Looking back. Millie Mackintosh and Meghan Markle allegedly once had a tight friendship before it came to a screeching halt upon the duchess’ romance with Prince Harry.
“Years ago, I’d say about eight years ago, I went to the opening of a hotel in Istanbul and I met Meghan Markle,” the Made in Chelsea alum, 33, revealed on the Wednesday, May 10, episode of her “Mumlemmas & More” podcast, noting she was a fan of the 41-year-old’s TV show Suits. “We met at the bar and we were both ordering a drink at the same time. I started chatting and we got on really well. We got on like a house on fire and spent the night partying and having fun and we just stayed in touch.”
While the Duchess of Sussex — who hails from Los Angeles — worked in Toronto filming Suits, she frequently traveled across the pond to visit various friends.
“I took her to my favorite spots and she didn’t know that many people so I kind of connected her with the best places to get your nails done, like my little black book. I gave her just, like, all my contacts,” Mackintosh recalled, noting they bonded over their shared wellness and blogging passions. “I definitely would say we were not best friends but when she was in town she would let me know and we would sometimes hang out.”
Mackintosh further revealed that she “last” saw Meghan during a hotel stay in the Cotswolds.
“She was staying there and said, ‘Just come and hang out.’ What I thought was going to be like a day of yoga and chilling ended up being rosé and margaritas in the pool and we had, like, a really fun afternoon,” Mackintosh added, noting that the Bench author had even allegedly teased her romance with Harry, now 38. “I thought, ‘Great that’s nice for her.’ I don’t know him just to clarify. I never met him. I was, like, ‘Great,’ didn’t really ask too much about him. Didn’t really think too much about it at the time.”
The Duke of Sussex and Meghan started dating in July 2016, months before taking their relationship public. After news broke of the twosome’s romance, there was an onslaught of media attention. And so, as a friend, Mackintosh reached out to note that she was “thinking” about Meghan.
“[Meghan] just sent me this really abrupt message that was really unlike any of our communication before,” the social media influencer alleged on her podcast. “What I read from that message was that she maybe needed a bit of space. Maybe needed to cool off, she was angry, she was maybe under a lot of pressure. … So I didn’t message her again, but I did expect that we would stay in touch.”
Instead, Mackintosh claimed that the Dater’s Handbook actress ended their friendship.
“She cut me dead,” she claimed. “I never heard from her again and I never messaged her again because I felt like she kind of told me to f–k off basically in that message. Meghan Markle ghosted me, babe.”
Mackintosh added: “What could I offer her at that point? She had met her prince. I was on a reality show so, I’m guessing she was like, ‘I can’t be associated with Made in Chelsea. I’m going to be royal.’”
The Archewell cofounder — who married Harry in May 2018 before welcoming son Prince Archie, 4, and daughter Princess Lilibet, 23 months — has not addressed Mackintosh’s claims or their supposed friendship. Us Weekly has reached out for comment.
Upon Meghan’s engagement to the Spare author, she resigned from Suits, shuttered her Tig lifestyle blog and deactivated her social media profiles to fit the royal standard of her future in-laws.
“Joining this family, I knew that there was a protocol for how things were done,” Meghan recalled during her Harry & Meghan docuseries, which debuted on Netflix in December 2022. “Do you remember that old movie The Princess Diaries with Anne Hathaway? There’s no class [where] some person goes, ‘Sit like this, cross your legs like this, use this fork, don’t do this, curtsy then, wear this kind of hat.’ It doesn’t happen. So, I needed to learn a lot, including the national anthem. … It was baptism by fire.”
Meghan and Harry ultimately stepped down from their roles as senior royals in 2020 before moving from London to Montecito, California. Since then, they’ve remained estranged from the duke’s father, King Charles III, and his brother, Prince William. Harry later attended the 74-year-old king’s coronation solo earlier this month with seldom family interactions. (The former actress had stayed home with their kids to celebrate Archie’s birthday.)
