Years of negative press have wiped it from our memories at this point, but back when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle first got together their romance was painted as the stuff of fairy tales come to life by a largely adoring media. Except things weren’t quite so rosy behind the scenes, according to Meghan herself.

As the Duchess of Sussex told it in Netflix’s groundbreaking Harry & Meghan docuseries, released in 2022, the deliriously happy vibes she and Harry gave off in the days before their marriage were all a carefully controlled narrative enforced by the Royal family. A key example of this for Meghan is the interview she and Harry did with the BBC to celebrate their engagement in 2018.

The duchess blasted the interview as merely an “orchestrated reality show,” where all the answers were heavily “rehearsed” ahead of time, down to the moment where Meghan was asked to show off her ring. “My point is we weren’t allowed to tell our story because they didn’t want [it],” Meghan claimed.

But that’s not how everyone remembers it…

Meghan Markle’s claims that her engagement was an “orchestrated reality show” are called into question

In some fresh comments, interviewer Mishal Hussain has now cast doubt on Meghan’s versions of events, admitting that she “didn’t know what to make of” the former Suits star’s explosive claims in her Netflix documentary.

Hussain, a veteran journalist with over 25 years experience at the BBC, told Saga Magazine that her own recollection of interacting with Harry and Meghan was of a couple who were genuinely “in love” and “full of joy,” without any artifice involved.

“What I remember about that day was two people who were excited about their engagement and in love,” Hussain recalled. “They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular. There was nothing that pointed to what would happen. It was two people who were full of joy in each other and life.”

So what are we to make of this Royal reboot of Rashomon? No one’s denying that Harry and Meghan weren’t genuinely happy to be getting married, of course, as we know the duo got up to all kinds of hijinks during the early days of their courtship. However, there is certainly a lot of evidence that there were clashes of both personality and decision-making with other Royal family members from the start. Including Prince Philip’s unflattering nickname for his granddaughter-in-law, Meghan’s bold request for Queen Elizabeth, and possibly an incident where Meghan made Kate Middleton cry.

Sadly, it seems that, while her marriage to Harry appears as rock-solid as ever (despite the odd illegitimate rumor), it wasn’t ever going to work out between Meghan and the Royal way of life.