Meghan Markle famously spoke about her first curtsy to the late Queen in the Sussexes’ Netflix series – and once again, her recollections have been called into question

The Duchess of Sussex’s comments about the late Queen have once again been called into question.

Her controversial remarks have resurfaced in a scathing article from Vanity Fair, published on January 17, which examines Harry and Meghan’s life in the five years since they stepped down as senior royals. Meghan famously spoke about meeting the late monarch in the couple’s Netflix docuseries, during which she performed an exaggerated curtsy as Harry sat looking on.

She recalled her first encounter with the Queen, stating that she discovered just before lunch at Royal Lodge – home to Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson – that she would meet Her Majesty. “It’s surreal. It wasn’t like some big moment of like, ‘Now you’re going to meet my grandmother,” Meghan recounted.

“I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before. We were in the car, and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch. And he’s like, ‘Oh my grandmother’s here, she’s gonna be there after church.’ And I remember we were in the car and we were driving up and he’s like ‘You know how to curtsy right?’ And I just thought it was a joke,” she said.

“How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother and that you would need to curtsy? Especially to an American. That’s weird,” Harry said. “Now, I’m starting to realise this is a big deal. I mean, Americans will understand this. We have Medieval Times, dinner and tournament. It was like that.”

“I curtsied as though I was like,” she said, pausing to do a theatrical deep curtsy with a giggle at the end. “‘Pleasure to meet you, your Majesty.” At the time, Meghan’s comments raised eyebrows, with viewers questioning whether she was being entirely truthful. And now the validity of her statements have been called into question again.

One of the contributors to the Vanity Fair article, Tom Fitzgerald, told the publication: “Meghan is the type of woman who would check a menu out online before going to a restaurant to pick what she was going to eat. So the idea that she didn’t know she was supposed to curtsy for the [late] Queen, I just didn’t find it particularly believable, because [based on] everything she ever told us about herself, I cannot imagine that she went into meeting the Royal Family completely cold, with no research whatsoever.”

In the past, sceptics have pointed to a 2010 scene from Suits where Meghan’s character Rachel Zane does a quite small playful curtsy to attorney Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman). Furthermore, Harry recalled the situation differently in his memoir Spare. According to the Duke, his aunt Sarah had already taught Meghan how to curtsy before the meeting. “Fergie came out, a little emotional, and asked, ‘Can you curtsy?’ Meg shook her head. Fergie then demonstrated, and Meg imitated her,” Harry wrote.

Elsewhere in their Netflix documentary, Meghan said she had to Google the British national anthem in the early days of her relationship with Prince Harry. The mother-of-two admitted that she repeatedly practiced the patriotic rendition of ‘God Save The Queen’, which she had taught herself online, before joining the Royal Family.

She also said that ‘the wave is not a thing’, claiming that she wasn’t trained to move her hand any special sort of way – but jokingly added she didn’t want to flail her hands ‘like an American’.