It’s no secret that there’s no love lost between Meghan Markle and the British press. Now, one of her previous co-stars has revealed that British tabloids offered him up to $70,000 to lie about having a relationship with the former actress in order to smear her reputation.
“Nothing happened,” Simon Rex explained while dropping the bombshell on The Hollywood Raw podcast. “We never even kissed. It was just like, we hung out once in a very non-datey way. She was just someone I had met on a TV show and, like, we got lunch. That was the extent of it.”
Prior to marrying Prince Harry, Markle once starred on the series Suits. When news of their innocent one-time hangout was made public, Rex said he started getting requests from the UK to make more of the incident than it really was.
“The tabloids, actually, when that story broke, a couple British tabloids offered to pay me a lot of money to say a lie that we actually hooked up,” he continued. “And dude. I said no to a lot of money because I didn’t feel right lying and f–king up the royal f–king family …”
A history of harassment
At the time, Harry penned a blistering letter. He condemned the tabloid for participating in behavior that “destroys lives.”
The Duchess of Sussex initiated the legal filing in London’s High Court against the newspaper, accusing the publication of “unlawfully” publishing her private letter that was written to her dad after her wedding and published Feb. 10.
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Harry also condemned The Daily Mail, charging that its editors are creating an environment that is putting his wife at the same risk and possible fate as his mother. She was relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi and died in a fatal car crash in 1997.
Harry said his wife had become “one of the latest victims” of the publication, which “wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences.”
The Duke of Sussex declared his “deepest fear is history repeating itself.”