In a royally cringe moment, Meghan Markle appeared to snub her husband as Prince Harry lent in as they were featured on the ‘kiss cam’ at a Lakers basketball game in Los Angeles on Monday.
During a playoff match between the Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies in downtown Los Angeles, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were featured on the vaunted ‘kiss cam’ on the big screen at the Crypto.com Arena.
While Prince Harry appeared willing to go along with the tradition of kissing his partner — even going so far as to lean in for the kiss — Markle burst out into laughter and pushed away her husband, who in turn pulled an awkward face of rejection.
The wayward couple relocated to Los Angeles in 2020 to pursue money-making ventures in Hollywood, going on to produce a Netflix series about their lives and a feminist-themed podcast on Spotify after sensationally stepping away from their duties as working royals amid accusations of racism within Buckingham Palace.
The outing at the Lakers game was the first public appearance from the Duke and Duchess since it was revealed that Meghan would not be joining Harry in London for the coronation of King Charles III.
Over the weekend, reports emerged claiming that ongoing tensions between Markle and the Royal Family over “unconscious bias” were at play in her decision to not attend the momentous occasion for her father-in-law.
According to a report from The Telegraph, the Duchess had exchanged with then-Prince Charles in a series of letters following the woke couple’s explosive 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which they alleged that an unnamed member of the Royal Family had raised concerns over the potential skin colour of her then-unborn son Archie due to the former Suits actress having African American ancestry.
The paper claimed that Markle was left unsatisfied with the exchanges of the letters with Charles and that she felt that there was still an issue of “unconscious bias” within the family and therefore decided to stay home rather than travel to London for the coronation.
The Duchess has denied that the row over race had any influence on her decision to stay in California, however, claiming that she plans to do so in order to stay with her two young children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
Describing the report as “ridiculous and false”, a spokesman for Markle told GB News: “The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago.
“Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating.”
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