Meghan Markle Had to Quickly Think on Her Feet After Being Given the Wrong Script for Her First Speaking Engagement as a Working Royal

Thank goodness Meghan Markle walked into her career as a working royal with a background in acting, otherwise her first speech as a working royal could have gone off the rails.

On the latest episode of Hello’s “A Right Royal Podcast,” Invictus Games Foundation director David Wiseman admitted he accidentally delivered the wrong script for Meghan’s first public address as Prince Harry’s fiancée, given back in 2018. The speech was given at The Endeavor Fund Awards (which Harry established “to support the ambitions of wounded, injured, and sick service personnel and veterans,” People reports) but Meghan struggled to start speaking because of a mistake.

“I messed up at work!” Wiseman said of the incident. “It was the first time she’d spoken in public as the [future] Duchess of Sussex. There weren’t many of us at The Royal Foundation, so everyone sort of mucked in for everything. I was writing the scripts, and there was a last-minute request for a change from her team—yeah, no problem, put it in. But she got the old version, and the new version was sent to her cohost, my mate [British Army veteran] Neil Heritage. And they were there on stage, and they had two different versions of the script.”

He added, “I don’t know if you remember, they were both sort of not arguing, but saying, ‘No, this is the version,’ and so there was a fluff of the lines in front of everybody on her first opening speech as the [future] Duchess of Sussex,” he said. (You can check out this video on X by Rebecca English of The Daily Mail, where Meghan and Heritage quietly laugh and can’t seem to locate the correct piece of paper on the podium to present the Celebrating Excellence Award, People reports.)

Wiseman joked that he “died a little bit inside” from his front row seat next to Harry, but was relieved as the two moved through the moment and the event received positive press coverage. Wiseman later sent Harry apologetic texts about the mishap, and Meghan hopped on the phone: “Meghan jumped on the text, ‘David, it’s M, honestly, really really, don’t worry about it,’” Wiseman said. “She was just so kind.”

People reports that “It was an unusual move for Meghan to present a prize that evening, as she was not yet officially in the royal family given her May wedding to Harry was still a few months away,” the outlet reports. “In contrast, Kate Middleton did not give her first speech until nearly a year after her royal wedding to Prince William in 2011.”