been a hugger. I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits,” Meghan mentioned of her first assembly with Kate. “I guess I’d start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside, carried through on the inside.”
However, an unnamed pal of the mother-of-three advised People that Kate was extremely affectionate.
“Kate’s a big hugger,” the pal advised the publication. “She is warm and friendly and greets everyone with a big hug and kiss. It comes naturally to her to be like that.”
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Signs the royal pair had a frosty relationship first emerged publicly within the months after Meghan and Prince Harry’s 2018 royal wedding ceremony, when tabloids ran wild with a narrative in regards to the former actress making Kate cry over Princess Charlotte’s flower woman gown.
However, Meghan claimed in her televised interview with Oprah Winfrey final yr that it was truly Kate who made her cry.
“She [Kate] was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised. And she brought me flowers,” Meghan mentioned on the time.
“A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something pertaining – yes, the issue was correct – about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.
“What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do, but that happened to me.
“And the people who were part of our wedding were going to our comms team and saying: ‘I know this didn’t happen. I don’t have to tell them what actually happened.’”
In a e-book launched later in 2021, titled Revenge, writer Tom Bower refuted Meghan’s claims, citing unnamed sources who advised him that Kate “burst into tears” when Meghan “compared Princess Charlotte unfavourably to her best friend Jessica Mulroney’s daughter.”
While the primary three episodes of Meghan and Harry’s groundbreaking Netflix docuseries had been largely centred on the couple’s love story, and the way press intrusion drove them to transferring abroad, the ultimate three – dropping tonight – will put a laser deal with their fractious relations with the royal household.
In a new trailer forward of the ultimate instalment, launched right now, Meghan accused the palace of planting tales about her to guard different members of the monarchy.
“You would just see it play out,” Meghan says. “A story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute and they’d go: ‘We’ve gotta make that go away.’
“But there’s real estate on a website homepage, there is real estate there on a newspaper front cover. And something has to be filled in there about someone royal.”
Harry, 38, went so far as singling out his brother Prince William, 40, including: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother, but they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
