Meghan Markle has been accused of making several demands by staff who worked with her on an advertisement campaign, according to an explosive new biography.
Before she met Prince Harry, The Duchess of Sussex "bulldozed her way through" during a campaign for Canadian women's clothing store Reitmans, claims Tom Bower's book Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors.
Investigative journalist Bower, known for his scathing portraits of famous figures, says Meghan made a number of demands during filming for the ad campaign and in post-production.
When Meghan first arrived at the hotel suite hired for her in Montreal, she apparently asked for a bigger room at a pricier hotel, it is claimed.
She also allegedly said to have requested she be booked under an alias, despite, Bower explains, the fact "no one in French-speaking Montreal really knew Meghan".
He claims that inside the hotel room she ignored the flower displays, bottles of her favourite wine and "even a special calligraphy pen carefully laid out on the tables" and "criticised the hotel's Tempur-Pedic bathrobe and slippers".
He continues: "She wanted Dior. The tea was the wrong blend and the vegan juice was warm."
Bower claims that during the filming, while Meghan was in the dressing room, she was heard complaining about the production, the clothes, the style and the script.
Asked during filming to name Canadian women who inspired her, Bower alleges, she laughed and asked for examples. "None of them inspires me," she apparently replied.
Adding: "You can’t make me say something I don’t want to or don’t believe in."
The book claims that "after ferocious exchanges a few script changes were made, only to be rejected by Meghan again.
"'She bulldozed her way through,' complained one of the team. No one stood up to her'", Bower writes.
And during post-production, Meghan allegedly "sent countless demands about changes to the colour of her lipstick and her waistline".
Bower says she also asked them to touch up her feet, because, she claims, they're often criticized online.
"Please fix my feet for me,’ she is said to have written.
"I get slaughtered online for [sic] people picking apart my feet, sadly. There’s a scar on my left foot + my right foot isn’t the prettiest (long toe etc) . . ."
In his book, Bower also writes that Meghan, despite her claims, has no "ancestry" in Malta.
She has previously said that her father’s great-great-great grandmother Mary lived in Malta with a British soldier called Thomas Bird.
Meghan further says they married and had a child born in 1862 and Mary was said to have been employed as a cook at Windsor Castle.
But Bower writes that although Thomas Bird did marry Mary but in Dublin in 1860 — "clearly excluding any employment in Windsor Castle".
Bird, he says, "was posted with his wife to India and briefly to Malta. Soon after a son was born and they moved to Canada, where Thomas died."
Meghan visited Malta in 2015 and in a blog post at the time she wrote: "Before I came people were telling me, 'When you go to Malta, everyone will look like you', and I started to say, 'Oh, my gosh, I do sort of blend in” and it’s the loveliest of feelings.’"
