Taking on Harry, Meghan in TV movie
Actors say they didn’t intend to be copycats, wanted to show royal couple as human beings
The TV movie is called Harry & Meghan:
A Royal Romance, but the actress who plays Meghan Markle wants viewers to think of the duchess-to-be as more than just a royal consort.
“Pay attention to her as an entire person and not just as a quote-unquote future princess,” Parisa Fitz-Henley says.
Certainly, that’s what Fitz-Henley did in taking on the role of Markle, the 36-year-old American actress who will marry Britain’s Prince Harry, 33, on May 19.
On May 13 at 8 p.m., Fitz-Henley, 41 — a Jamaican-born, American-raised actress who, like Markle, is biracial — will star in the Lifetime movie about Markle’s relationship with Harry, played by Scottish actor Murray Fraser, 23. Canadian viewers can also catch the film the night of the actual wedding, at 8 p.m. on W Network.
Neither Fitz-Henley nor Fraser was a royal watcher before making the film although Fraser, who lives in London, England, couldn’t avoid daily headlines about the couple and other royals. So the first order of business when they signed on for the project was research, lots and lots of research.
“I looked up everything I could find online: interviews, everything she had said herself, her thoughts about different things, her writing, her choices, her mannerisms, anything I could possibly find,” Fitz-Henley says.
Likewise for Fraser, who had a small role in a project about an ancestor of Harry’s, the TV series Victoria.
Fitz-Henley has also played an ancestor of Harry’s: Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, onstage.
Although Fitz-Henley’s path never crossed with Markle’s in what she calls the “sisterhood” of acting — Fitz-Henley is known for the TV series Luke Cage,
Jessica Jones and Midnight, Texas — she says she feels a kinship with Markle.
“We’re actresses of colour and biracial actors … she has spoken about not liking to have her freckles airbrushed out. People lighten my skin sometimes in photos. I don’t like that at all … I feel like I can relate to the things that she has dealt with.”
The one thing Fitz-Henley refused to do in her research was reach out to mutual friends to grill them about Markle. “Her actual friends would never speak about her, and it would feel gross and intrusive,” she says.
Besides, she and Fraser weren’t aiming to impersonate Meghan and Harry but to interpret them.
“We didn’t have to be copycats of the people, just catch their essence,” Fraser says. “We just wanted to play them as human beings who happened to be a prince and happened to be an actor.”
Both he and Fitz-Henley say they felt a sense of responsibility playing living people, although Fraser jokes the most challenging part was “looking in the mirror, being ginger every day.”
The real challenge, they agree, was taking the pressure off themselves and not worrying about other people’s opinions. All they could do was try to play the parts “honestly and truthfully,” Fraser says.
And they both came out of the whirlwind of an experience, which included an intense six or seven weeks of filming in Vancouver, with new respect for their characters. Fitz-Henley recalls watching the couple do an interview after their engagement and how Markle didn’t “seem to diminish herself in any way to stand by his side … as women, sometimes it’s very easy for us to feel like we have to become smaller no matter how big our partner is. I love that she took up space, and was confident and comfortable.”
Fraser says playing Harry opened his eyes to the prince’s “amazing” charity work. “Just in terms of being born into a position that I don’t think anyone would really wish to get born into, to be in the public like that from Day 1 for the rest of your life … he’s used his platform for a lot of good.”
Both actors expect they’ll catch at least highlights of the royal wedding on May 19. And what if the newlyweds watch the TV movie?
“I try not to think about that one,” Fraser says. “I’m sure it would be a bit of a bizarre thing.”