Meghan Markle's re-enactment of how she curtsied when she met the Queen for the first time in her Netflix documentary with Prince Harry has been labelled "mocking" and "embarrassing".
Royal expert Gyles Brandreth discussed the pair's new Netflix documentary after the first three episodes of the bombshell series dropped on the streaming platform today.
It sees a series of interviews with the couple talking about the early days of their romance. In the episodes, Harry revealed that Meghan being introduced to his grandmother was a "shock to the system".
"There wasn’t like some big moment of ‘Now you’re going to meet my grandmother’. I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before," Meghan added of the moments before.
After they finally met, Meghan then performed an awkward and exaggerated curtsy and giggles away as she said: "Pleasure to meet you Your Majesty" while the camera showed a stony-faced Harry.
Now Gyles has given his verdict, calling Meghan's exaggerated curtsy "embarrassing".
Speaking to Vanessa Feltz on TalkTV on Thursday, he said: "It's embarrassing, because it is mocking - and nobody curtsies to the Queen like that, and nobody would have advised her to do it that way.
" Prince Harry always spoke with huge respect and love for his grandmother and always acknowledged that she had several roles in his life. He usually said she was first Queen and Commanding Officer. He always said that first and then ‘Granny.'"
Gyles added: "He would know that the bow, as it were, is a brief nod and the curtsy is to show respect for the sovereign, and in the case of the Queen - a lady in her 90s who actually had earned respect through a lifetime of service, and that was it.
"To do this sort of mocking thing is uncomfortable, but it is a cultural difference. It's like you would do a curtsy if you were playing in Snow White."
Meghan also revealed in the documentary that she found the "formality" of being in the royal family "surprising" and recalled an awkward encounter with Prince William and Kate, now the Prince and Princess of Wales.
She revealed: “When Will and Kate came over, and I met her for the first time, they came over for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot. I was a hugger. I've always been a hugger, I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.
"I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside. There is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and go ‘You can relax now’, but that formality carries over on both sides."
