Meghan Markle’s secret phone call minutes before Prince Harry proposed unveiled

Meghan Markle hid from Prince Harry in their cottage on the Kensington Palace estate so she could make a secret phone call just minutes before he proposed to her in 2017. Speaking in their Netflix docuseries Harry and Meghan, released in 2022, the Duchess of Sussex, now 43, shared what happened just minutes before the proposal.

While she previously spoke about how it was all “romantic” in the official engagement interview with the BBC in 2017, it turns out that the duchess was actually quite flustered moments beforehand when she saw what was about to happen. Although the Duke of Sussex, 40, had told his then-girlfriend not to look out the windows of Nottingham Cottage, it turns out that Meghan had a hunch about what was about to happen when he popped open the champagne.

She then rushed away to call her then-good friend Jessica Mulroney, who it is believed she is no longer very close to, to tell her what was about to happen. When talking about the moment on their docuseries, Meghan admitted: “He told me not to peek.” A video was then shown of Meghan filming herself telling friend Jess on the phone: “It’s actually happening! Oh my God Jess, Jess, it’s happening, it’s happening. He told me not to peek.”

The duchess was whispering in the video to avoid being overheard by Harry, who had laid a picnic blanket and electric candles outside to create a romantic vibe. The prince also admitted in the docuseries that he was sure his actions before the proposal, which saw him get down on one knee, gave what was about to happen away. Harry said: “I did pop a bottle of champagne while she was roasting a chicken and that kind of slightly gave the game away.

“She was like, ‘You never drink champagne, what’s the occasion?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, I just had it like, lying around.” After getting engaged in November 2017, the couple went on to marry in Windsor in 2018.

Less than two years later, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ended up quitting life as senior royals and moving across the pond to Montecito in California, where they still live with their children Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three.