Meghan left Fiji engagement ‘because UN did not make her a goodwill ambassador’
THE Duchess of Sussex may have walked out of an engagement in Fiji because she felt snubbed by a United Nations organisation for women, it was claimed yesterday.
One of the mysteries of Meghan’s short career as a working royal is how she came to leave a market in the Fijian capital Suva after only eight minutes during her and Harry’s visit to the island in October 2018.
Now Robert Lacey, the royal biographer, has come up with a potential explanation. He claims she nursed a grudge against UN Women, the organisation hosting the visit to the market, because it had not made her a goodwill ambassador when she was still working as an actress.
It has previously been suggested that Meghan only agreed to carry out the engagement if all UN Women branding was removed.
But in an updated version of Battle Of Brothers, his book about the feud between Harry and Prince William, Lacey has suggested Meghan allegedly felt under-appreciated for a speech she gave on gender equality to UN Women in New York in 2015.
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Lacey writes: “She had rubbed shoulders with the likes of Hillary Clinton and actor Kiefer Sutherland and might have hoped to join UN Women’s distinguished roster of goodwill ambassadors that included celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and Emma Watson. But in those preHarry days UNWomen only assigned the cable TV actress the lesser role of advocate.”
The author cites a Los Angeles screenwriter who was close to former associates of Meghan saying: “She’s nice and smiley as can be until you step in her way, or don’t give her what she hopes for. Then she can be remorseless – heaven help you.”
Meghan was pregnant with Archie when she was in Fiji.An aide blamed the heat for the duchess’s decision to cut the market visit from a scheduled 20 minutes to eight.
The aide said: “It was hot, humid and uncomfortably busy and there were far larger crowds than expected.”