In a new Channel 5 documentary, a royal commentator has opened up about the impact Meghan Markle had on the Royal Family, claiming that she “forced everybody to up their game”
Meghan Markle forced the Royal Family to “up their game” when it came to one crucial aspect of their role in the public eye, a royal commentator has claimed. A new Channel 5 documentary, which covers the Duchess of Sussex’s impact on the Firm when she married Prince Harry, suggests that Meghan actually forged a “new formula” for the Royal Family’s philanthropic work.
In one segment of The Meghan Effect: How She Shook Up the Royal Family, focusing on a time before the Sussexes’ withdrawal from the family and subsequent move to the US, the filmmakers recounted a time when Meghan “forced everybody to up their game”.
Merely weeks after her wedding to Harry, Meghan embarked on her first joint venture with the late Queen Elizabeth, travelling on the Royal Train to open two venues in the North West of England.
Queen Elizabeth and Meghan visited Chester, where they participated in a one-minute silence to mark the first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017, which tragically took the lives of 72 people and displaced hundreds.
In the incident on June 14 that year, a fire tore through the North Kensington tower block, in what was described by the London Museum as “one of modern London’s worst disasters”, one which would highlight the capital’s “severe housing inequalities”.
In the documentary, the narrator described how Meghan was “best placed” to respond to the disaster. In her first solo venture as a working royal, the Duchess met with women at the local community kitchen.
Royal commentator Afua Hagan said: “When Meghan joined the Royal Family, she kind of forced everybody to up their game when it came to philanthropy. The causes that Meghan wanted to work with, and one of the most prominent ones, was Grenfell.
“Suddenly, it seemed like the Royals were working on really, you know, different projects and things that they possibly wouldn’t have been involved in beforehand.”
In a clip from the time, Meghan said: “I felt so immediately embraced by the women in the kitchen and your warmth and your kindness, and to see, in this one small room, so much diversity.
“There’s 12 countries represented in this one group of women. It’s pretty outstanding.”
Meghan, according to royal historian Dr Ed Owens, was more “socially attuned” to the “grievances, the difficulties, the problems” endured by the community, also pointing out that the Duchess wished to “engage” with them.
It led to the creation of the Together cookbook, a collection of recipes from women who’d been displaced by the disaster, with Meghan helping to gather them and writing the book’s foreword.
It was claimed by the narrator that Meghan was the only royal to return to the community for “multiple visits”, the impact of which was to “pioneer a new formula” for how the Firm participates in its humanitarian efforts.
You can catch The Meghan Effect: How She Shook Up the Royal Family on Channel 5 on Saturday, November 1, from 9.20pm to 10.50pm.
