MEGHAN Markle was told by the Queen she could continue acting rather than becoming a full-time Royal when she joined the Firm, it has been claimed.
Speaking on the Royally Obsessed podcast, Andrew Morton said the 39-year-old former actress was given this option by Her Majesty.
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Morton, who famously wrote Princess Diana’s blockbuster biography in 1992, said the Queen gave Meghan and Prince Harry options for different routes they could take within the royal family.
He said Meghan continuing her acting career – she appeared in Canadian legal drama Suits before meeting Harry – was one of these.
“[The Queen] gave them the opportunity to go wherever they please,” Morton said. “They were given a degree of latitude.
“They were told ‘here are your first class tickets, pick which country you want to go to, we’re going to make you youth ambassadors for the Commonwealth’.
“In fairness to the royal family, in fairness to the Queen, she did give them that opportunity to go wherever they pleased.
“And also, they did say to Meghan if you don’t want to embrace royal duties full time please be our guest and continue your acting career.
“Those opportunities were open to her.”
But Morton wondered if the Sussexes had spent enought time actually considering their options.
He said: “I think neither of them gave it the thought they should have done. I think that famous warning from Prince William of ‘steady on, think about what you’re doing’, that Harry bridled at, was probably meant more with affection.”
During the same chat Morton also revealed Meg’s claims in the Oprah interview she rarely left the Palace were dubious.
He said friends saw Meghan going out and about as a royal.
She would go to the shops and eat out at restaurants with her pals, he claimed.
And despite how she portrayed her time in the Firm to Oprah and millions of viewers – the Palace experience didn’t “seem like a prison.”
He said: “When I was watching the interview, I was ticking off ‘yes, sense of isolation’, ‘yes, sense of desperation’ exactly what Diana was saying to me.
“But then again, well, friends of mine said they’ve seen Meghan walking from Whole Foods supermarket on Kensington High Street with bags of foods back to Kensington Palace.
“It didn’t seem too much like a prison. Other friends have seen her out and about with friends at restaurants, so she seems, to me, to have led a normal life.”
In the bombshell Oprah interview, Meghan explained that she had to give up her passport and driver’s licence.
She said: “You couldn’t. I mean, you have to understand, as well, when I joined that family, that was the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport, my driver’s licence, my keys.
“I said: ‘I have left the house twice in four months, I am everywhere but I am nowhere.”
“I continued to say to people: ‘I know there is an obsession with how things look, but has anyone talked about how it feels? Because right now I could not feel lonelier’.”
Oprah went on to question whether she felt ‘trapped,’ to which the Duchess of Sussex replied: “That’s the truth.”
He also pointed out that Meghan flew to New York on a private jet when celebrating her baby shower when pregnant with Archie in February 2019.
He went on to add that the royal made many overseas trip “without wearing handcuffs.”
The royal biographer continued: “So there’s some inconsistency but also there’s similarity with Diana as well.
“It was a complex interview and it has left us with lots of questions.”
The Duchess told Oprah Winfrey she felt like she “didn’t want to be alive anymore” in her bombshell interview in March.
She said she begged for help from the Firm after struggling with her mental health – saying it was her husband who “saved” her.
Breaking down in tears, pregnant Meghan said: “I just didn’t see a solution.
“I didn’t want to be alive anymore.”
But Meghan’s friends say she has “no regrets” about her interview with Oprah Winfrey, and that the Royal Family should be “relieved” she didn’t name names.
Meghan and Harry alleged that a senior royal asked Harry how “dark” Archie’s skin tone would be – but during the chat, they refused to point fingers.
But despite making the serious allegations and revealing a thread of insider information about the inner workings of the Palace, a friend of Meghan’s said doing the interview was the “best decision she made.”
