The Duchess of Sussex has revealed she found the British citizenship test “so hard” and even the Duke of Sussex had “no idea” of some of the answers. The American-born actress spoke about studying for the Life in the UK test on the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast.
Meghan said she turned to Harry for help while practising for the official government quiz, but the British-born duke – who is fifth in line to the throne – was also stuck on the questions. When Meghan’s engagement to Harry was confirmed in 2017, Buckingham Palace announced that the former Suits star would become a British citizen. But the Sussexes quit the working monarchy in 2020 and moved to the US, amid reports Meghan had abandoned the process of seeking citizenship.
Chatting to actress and director Pamela Adlon, who recently became a British citizen, Meghan said: “That citizenship exam is so hard. I was studying for it and I remember going ‘Oh my goodness’. I would ask my husband ‘Did you know this? Did you know this?’ and he would be ‘I had no idea’.”
Adlon, best known for voicing Bobby Hill in the animated comedy show King Of The Hill, joked: “I think they made it harder for you. They were like ‘We’re gonna really throw up walls on this one’.”
Meghan laughed and said, “You think?”
The Duchess also chatted with her “dear friend” Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the First Lady of Canada – wife of the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Meghan spoke about how they spent time together in the summer with their children, and how she bought an “inflatable pizza slice” pool float online which proved to be a “big hit”.
“This wasn’t our day of being the wives and moms, all perfectly quaffed with up dos and pearls and demure smiles,” the duchess said. “This was the other version of us, both with wild curly hair and swimsuits and loose linen and huge belly laughs, big cuddles with our little ones and quiet whispers of girl talk on the terrace, giddy like absolute school girls. We were just having so much fun.”
Meghan described the episode called Good Wife/Bad Wife, Good Mom/Bad Mom as digging into the roles women play on the home front and looking at how to “break out of the limiting version of these moulds society has carved out for us”.
