It might make Prince Harry profoundly uncomfortable,
but one of Meghan Markle's on-screen love interests had plenty to say about their
steamier moments. And that's not the only former co-star who's revealed their true thoughts.
Wizards of Waverly Place star Gregg Sulkin got to know Meghan Markle when
they appeared together in the 2015 crime drama Anti-Social. He played
a street artist who gets involved in his brother's criminal schemes,
while she played his girlfriend, a glamorous model who is no fan of her beau's shady bro.
During a 2019 appearance on Fair Game with Kristine Leahy, the British Sulkin shared his
excitement that his American co-star had secured a spot in his country's history books. As he put it,
"Everybody does know her as a princess, but in real life, she genuinely is also like a princess."
"She is one of the classiest, the nicest,
one of the most sincere and genuine people I've ever met."
And in a 2019 interview with Access Hollywood, Sulkin declared,
"If there's one person I would want to represent our country, it would be her."
And back in 2016, he gushed to Vanity Fair,
"Out of all the actresses I've worked with in 12 years, I think she's my favorite."
While filming the 2016 Hallmark movie Dater's Handbook, Meghan Markle received some sage
advice from her on-screen love interest. As Kristoffer Polaha revealed to SheKnows in 2022,
"She was dating a guy in Toronto and she wasn't really into the dude,
and I was like, 'You just got out of a marriage [to Trevor Engelson],
why are you jumping into another relationship? Go be single, be free.'"
And Markle did exactly that. Soo after, she just so happened to attract the attention
of Prince Harry once she was unattached. She later texted Polaha to let him know that she'd
met someone special. During a 2021 appearance on The Sarah Scoop Show, Polaha weighed in on
her and Harry's decision to step down as senior royals and forge their own path.
"I'm a hundred percent on Meghan's side. I think she's whip-smart, a lot of
amazing potential to do a lot of good in the world."
Polaha also said that he'd love to team up with Markle again,
and there's definitely some potential for a collaboration. He writes romance novels,
and she told Variety in 2022 that she and Harry are interested in producing rom-coms.
Wendell Pierce played Meghan Markle's father on Suits, and he has fond memories of working
alongside her. During a 2018 appearance on Harry Connick Jr.'s talk show, Pierce revealed that she
used to speak about her royal beau in code to keep their relationship on the down low.
"Your life is going to change, but always know,
no matter where you are, I will always be your loving fake father."
Then in a 2021 interview with the U.K. radio station LBC, Pierce addressed the
topic of Meghan and Harry stepping away from their royal duties. As he put it,
"It is quite insensitive and offensive that we are all complicit in this sort
of Palace...gossip. In the midst of so much death, I think it is insignificant."
When the Daily Mail started twisting what he said as criticism directed
towards Markle, Pierce responded by tweeting,
"I never was interviewed by the Daily Mail and their story manipulated my words in
a radio interview. As I told Meghan, I support her and wish her all the best."
In 2005, Meghan Markle and Simon Rex both appeared on the UPN sitcom Cuts. And then
multiple tabloids wanted to cast the two of them as love interests in real life. In
a 2022 interview with The Guardian, Rex revealed that he'd been offered
$70,000 to lie about having a sexual relationship with Markle. As he admitted,
"I was broke as f---! I really needed the money. But I'll be on food stamps before I do that."
Rex alerted Markle about the slimy offer, and to thank him for refusing
to play the tabloids' dirty game, she wrote him a letter that said,
"It's nice to know there are still good people."
The note was so meaningful to Rex that he had it framed. Markle once told Good Housekeeping
that she had a side hustle as a calligrapher, so we're sure the letter was worthy of that frame.
"It's so funny that we live in a time where everyone's like,
'It's such a big deal.' I just did the right thing. You know?"
In a 2018 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Abigail Spencer revealed that
she and Meghan Markle are more than just close friends, they also have the exact same
birthday. The two of them appeared on Suits together, but they actually first connected
when they were auditioning for a different project years earlier. As Spencer recalled,
"She was just so stunning and there was just something about her."
After The Times published its 2021 report about the bullying accusations a palace adviser made
against Markle, Spencer defended her friend in a lengthy Instagram post. When they reconnected
after not seeing each other for a while, Markle integrated herself into Spencer's new group
of friends, who were instantly charmed by her warmth and attentiveness. Spencer also revealed,
"She's been there for me — and physically held me — in my darkest hours: After my dad died.
After a gut-wrenching breakup, she brought me into her home & nursed me back to health."
Spencer also appeared on the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan,
as she reminisced about the time that Markle informed her that she was dating Prince Harry,
which happened at Bergdorf Goodman as they sipped on champagne.
"It was very clear from the moment that she told me about him that they
were in love and that they were gonna go to the ends of the earth to be together."
When Meghan Markle showed up in the 2013 rom-com Random Encounters,
she didn't play the romantic lead. That part instead went to Abby Wathen,
while Markle played Wathen's roommate and party-girl pal. The two actresses also had
an off-screen friendship that was strengthened by their parallel relationship timelines. As
Wathen recalled in the 2017 ITV documentary Prince Harry and Meghan: Truly, Madly, Deeply,
"Meghan and I bonded because I was married and she
was getting married. I was invited to her wedding but I couldn't go."
The wedding that Wathen missed happened in 2011 when Markle and
producer Trevor Engleson tied the knot in Jamaica. They divorced two years later,
and Wathen's marriage ended around the same time as well. As Wathen recalled,
"We bonded on that too. I was destroyed, but she was empowered. She
took her power back. It wasn't the right relationship for her, so she moved on."
While Random Encounters wasn't exactly a big hit,
Markle did manage to land her starring role on Suits soon after.
"I think she kind of always knew that she would be successful,
like that's the kind of person that she is."
Working royals aren't that different from actors, as they have to constantly perform
for the cameras. So it pays to look affable even when you don't feel like smiling and making small
talk. But as an actual actor, Meghan Markle didn't just have to smile and look engaged
during public engagements, she also had to be believably vicious, seductive, and vulnerable.
For her role as a photographer in the 2012 movie Dysfunctional Friends,
Markle had to be domineering while directing a male model played by Christian Keyes. When
he dared to question her character's artistic vision, she delivered the line:
"That's why you're not paid to think."
Markle also had to slap Keyes at one point, and as he recalled to People Magazine in 2018,
"[Meghan] said, 'I might improv an extra smack,' and I was like, 'smack away!' I
knew she was going to put a little hand on it. She had some torque and rotation in the wrist."
When she wasn't smacking him around on set, Markle was a pleasure to be around. As Keyes put it,
"She was super cool and approachable. She was a class act."
From 2006 to 2007, Meghan Markle appeared on the game show Deal or No Deal as one of the
models who stood smiling onstage next to a briefcase. But she didn't exactly
find this job to be very fulfilling. As she admitted on her Archetypes podcast in 2022,
"I was thankful for the job, but not for how it made me feel, which was not smart."
She also mentioned that she didn't want to be valued just for her appearance. Deal or
No Deal host Howie Mandel has admitted that he has no memory of Markle from
their time working together. However, he has spoken out in support of her
after her comments about the show were criticized. As he told Us Weekly in 2022,
"I don't think Meghan is complaining. I think Meghan just said she wanted to do more [...] I
get it because [...] they had this pyramid of 26 beautiful, intelligent women standing there
just staring at me like I was a piece of meat. I was in the center, just dressed up in a suit
and I felt like I am more than this. And they would just look at me and I had to do nothing."
"From Howie to Harry. Harry, Howie. Howie, Harry."
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry confesses that seeing some of his
wife's love scenes in Suits made him rather uncomfortable. As he put it,
"It would take electric-shock therapy to get those images out of my head."
Of course, that's often part of the job for an actor, and that wasn't the only
time that Markle had to fake intimacy with a co-star. The steamy scenes that she filmed
as an ex-stripper didn't help the 2008 pilot for The Apostles get picked up by a network,
but they did give her on-screen husband something to talk about when she married Harry.
In a 2018 interview with BBC Radio 5, Keith Robinson said that Harry is a fortunate man to be
married to Markle. He also praised Markle's work ethic and attitude, as well as her appearance.
"She's a very beautiful woman, so it's not hard to kiss a beautiful woman,
so I'm glad they casted a beautiful woman to play my wife. So it was nice obviously, fellas."
Filming love scenes can be awkward,
but Robinson thought that he and Markle vibed as co-stars. As he revealed,
"She was very into it, very giving. It wasn't a hard sell
for me at all. We had some pretty intense scenes."
After Meghan Markle found her prince, her Suits co-star Patrick J. Adams assumed the
role of her white knight. When she was accused of bullying palace staffers,
he defended her in a series of since-deleted tweets. As he put it,
"It sickened me to read the endless racist, slanderous,
clickbaiting vitriol spewed in her direction from all manner of media."
Adams also criticized Buckingham Palace for announcing that it would be investigating the
bullying allegations, arguing that it was Markle who was a victim in this situation. As he put it,
"This newest chapter and [its] timing is just another stunning example of the
shamelessness of [an] institution that has outlived its relevance,
[it's] way overdrawn on credibility and apparently bankrupt of decency."
In 2020, Adams told Radio Times that he hadn't
called Markle since she married into the royal family, as he confessed,
"Quite frankly, I think I'm intimidated [...] I don't know what I would say."
But if he can ever muster up the courage to break the ice with someone he worked
with for seven years, he'd happily do so again. In 2022, Adams told Extra that
he's totally up for collaborating with Markle on one of her Netflix projects.
Amanda Schull is another one of Markle's Suits co-stars who's been
interviewed regarding her thoughts about the Duchess. In 2018, she told New Idea,
"I don't know [Harry] personally, but he's a very lucky man to have Meghan
in his life because I can only say wonderful things about her."
But back when Schull joined the cast of Suits, she was the one impressing Markle. In the 2000
movie Center Stage, Schull played an aspiring ballerina trying to achieve her dream of joining
the fictional American Ballet Company. It's easy to see why someone as driven and ambitious as
Markle would find this movie so appealing. As Schull recalled to Us Weekly in 2018,
"A fun little tidbit with Meghan — she was a Center Stage fan. So she
would ask me lots of questions about Center Stage, which is really sweet."
Markle eventually became more than an excited fangirl in Schull's eyes, as she
earned the respect and admiration of an actor she held in such high esteem. As Schull put it,
"Every single time I worked with Meghan she was so prepared and so focused with
her work on camera [...] She was just always such an open,
lovely, generous person from the very first day I met her."
Meghan Markle's Suits castmates weren't bitter when she bid them farewell to
embark on her new royal life. Some of them even scored invites to her wedding in May
2018. Before the ceremony, Sarah Rafferty spoke to Today about the cast's close bonds.
"We were with each other for longer than we went to college or high school with our friends,
so we became family, in a way. We're still family. So this is, this is a wonderful family."
And Rick Hoffman shared a rather heartwarming story. The end of a
relationship had left him dateless for a destination wedding in Paris,
so Markle offered to be his plus-one, and they ended up having an absolute blast together.
As for Eric Roberts, he came out in Markle's defense after she was
accused of bullying members of her palace staff.
"She's not a bully in my experience at all."
"She could not have been more gracious."
D.B. Woodside also found the allegations impossible to
believe. As he insisted to Entertainment Tonight,
"Meghan is one of the sweetest, nicest, most intelligent,
thoughtful human beings that I have ever met in my life [...] The thing about her
is she's strong and she's resilient. And if they think that this kind of stuff is going
to knock her off her game for very long, they picked the wrong woman to mess with."
In the 2011 comedy Horrible Bosses, Meghan Markle plays a FedEx driver who catches the
eye of Jason Sudeikis' character Kurt. He tells her that she's too attractive
to be delivering boxes and asks her if she's really filming a prank show. Alas,
this cringe-worthy attempt at flattery fails to impress. In a 2018 interview
with Entertainment Tonight, Sudeikis quipped that all it took was filming that scene to
convince him that Markle would someday trade her FedEx cap for a crown. As he put it,
"She was regal in that moment, and it seemed like
she's only gotten better at it [...] It was great. She was very sweet."
By 2020, Meghan Markle's star power had increased exponentially. It was so strong, in fact,
that it powered the resurrection of a Comedy Central project that had been gathering dust for
nearly a decade. It was called The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down, and her castmates included
New Girl's Max Greenfield and Happy Endings star Adam Pally. As Pally recalled to Access Hollywood,
"She was very sweet and talented [...] I think it was disappointing for her when she showed
up and found out that I was her love interest and not the other male lead, Max Greenfield."
"I mean, that- it's kind of a bummer."
If Meghan Markle began acting again today, it's safe to assume that most
of her co-stars wouldn't forget their experiences with her. But before her
name was in the headlines on a daily basis, she didn't exactly leave a lasting impression
on everybody that she worked with. When Us Weekly asked Emmanuelle Chriqui about the
2006 thriller that she and Markle were in together called Deceit, Chriqui responded,
"She was in that? I didn't even know that! That is amazing. I had
no idea. Mind blown right now! I don't remember that at all! That's hilarious."
Nathan Fillion, on the other hand, remembered working with Markle,
though he couldn't recall all the details. When Entertainment Tonight asked him about
her role in an episode of Castle as a serial killer who wore a Sleeping
Beauty costume and dressed her victims up like fairytale characters, he confessed:
"I forgot that she was the murderer, and I'm shocked. I'm shocked."
Then there's comedian Russell Brand, who claimed that he snogged Markle in 2010's Get Him to the
Greek. But on a 2018 episode of the British talk show Loose Women, he admitted that he
doesn't actually remember the supposed kiss, though he does believe that the footage exists.
"I only know this, because I think I saw a clip of it somewhere."
Despite Brand's recollections, it's worth noting that no such
scene actually appears in the final cut of the film.
Meghan Markle had a small role as a bartender in the 2010 drama Remember Me, and the star of
that film, Robert Pattinson, still remembered her many years later. In the scene, she makes
Pattinson's character smirk when she denies his friend a drink, much to his bewilderment.
When E! News asked Pattinson to comment on Prince Harry and Markle's engagement in 2017, he said:
"She seems great. I worked with her, as well. So, uh-"
"Did you?" "She's in Remember Me. It's my claim to fame!"
And when Pattinson was asked if he believed that his history with Markle would score him a wedding
invite, he laughingly replied, "Hopefully." Pattinson ultimately didn't attend the wedding,
but the snub should hardly be interpreted to mean that Markle didn't enjoy working
with him. Quite the contrary, in fact. As she gushed to Her World back in 2013,
"Oh, he's such a sweetheart [...] He's a really lovely guy and a really great example to be able
to watch someone who is young, whose stardom has really taken over his life in such a huge way,
and yet he's still gracious, humble, and cool. I think that is really endearing."
Interestingly enough, Pattinson has another royal connection to Markle,
as he was reportedly once considered for the role of Harry in a biopic called The Spare.