Eight years have passed since Prince Harry, once considered Britain’s most eligible bachelor, announced his engagement to actress Meghan Markle, known for her role in the TV series Suits.

The couple, who were introduced through a blind date in London back in July 2016, revealed their engagement on November 20 in an exclusive Kensington Palace interview with the BBC’s Mishal Husain, sharing intimate details about their relationship and the proposal.

Although initially celebrated as a tender showcase of their affection, their engagement interview is now being revisited for potential early signs of Meghan’s inclination to “take control of the narrative,” as suggested by a body language specialist.

This interview is also remembered for sparking controversy, as the Duchess later described it dismissively as an “orchestrated reality show” in the couple’s 2022 Netflix docuseries.

Mishal Husain, typically a composed and undramatic presenter for Radio 4’s Today program, countered these assertions with a wry remark on the show, stating, “Recollections may vary.”

Body language expert Judi James notes that the interview is filled with moments where Meghan seems to adopt the role of a “subtle movie director,” employing strategic “non-verbal ties” to assume a more dominant position.

Such leading behaviour is, she argues, illustrated by Meghan ‘cueing Harry in for his lines with pats, nudges and stares’ while also ‘sending him prompts to the narrative via her facial expression before he opens his mouth to speak’.

Meghan’s perceived desire to manage the direction and pace of the interview should come as little surprise. She was, after all, an experienced actress.

Certainly, Ms James takes note of the positioning of the pair throughout the interview – adding that while Harry is sat with a ‘slightly slumped’ posture and ‘his head tilted in a passive gesture’, his fiancée is sat ‘upright and employing a strong and confident facial engagement’. 

Explaining how Meghan tries to ‘issue soft power steering signals’, Ms James adds that the future Duchess often ‘appears to create small hints of caution’ or attempts to indirectly instruct Harry to ‘stop and let me take over’.

‘She has Harry on a firm non-verbal tie here. His left hand is pulled over onto her lap and her right elbow is pushed out on top of his arm so she contains not just his hand but his entire lower arm from the elbow downward.

‘Their fingers are meshed, meaning there is little chance he can remove his hand if he wants to.’

Describing such move as an ‘encasing technique’, Ms James adds that while this hand placement could serve as a ‘signal of love and connection’, in this case the future Princess is ‘using it for a more practical purpose’. 

Indeed Meghan’s tendency to act both ‘in charge of the choreography and the script’ is, Ms James asserts, made rather clear from the very first question posed. 

While Harry is the leading responder to Husain, who begins by asking for details of their intimate proposal, Meghan is said to place a ‘small firm pat on Harry’s hand to cue him to speak’.

‘It happened a few weeks ago, earlier this month, here at our cottage; just a standard typical night for us,’ Harry said. 

The pair then went on to describe how it was while ‘roasting a chicken’ that the prince got down on one knee – with Meghan describing the moment as ‘sweet and natural and very romantic’.

Ms James adds: ‘She turns her head quickly to communicate via her eye contact. 

‘Her wide social smile is still in place as she exchanges eye contact with him to offer Harry a direction of expectation that this is going to be a very happy story.

‘Meghan also pumps her arms in a micro-gesture of enthusiasm but then adds a small but telling elbow nudge to Harry in case he missed his other cues. 

‘There is a meeting of eyes between the pair with what looks like a director’s stare from Meghan before Harry delivers his “lines”.’

When Husain proceeds to ask the happy couple whether the proposal was met with an ‘instant yes’, Meghan is quick to respond without even looking at Harry beforehand.

She gushes: ‘Yes! As a matter of fact I could barely let you finish proposing!’

‘It was just so sweet and natural and very romantic,’ Meghan recalled. ‘He got on one knee. I could barely let [him] finish proposing. I was like, ‘Can I say yes now?” 

Then, in a further sign of her need to ‘control’ the narrative of the conversation, when Husain queries how the pair first met, Meghan quickly interjects during Harry’s brief explanation and is quick to remind the prince that they ‘should protect’ their ‘privacy’.

Explaining how Meghan handles this briefly tense moment, Ms James explains: ‘Meghan’s loving smile drops and she interjects while he is speaking, taking over quickly to warn him.’

The future Princess is also said to have ‘added a leg waggle and a small drumming ritual with her fingertips on his hand to seem to slightly advise caution.’

‘Harry rubs her thumb with his but she re-caps his hands with hers and looks down here so her face is hidden from him as she speaks, meaning he has lost access to her approval signals’, she adds.

At a later stage, when Harry is queried about how the pair managed their conflicting schedules, with Meghan committed to the filming of Suits and Harry to that of his royal duties, Meghan once again ‘takes over to suggest control’.

As Harry takes a breath before responding ‘It was-‘, Meghan quickly adds: ‘It was just a choice. Right? I think that very early on, when we realised we were going to commit to each other, that we knew we had to invest the time and the energy and whatever it took to make that happen.’ 

But it is not just Meghan’s more overt forms of ‘control’ that Ms James notes throughout – but also her deliberate use of covert forms of body language to make it clear to her husband that she has a desire to command the conversation.

She explains that at a later stage in the interview, Meghan ‘uses her knee as a nudge signal to take over the narrative’.

 When Husain asks if the loved-up pair have met each other’s family yet, Meghan ‘scratches and rubs’ her knee to signify, Ms James believes, ‘a sudden change of gestural response’.

She then proceeds to answer: ‘Yes. His family’s been so welcoming and…’

But with Harry being given the go-ahead from Meghan, the prince is quick to chime into the conversation and turns to his future wife to say: ‘You’ve met quite a few of them actually.’ 

When the pair begin to speak about the all-important engagement ring, Ms James suggests that Meghan ‘pets’ Harry’s hand in a bid to ‘cue him’ to respond. 

Harry revealed that he proposed to Meghan with a ring with a centre diamond ethically sourced from Botswana, where they had fallen in love, with two outer diamonds from his late mother Princess Diana’s collection.

The exquisite £120,000 royal jewel would go on to be voted the most popular engagement ring in the world for several consecutive years, despite the band going through several transformations.

While the engagement interview was initially perceived as a clear indication of a couple very much in love, it later became regarded by some as an early indication that there were warning signs of trouble in paradise. 

The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden, who spoke to sources who worked for the royal household at the time of the interview, declaring that the Duchess’s so-called ‘performance’ should have raised more concerns.

‘At the time, there was so much excitement about the engagement that no one really questioned some of Meghan’s comments,’ one source said. ‘But, if you watch it again now, some of her responses seem insincere and her body language is telling.’

And with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard not to hear some of her answers differently now.

For example, Meghan told Husain that she had met Harry on a ‘blind date’, with the Prince adding: ‘It was a blind date, for sure.’

However, in the Netflix series, the Duke says he got to know his future wife via a photo-sharing app.

‘Meghan and I met over Instagram,’ he explained.

‘Because I’m from the States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the Royal Family,’ she mused.

‘I didn’t know much about him and so the only thing that I had asked her when she said she wanted to set us up was “Well, is he nice?”.’

However, it subsequently emerged that Meghan had taken a close interest in the Royal Family since childhood.

Indeed, she had been pictured posing outside Buckingham Palace as a 15-year-old tourist with her then friend Ninaki Priddy, who remarked of her marriage to Harry: ‘I’m not shocked at all. It’s like she has been planning this all her life.’

Meanwhile, as an adult, Meghan was so fascinated by royal news that she would comment on it through her now-defunct blog, The Tig.

Since Meghan and Harry’s notorious exit from the Royal Family, later dubbed ‘Megxit’, the Duchess has publicly spoken negatively about the interview – complaining that Husain ‘wasn’t empathetic enough, wasn’t warm enough’, according to a royal source.

The BBC’s director-general at the time of the interview, Lord Hall, firmly rejected such criticism, declaring that it was ‘simply untrue’ to suggest that the chat was staged. 

Writing in the August issue of Saga magazine, Husain elaborated further on Meghan’s views: ‘When the Duchess of Sussex said that my engagement interview with her and Harry was an ‘orchestrated reality show’ I didn’t know what to make of it.

‘They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular.’

Evidently, while the public may have initially been captivated by their impeccable love story, that shine has since worn off. Their once-joyous engagement interview is now sadly often seen as the beginning of the bitter end for the former royal couple.