Meghan Markle showed her supportive side and once turned up at a struggling co-star’s house with a gift of scones, according to a newly resurfaced interview.
Suits actor Sarah Rafferty said Meghan “showed up and saved” her when Sarah was struggling to balance motherhood with a grueling filming schedule.
The video clip where Sarah shares Meghan’s gesture comes from an interview with the pair in 2014 and comes amid allegations that Meghan’s staff are terrified of her.
The Duchess of Sussex’s team recently mounted a rear guard action defending her to Us Weekly following claims in The Hollywood Reporter that she was like a “dictator in high heels.”
The PR war took place against the backdrop of bullying allegations made against Meghan by former palace aide Jason Knauf in 2018.
Meghan Markle and Sarah Rafferty are seen at the 2015 NBC New York Summer Press Day at Four Seasons Hotel, on June 24, 2015. An interview they gave in 2014 has resurfaced on TikTok.
Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage
And in that context, a fan posted footage on TikTok of Sarah describing a day when Meghan “show[ed] up and save[d] me.”
The clip was liked 3,400 times and viewed 54,000 times after it was posted with the message: “This is the real Meghan Markle. The kind, generous friend who shows up with scones for you and your kids after a long day.”
The pair were co-stars on Suits at the time and conducted a joint interview to promote the show, which was broadcast by AfterBuzz TV.
Sarah said: “I’ll give you an example, I was working till 4.30 in the morning on a Friday night and my husband was traveling for business, and on Saturday morning at 7.30—right about 20 minutes after the kids woke up—my front doorbell rings and it’s Meghan with scones and Starbucks.”
“We turned on cartoons,” she continued, “and the girls were like, ‘what is this amazing thing called a scone?’
“And we let them eat them in bed and get crumbs everywhere, and it was just exactly what I needed, you know? Off in Toronto and [a] really, really delirious morning to have my friend show up and save me.”
“We’re all in Toronto where we filmed the show,” Meghan said in the interview, “so we’ve become a little family. So really, I think we all sort of lean on each other.
“I don’t have to balance two beautiful little girls like Sarah does but she does it so well. We all just manage to support each other with whatever comes up.”
“We’re lucky enough to have five, six, seven seasons,” she continued. “These friendships that you see us develop on camera are really a reflection of how well we all get along off-camera.”
The clip can be viewed here and the full interview here.
Meghan Markle and the History of the Bullying Allegations
Meghan was nicknamed “Duchess Difficult” in a December 2018 article in the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times that said staff found her challenging to work for.
In March 2021, an email accusing Meghan of bullying two PAs out of Kensington Palace dating back to October 2018 was leaked to The Times.
Meghan’s spokesperson described it as a “smear campaign” designed to undermine her Oprah Winfrey interview, which was days away from broadcast at the time.
New allegations against the duchess emerged earlier this month in The Hollywood Reporter, with an unnamed current senior staffer quoted saying that the duchess belittles people, is “absolutely relentless” and “marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders.”
The unnamed employee from her U.S. operation said they had “watched her reduce grown men to tears.”
Meghan’s team hit back with a series of statements to Us Weekly, including from global press secretary Ashley Hansen, who said Meghan greeted news that Ashley needed surgery “with the kind of concern and care a parent would express if it were their own child.”
Us Weekly editor Dan Wakeford also described speaking to an unnamed source: “‘We’re here for a reason,’ says one of the current team members, ‘if you come for our bosses we’re coming for you. We’re just trying to do good.'”
Since then, The Daily Beast also ran new quotes from an unnamed source suggesting there were a number of royals in the past who treated their staff badly—but also suggesting Meghan had at times behaved like a “demon” with “psycho moments” during her time at the palace.
Meghan has always denied being a bully, while her husband Prince Harry wrote in his memoir, Spare: “Nerves were shattering, people were sniping. In such a climate there was no such thing as constructive criticism. All feedback was seen as an affront, an insult.
“More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept. For all this, every bit of it, Willy [Harry’s brother William, Prince of Wales] blamed one person. Meg.
“He told me so several times, and he got cross when I told him he was out of line. He was just repeating the press narrative, spouting fake stories he’d read or been told.
“The great irony, I told him, was that the real villains were the people he’d imported into the office, people from government, who didn’t seem impervious to this kind of strife—but addicted to it.”
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about Charles and Queen Camilla, William and Kate, Meghan Markle and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.
