Meghan Markle Realized the Royal Family Was Serious When Prince Harry Gave Her an Emergency Curtsy Lesson

The Oprah Winfrey interview on CBS kicked off with Meghan Markle alone, where she revealed some fun behind-the-scenes tidbits with Prince Harry and the first time she met Queen Elizabeth. This wasn’t an average meet-the-parents moment, this was major. You can’t shake the Queen’s hand — you have to curtsy.

That’s when Meghan had to take a last minute lesson from her then-boyfriend Prince Harry — talk about a stressful thing to have to worry about!

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“He goes, ‘Do you know how to curtsy?'” Meghan recalled to Oprah. “I said, ‘What?’ He says, “Do you know how to curtsy?'”

The Duchess of Sussex admitted that she genuinely believed the curtsy was “what happens outside” in front of the public. (So did we!)

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“I thought that was part of the fanfare,” she continued. “I didn’t think that’s what happens inside. I said, ‘But it’s your grandmother.’ And he said, ‘It’s the Queen.'” Mic drop!

But curtsying was what Meghan had to do in her first moment of meeting the Queen, and Oprah was dying to know how to successfully complete a royal curtsy on the fly. “How do you curtsy?” she asked.

“Deeply, to show respect,” Meghan replied.

“We just practiced and then walked in,” said Meghan nonchalantly.

Oprah responded, “You and Harry practiced?”

“Yes and Fergie ran out and apparently, I did a very deep curtsy,” she laughed.

With such a meet-cute beginning with the Queen, it’s hard to see how much things have changed between the senior royals and Meghan and Harry. The relationship was so rosy at the beginning — but as the interview goes on to show, curtsying was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to royal pressures.

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Click here to see Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s complete relationship timeline.

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