A never-before-seen home video from 1990 shows an 8-year-old Meghan Markle playing queen at a friend’s birthday party, long before she was engaged to real life royalty.
The homemade movie, now nearly three decades old, shows Markle and her friends acting in a partially improvised story titled Your Royal Highness. The video was published by E! News. In it, Markle plays the queen, while her friends surround her as intrepid princesses.
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The fledgling actress had no idea that the fantasy would one day become a reality. On May 19, Markle will marry Prince Prince Harry, officially making her a part of the British Royal family. The couple got engaged in November of 2017, after more than a year of publicly dating.
If the home movie is a glimpse at how Markle will conduct herself in her new royal station, the British people are in for a decadent reign. “Your highness, isn’t there anything to do around the kingdom anymore?” one of Markle’s friends asks in the home movie.
“Yes!” she responds. “Make 90,000 cookies and sew me a nice dress.”
“Your highness, what is this all for?” another girl asks.
“It’s for this meeting I’m having. I’m having people from Florida and Canada, Mississippi, Missouri,” says Markle. Then, in the spirit of fairness, she tells “Princess Nikki” and “Princess Kara” to go inside for a ten-minute break.
She shows a stern side in her capacity as queen as well. “Princess Kara, I thought I said no eating cookies in bed,” she says later on in the video.
“It’s not a cookie, mother,” her friend replies. “It’s a Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookie.”
“Oh! Carry on then,” Markle says in her best British accent. “Carry on!”
At one point in the improvised masterpiece, Markle is seen wearing a gold crown. She may do so again in two months, when she walks down the aisle at her wedding. Rumors suggest Markle may wear a borrowed tiara from Queen Elizabeth II, as Kate Middleton once did.
Middleton and Prince William are reportedly overjoyed that Markle is joining the family.
“We are very excited for Harry and Meghan,” they said in a statement on Twitter in November. “It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together.”
The home movie may have been Markle’s only chance to play royalty on screen, as she will be retiring from acting following her wedding in the spring.
