Meghan Markle and Prince William's Awkward Eye Contact Spotted by Fans

Fans think Meghan Markle and Prince William's body language at a time of royal conflict showed an awkward dimension in their relationship.

Meghan and Prince Harry were filmed with Kate Middleton and William during a Christmas church service at Sandringham in December 2018. For the Duchess of Sussex, it was her second time joining Harry's relatives for their traditional gathering at Queen Elizabeth II's estate in Norfolk.

TikTok users believe they spotted Meghan trying and failing to make eye contact with William during awkward exchanges, though it is not possible to know exactly what was going on in the minds of the royals present.

A TikTok clip of their interaction was liked nearly 48,000 times and viewed 2.3 million times after it was posted with the message: "Remember that Christmas where Meghan kept trying to catch William's eye and chat to him but he was having none of it?"

"I'm not a body language expert, but damn, I feeeeeeeeel that," one TikTok user commented after seeing William appear to dodge Meghan's gaze. "She was trying to be part of the family and they were having none of that," another person commented.

Whatever Meghan and William felt at the time, that Christmas came during the era in which relations between Harry, Meghan and the wider royal family and palace disintegrated.

Stories in the British press over the previous two months had described Meghan as "Duchess Difficult," said she made Kate cry, which Meghan denies, or described Harry being rebuked by the queen during tensions over Meghan's wedding day tiara.

A month later, in January 2019, Meghan would tell Harry for the first time that she was experiencing suicidal thoughts in the aftermath of the media backlash.

"I just didn't want to be alive anymore," Meghan told Oprah Winfrey in March 2021. "And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. "And I remember—I remember how he just cradled me. And I was—I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that, 'I've never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere'.

"And I was told that I couldn't, that it wouldn't be good for the institution," Meghan said. "We had to go to this event at the Royal Albert Hall and a friend said, 'I know you don't look at pictures, but, oh, my God, you guys look so great'  and sent it to me.

"And I zoomed in, and what I saw was the truth of what that moment was, because right before we had to leave for that, I had just had that conversation with Harry that morning, and it was the next day that I talked to the institution."

The Royal Albert Hall event was a performance of Totem by Cirque du Soleil on January 16, 2019, around three weeks after Christmas.

Prince Harry would later go on to suggest that the stories in the press at the time were leaked after William divulged information to King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

He wrote in his memoir, Spare: "Who could've planted such a thing? Who could've leaked it to the press in the first place? Who? We went around and around. The list of suspects became vanishingly small.

"Finally, finally, Willy leaned back and conceded that, ahem, while we'd been on tour in Australia, he and Kate had gone to dinner with Pa and Camilla...and, alas, he said sheepishly, he might've let it slip that there'd been strife between the two couples...

"I put a hand over my face. Meg froze. A heavy silence fell. So now we knew."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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