Publicity-seeking: Meghan on her 2013 trip to London when she met Katie
Watching the Duchess of Sussex cut such a wounded figure as she spoke on TV last weekend, with her eyes wide and brimming with tears, made me recall an evening spent in her company at a rooftop bar in London.
At the time, Meghan Markle was largely unknown outside the US, despite her starring role in the American TV drama Suits. Keen to make a name in Britain, her UK publicist had all but begged me – then a showbusiness journalist for a red-top newspaper – to meet the actress for a drink.
To be honest, I’d never heard of Meghan or Suits, but reluctantly agreed – even though I’d been rather looking forward to putting my feet up in front of the TV.
But here I was on a windswept November night in 2013 sharing a bottle of prosecco with Prince Harry’s future wife, both of us shivering beneath an outdoor heater. It soon became clear that Meghan was determined to raise her profile – even if it was with an inconsequential 80-word piece tagged on to the end of my weekly column.
We got on well, so much so that she canvassed my opinion on whether she should go on a date with the footballer Ashley Cole who was then, as now, not exactly a man blessed with ‘woke’ sensibilities. All in all, she seemed grateful that I was helping. We even hugged.
It was with this in mind that I watched her interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby last weekend. It might sound difficult to understand, she explained, but the forensic, unrelenting UK media attention came as a surprise. ‘I had no idea,’ she insisted.
She went on to tell Bradby that as an American she ‘very naively’ didn’t know about tabloids and ‘didn’t get it’.
Back in 2013 we met at the Sanctum Soho, a five-star hotel popular with celebrities. I was greeted at 8pm by a woman with long, dark brown, wavy hair, wrapped up in a smart, but not particularly expensive-looking black winter coat, dark jeans and a pair of stiletto boots. She introduced herself as Meghan. Recalling how I had ruined a pair of cherished gold shoes at my 30th birthday party at the same venue two years earlier, I warned Meghan about getting her heels caught between the decking.
We sat at a corner table – thankfully beside a heater – and opposite a jacuzzi that we joked would receive little attention on such a chilly night. She struck me as pretty, but unremarkably so, until she flashed her transformative Hollywood smile. She was softly spoken, kind and eager to chat. Pouring me some of the venue’s house prosecco into a plastic champagne flute, I sensed an eagerness to make me her friend.
Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane in American TV drama Suits season four
It wouldn’t be unkind to say that my previous work with her UK publicist, Neil Ransome, had involved some less than stellar celebrities – far more likely to have appeared on Reality TV than Hollywood red carpets.
During my years as a showbiz journalist, I’ve been inundated with requests from agents and publicists to meet their ‘new client’ – all too often a desperado determined to have their 15 minutes of fame. Such meetings are often tiresome.
Patrick J. Adams as Michael Ross, Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane in American TV drama Suits
But this client, Meghan, was not for giving up. In order to make that rooftop meeting happen, the persistent Mr Ransome contacted me several times, and, I later learned, had similarly pestered every other Fleet Street showbiz reporter. When I was obviously proving reluctant, he eventually resorted to getting a mutual friend, a former journalist turned publicist, to give me a nudge. She said we could go together, make a night of it and promised the prosecco would flow. Their determination – with or without Meghan’s encouragement – to get me to a meeting was obvious.
At the time, I was the Showbusiness Editor and columnist for the Sunday People, a newspaper whose circulation and status put me a fair way down the pecking order of British tabloid journalists with whom an American star might wish to ingratiate themselves. But Meghan betrayed no hint of feeling short-changed that night.
Clearly, networking was something at which she excelled.
Either she didn’t realise she was doing it or – more likely in my view – she had it down to a fine art.
At the time, she just seemed like a normal woman. She wasn’t starry, but polite and as interested in me as I was in her.
We spoke about her childhood in Los Angeles and she confided that she had recently been through a divorce from Hollywood movie producer Trevor Engelson.
I recall her looking down as she spoke about how hard it was, but that it was for the best.
Her mood brightened as we enjoyed another glass of fizz. After establishing we were the same age, we began to bond over how hard it is to find a boyfriend.
We moaned and swapped some war stories – hers mostly about her divorce – before she retrieved her iPhone 5 from her designer handbag. She looked somewhat pleased with herself, gleeful, hopeful. ‘Do you know this guy, Ashley Cole?’ she asked. ‘He follows me on Twitter and keeps trying to talk to me. He’s trying really hard.’
I knew Ashley only too well – both from meeting him in person a few times and from covering the twists and turns of his romance, marriage and divorce from the singer Cheryl Tweedy.
That night, as Meghan worked to secure coverage in a national newspaper, I saved her from the fate of becoming Mr Cole’s girlfriend. Having spent much of my career reporting on the ups and mostly downs of his marriage to Cheryl, I felt it was the sisterly thing to do to pass on my plentiful knowledge of how he had repeatedly cheated on his wife. Following their split, several women came forward to tell their stories.
Meghan speaking to Tom Bradby in the ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey
Meghan looked disappointed, giving me an inkling that she liked him, or at least the idea of him. At the time, the Chelsea and England star was hailed as the best left-back in the world and regular fodder for the tabloids. I can recall looking at her downcast face and feeling bad that I had crushed her dream of becoming a WAG.
We spent much of the remainder of the night talking about English men, how much she liked them and how much she loved London.
‘To be honest, I’d never heard of Meghan or Suits, but reluctantly agreed – even though I’d been rather looking forward to putting my feet up in front of the TV’
She was staying in Soho House, the members’ club where her Canadian friend Markus Anderson works as a consultant. It is said that Anderson introduced Meghan to friends including Amal and George Clooney and Jessica Mulroney, who reportedly became her stylist.
The prosecco flowed until 11pm when Meghan called it a night. We said our goodbyes, exchanging more hugs as we wished one another luck with our respective hunts for The One.
My friend and I finished the third bottle of prosecco we’d all started, and Meghan’s grateful PR team picked up the tab. It was worth it for them and for her. Meghan got all of six inches in my gossip column (the story being Ashley’s pursuit of her).
But her profile-raising efforts didn’t end there.
The following week she was at it again, riding the publicity carousel in London for all she was worth. First she was pictured at a red-carpet event on the arm of an eligible male model – an old PR ruse designed to set tongues wagging.
Later there was a charity gala dinner at which she helped hand out prizes. It was on this occasion that she reportedly asked TV personality and former WAG Lizzie Cundy: ‘Do you know any famous guys? I’m single and I really love English men.’
The whistlestop London tour also involved attending the premiere of a film she had no part in.
It isn’t easy to reconcile the Meghan who appeared so at ease talking candidly with a tabloid journalist she had never previously met with the Duchess on our screens last weekend who spoke of her hatred for the British tabloids. Had contempt hidden behind the hugs on that rooftop bar six years ago? Did her smiles really mask a snarl of disgust?
Or is it that, as the Duchess of Sussex, she no longer needs the gossip column coverage that plain Meghan Markle once craved?