Meghan Markle's subtle facial expressions suggested her feelings of shame and embarrassment when she recalled her first meeting with the Princess of Wales, a body language expert has claimed.
The first part of her and Prince Harry's eagerly-anticipated Netflix series Harry & Meghan saw them recall the early days of their romance.
In the second episode, Meghan recalls her first meeting with the Prince and Princess of Wales and how they got together for dinner.
She said: “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. And that was surprising to me.”
And according to body language expert Darren Stanton, Meghan let slip her true feeling about the meeting through several unconscious gestures.
Speaking on behalf of Betfair Casino, Darren said: "Meghan is extremely kinaesthetic, which means that she is a very tactile person who likes to touch. However, this is clearly not the case with a lot of people in life.
"When she was speaking about meeting Prince William and Kate for the first time, she obviously felt it was appropriate to hug. It was clear from William and Kate’s response that they still had to get to know her a little before that could happen.
"From previous analysis that I have done on William and Kate, they also come across as kinaesthetic people, but they can be guarded before deciding they want to get close and open up to someone, like most people.
"As Meghan was talking about the moment, I noticed her eyebrows came up and her face dropped.
"This was a combination of the emotions of feeling embarrassed and shame. When she was repeating the memory about the meeting, her unconscious mind was fighting off the same feelings that she had back then.”
It comes after Harry claimed Meghan found the “formality” of being in the royal family “surprising”.
He also described how Meghan meeting the Queen for the first time was a “shock to the system”.
Harry said: “My grandmother was the first senior member of the family that Meghan met. She had no idea what it all consisted of so it was a bit of a shock to the system for her.”
Meghan said: “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.
“We were in the car and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch, and he’s like ‘Oh, my grandmother’s here, we’re going to meet her after church.’ And I remember we were in the car driving up and he’s like ‘You know how to curtsy, right?’ And I just thought it was a joke.”
Harry said: “How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you will need to curtsy. Especially to an American. That’s weird.”
Meghan added: “Now I’m starting to realise ‘This is a big deal’. I mean, Americans will understand this… We have medieval times, dinner and tournament. It was like that.”
