Onward and upward. In a new interview, Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas opened up about finding herself in the wake of their 2014 split.
“I think I have grown confident and fortunately I have learnt not to sweat the small stuff too much,” the actress, 31, told News Corp Australia’s The Daily Telegraph. “And I just think it has definitely given me a stronger sense of purpose and a stronger sense of what I want or don’t want.”
Bonas also looked back on her fears about being dubbed an It Girl (like her mother, Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon) on the heels of her breakup with the British royal.
“I think terms like that are very narrow-minded,” she told the newspaper. “I think that I work very, very hard, I love what I do, and I just hope that this role [in White House Farm] has shown people what I can do and what I would like to do going forward and not be caught in a box in any way.”
Harry, now 35, and Bonas started dating in 2012 after being introduced by his cousin Princess Eugenie. They called it quits two years later, with a Bonas family source telling Us Weekly at the time, “It’s very sad that they have decided to split. It’s very amicable, but they have decided to go their separate ways.”
The former couple have remained friends ever since, and the model even attended the prince’s 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle. A year later, she announced her engagement to Harry Wentworth-Stanley.
Bonas told The Daily Telegraph that her wedding has “unfortunately” been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding, “We are not quite sure what our next move is.”
The Tulip Fever star has spoken candidly and fondly about her two-year romance with the royal many times. In 2017, she opened up about the downside of being known as his ex.
“I think it’s that thing of being pigeonholed. Especially in this country, I feel people are very quick to put you in a box or put you in a corner and think, ‘Oh, well, you’re that so you must be that,’” she said on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour at the time. “It’s incredibly frustrating, especially in the industry that I’m in. But you know, it is the way it is.”
