How to 'Find a Voice': Meghan Markle Can 'Multi-Task' 'Female Empowerment' With Planning to Marry a Prince

Meghan Markle joked along with Prince Harry, who interrupted her speech at the Royal Foundation Forum on February 28, 2018. A royal author now claims that Harry's joke to his bride-to-be, which also played out in front of Prince William and Kate, the then-Duchess of Cambridge, "was much more weighted" than what was previously known about the infamous "Fab Four" meeting.

During one quiet moment, the Suits star went to the podium and shared: "With so many campaigns like MeToo and TimesUp, there's no better time to continue to shine a light on women feeling empowered and people supporting them. You'll often hear people say, 'Well you're helping people find their voice' and I fundamentally disagree with that, because women don't need to find a voice. They have a voice, they need to feel empowered to use it, and people need to be encouraged to listen."

In his book, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, Tom Bower wrote: "While Meghan spoke, Harry spotted William's rictus grin... 'Wedding first,' Harry whispered loudly. While the four all laughed at Prince Harry's comment, the author paints a picture that it was his way of reminding his fiancé at the time to not get ahead of herself. 'We can multi-task,' Meghan replied to the unexpected interruption."

This tongue-in-cheek reference to royal protocol from Harry was, what Bower suggested, part of the appeasement senior royals exhibited to the Forum's executives, who were used to their famous patrons sitting quietly and following the narrative.

"While William, Kate and Harry had become accustomed to their motley behavior, Meghan's arrival as a natural recruit for the Foundation's philanthropic work disturbed the rhythm of the executives' habits," Bower added. "Her feminism also upset their ingrained conservatism."

Bower continued: "That power was exercised by the Foundation's executives, an unimpressive group criticized for ineptly moving the royals around like chess pieces."

During the four-way interview, just months before she became "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex," Meghan Markle allegedly felt ignored during the panel.

The summit was a chance for the four millennial royals to lay out the causes for the initiatives they wished to champion in the coming years. The filmed discussion took place three months before Harry and Meghan's wedding. The forum led to the quartet of thirtysomethings being labeled the "Fab Four" by the British press, which was to be short-lived. According to the Duke of Sussex's memoir, Kate and Meghan started having issues at that event, and it happened backstage.

A royal insider said that Bower's insight is an example of how "Meghan broke Harry," and "turned him into her willing puppet, complete with her ideology now his." The source also claimed that Meghan "is not a feminist; she is whatever she needs to be when a social narrative calls for it," before then quipping: "Nevermind the fact that she married into the most patriarchal form of government known to humankind."

Daily Mirror reported on Bower's comments.