RICHARD EDEN: ‘Insincere’ Meghan was sending out warning signs from the start, only now do royal sources admit they missed them

BBC newsreader Mishal Husain is known for her cool, calm demeanour, even when questioning the most brazen politicians on Radio 4’s Today programme.

Her decision to publicly respond to the Duchess of Sussex’s criticism of a 2017 television interview Ms Husain conducted on the occasion of Meghan and Harry’s engagement has caused an uproar.

“Mishal is not easily irritated, to say the least, so this is a remarkable intervention,” a BBC source told me. “She clearly felt strongly about it.”

The criticism surfaced in the 2022 Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan, in which the Duchess dismissed a suggestion that Husain’s interview with the couple was an “orchestrated reality show.”

“It was, you know, rehearsed,” she said. “So we did the thing outside with the press and then we went straight in, took off our coats, sat down and did the interview. So it all happened at the same time.”

According to a senior royal source, Meghan complained that the presenter was “not empathetic enough and not warm enough” to lead the interview.

The former actress was said to have preferred her American compatriot Oprah Winfrey to be chosen for the job.

Husain now writes in the August issue of Saga magazine that the attack on her interview has left her stunned.

And that, rather than being the naive victim of some coordinated establishment plot, Meghan was convinced that the royal couple had thought carefully about what they were going to tell listeners.

“When the Duchess of Sussex said my engagement conversation with her and Harry was an ‘orchestrated reality show,’ I didn’t know what to make of it,” Husain writes.

“It seemed like they had put a lot of thought into what their new life would look like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular.”

Husain adds that there was no talk of problems that would arise later, when the couple decided to step down from their royal duties.

“There was nothing to indicate what was going to happen,” she writes. “They were two people who were full of joy in each other and in life.”

After the Netflix series aired, Husain was asked about Meghan’s comments by a colleague on the Today program.

Borrowing a line from Queen Elizabeth’s response to the Duchess’s accusations of racism within the royal family, she said wryly: “Memories may vary.”

This week I spoke to sources who worked for the Royal Household at the time of Husain’s 2017 interview, who said the Duchess’s “achievements” should have raised more concerns than they did.

“At the time, there was so much excitement about the engagement that no one really questioned some of Meghan’s comments,” a source said. “But looking back now, some of her comments seem disingenuous and her body language is telling.”

Meghan undoubtedly exuded much more confidence than other women who married members of the royal family.

For example, Lady Diana Spencer, then 19, was painfully shy when interviewed alongside Prince Charles in 1981.

Kate Middleton, then 28, appeared nervous when ITV’s Tom Bradby asked them questions at Kensington Palace in 2010, leaving Prince William to take the lead.

In contrast, Meghan, then 36, seemed more confident than Harry in their interview. She was, after all, an accomplished actress.

Her body language, which occasionally leaned toward her fiancé, made her come across as the dominant half of the relationship.

Looking back, it’s hard not to hear her answers differently.

For example, Meghan told Husain that she met Harry on a “blind date,” to which Harry added, “It was definitely a blind date.”

However, in the Netflix series, the Duke says he met his future wife through a photo-sharing app.

“Meghan and I met through Instagram,” he explained.

In 2017, Meghan told Husain that when a mutual friend helped her arrange the blind date, she knew little about Harry.

“Being from the United States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the royal family,” she mused.

“I didn’t know much about him, so the only thing I asked her when she said she wanted to set us up — I had one question. I said, ‘Well, is he nice?’

However, it later emerged that Meghan had had a great interest in the royal family since childhood.

Indeed, she was photographed posing outside Buckingham Palace like a 15-year-old tourist with her then-girlfriend Ninaki Priddy, who said of her wedding to Harry: “I’m not shocked at all. It’s like she’s been planning this her whole life.”

‘[Meghan] gets exactly what she wants and Harry has fallen for her game. She has always been fascinated by the royal family.

“She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0. She will do a good job in her role, but my advice to him is to proceed with caution.”

As an adult, Meghan was so fascinated by royal news that she commented on it on her now-defunct blog, The Tig.

The more I look back at that 2017 interview with Mishal Husein, the more it seems like the real “orchestrated” thing about it was the Duchess’s performance.

In the American drama Suits she played the role of paralegal Rachel Zane, and she did so with some success.

But she found a new role at Kensington Palace: the naive outsider who married into the Windsors. I would argue that she was a lot less convincing.

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