Actor Jodie Turner-Smith said the royals could’ve done more to protect Meghan Markle and Prince Harry in a new interview with “Good Morning Britain” earlier this week.
The “Anne Boleyn” actor spoke with presenter Richard Arnold about Meghan’s role ― now that she’s not a working royal ― and how the royal family could evolve as a whole.
“There’s a lot of resistance to new things that can push that institution forward in a way that more represents the world today,” Turner-Smith explained in the interview.
“I think they could have looked at this marriage and that relationship as a way to evolve and could have embraced it and embraced her fully, and protected her,” the actor added. “And protected their son in a way that made him feel like he didn’t need to, you know, leave.”
Turner-Smith previously made similar comments in a recent interview with The Telegraph, when she was asked about Meghan being “a great modernizer of the monarchy.”
“I think that Meghan could have been that,” the “Queen and Slim” actor replied.
“It was a terrible missed opportunity, the way in which it was not allowed to be something that really modernizes that institution, and to change it to something for the better,” she said. “I think that’s why there’s dysfunction there.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex officially stepped back as working members of the royal family in March 2020. A year later, the couple sat down with Oprah Winfrey to talk about their time within the royal family, and the reasons why they left.
Meghan told Winfrey that a member of the royals expressed racist “concerns and conversations” about the color of their son Archie’s skin before he was born and refused to offer him security.
The former “Suits” actor also said that after she became suicidal, the institution wouldn’t get her the help she needed to get better. Harry also called out his family for refusing to publicly support the couple, because they were afraid of tabloid backlash.
“There have been many opportunities for my family to show some kind of support,” the duke told Winfrey. “Female members of parliament, Conservative and Labour, called out the colonial undertones of articles and headlines written about Meghan. And yet no one from my family ever said anything over those two years.”
Buckingham Palace later answered the couple’s claims in a short statement, saying that “The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.”
“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately,” the statement added.