Meghan Markle's Former Bodyguard Reveals How Her Introduction to Royal Life Got off to a Bad Start
Meghan Markle’s former Toronto bodyguard, Steve Davies, is revealing the real truth about her life. He is tired of the bullying narrative because he only knows her as a sweet, kindhearted person, who got off to a terrible start with royal life. Even though she was already in the public eye, the Duchess of Sussex wasn’t well-protected from the U.K. tabloids from the very beginning.
He was hired by NBC in 2018 while she was filming Suits in Canada ahead of her May wedding to Prince Harry. “I felt sorry [for her] because she’d gone from being a celebrity to being a member of the biggest family in the world,” he told In Touch Weekly. “It was stressful for her — all the publicity.” The constant press made her “paranoid” because Meghan had “drones, vehicles chasing” her constantly. Davies described it as a “nightmare.”
By the time she moved to England, her world became even smaller. In the Harry & Meghan Netflix docuseries, Meghan revealed how she was a future royal trapped behind palace walls. “I couldn’t call an Uber to the palace. You couldn’t just go,” she shared while pointing out that even lunch with friends was forbidden. “People within the Firm would say, No, you’re oversaturated, it would be best for you to not go out.’ I go, ‘Well, I haven’t left the house in months.’”
When Meghan was in Toronto, Davies tried to keep her life as normal as possible with trips to the grocery store. “The previous security team wouldn’t let her do that. So, I pushed the cart around the grocery store, and she was putting stuff in it. She really enjoyed that,” he added. Once she was in the “goldfish bowl” in the U.K., “Buckingham Palace was controlling the PR” and that moment was really the end of her happily ever after in the royal family.
The Duchess of Sussex admitted in September 2017 that she really didn’t know what her royal life would look like until she was actually knee-deep in it. “I think I can very safely say as naive as it sounds now, having gone through this learning curve in the past year and a half I did not have any understanding of just what it would be like,” Meghan told Vanity Fair.
Prince Harry knew it would be hard, having gone through similar situations with his ex-girlfriends. He added, “I had tried to warn you as much as possible. … I think you can have as many conversations as you want, trying to prepare as much as possible but we were totally unprepared for what happened after that.”
It was never an easy adjustment, and it wasn’t a healthy fit for Meghan in the end.
Before you go, click here to see Meghan Markle’s best fashion moments as a royal.