Leaving your country, your home, is always difficult. Although it is your own, thoughtful and even happy decision, putting miles between yourself and the land and people who have accompanied you throughout your life to start a new life project is complicated. Henry of England and Meghan Markle decided to leave the United Kingdom, where Charles III’s youngest son had lived practically his entire life, in 2020. Four years ago they settled in California, where they apparently enjoy the existence they pursued with that escape: a private, quiet life, with the business projects that they themselves have chosen, raising their two children without the impositions that come with being a member of the British royal family. But they have also had to forge a new circle of trust to accompany them in the process. Enrique had his family and his friends—from Eton, from his military career—in the United Kingdom; Markle barely had a relationship with his family: he studied in Chicago and had lived for a few years in Toronto, although Los Angeles is the city of his birth. Hence, when he returned so close to his homeland, he put his agenda into making his house in Montecito a home.
Due to their own lifestyle, focused on work and childhood relationships, making friends is not easy in a country like the United States, but neither is it when you are a couple as famous as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Even if they have a trained eye, they have to be careful to distinguish between those who really want to lend a hand and the handful of flies interested in their fame and fortune. Hence, they have turned to old friends or trusted people to create their network. Friends from their youth and coworkers have crept into their lives until they become their new family.
It is true that Markle does count on her mother. Doria Ragland continues to be a fundamental support in the lives and routines of the couple. Although they have specialized nannies, she often stays in the care of Archie, who turns five this May 6, and Lilibet, who will be three in June, and accompanies them to events. Until the Sussexes returned from London, Ragland lived at their home in View Park-Windsor Hills, a quiet area south of Los Angeles, but now he spends long periods in Montecito, 150 kilometers north, next to the picturesque (and very face) Santa Barbara.
The fact that the city of cinema is just two hours by road from the Sussex residence has allowed Markle to recover some of her former friends in that industry. One of them, one of the most intimate, is Abigail Spencer, a television actress whom he met during the filming of the series. Suits, which they both starred in. She was at Markle’s wedding to Enrique in May 2018, and also at the party to celebrate Archie’s birth in New York in February the following year. And now, when Markle returns to the United States, he is one of her great supporters, especially the most public, because the dukes’ friendship network is something that they themselves protect on purpose, aware of the frequent media persecution to which they their circle is often subjugated.
Spencer, being a public figure, has spoken about Harry and Meghan, but cautiously. In an interview a few weeks ago on singer and host Kelly Clarkson’s show she explained that she had met her friend almost 17 years ago. “It was 2007 and I was filming a pilot episode for NBC, and I had to go to a reading with the person who was supposed to play my best friend. They were testing other actresses. I walked in and saw this beautiful creature at the end of the table and I was like, ‘Who is it?’ We immediately had something, you know? Her name is Meghan Markle,” she said. “It was something between us. Our friendship developed a lot in that time, it deepened. She is an amazing person.” Coincidentally, they were born on the same day of the same year.
Spencer is precisely one of the 50 people who has received a jar of jam from Markle. What seems like an anecdotal detail is being a kind of Easter egg hunt on social media. The duchess is in the midst of launching her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, and as the only clue she has sent fifty jars to a handful of friends and acquaintances, such as Kris Jenner, Mindy Kaling, Chrissy Teigen or Tracee Ellis Ross, who have been posting the now famous jam on their profiles.
These celebrities know the dukes, but they are not so much in their inner circle. Yes, there is another one who has tried the sweet and received a personalized, handwritten card from the duchess (she studied and worked as a calligrapher years ago): Kelly McKee Zajfen. She is, along with Spencer, one of the closest to Markle. McKee Zajfen, 44, is an entrepreneur and founder of Alliance of Moms, a charity that supports young pregnant women and teenagers living in care homes. Markle posed with a t-shirt in support of said foundation last year, and this year, on the occasion of Mother’s Day (in the US, the second Sunday in May), both Spencer and Markle have been photographed with McKee Zajfen wearing another t-shirt. the organization. The three of them are very close, especially now that they live nearby; The businesswoman has described them as “inspiring.” The two actresses actively collaborate with the philanthropist and are a great support for her, who in July 2022 suffered the loss of her son George, who died of meningitis and covid at only nine years old. The dukes donated $5,000 in the little boy’s name after his death.
The photographer Misan Harriman is another of those friends that Markle created in her years as an actress and that she has recovered and kept on her return to the United States. He was the one who photographed the couple for the image with which, in February 2021, they announced the duchess’s second pregnancy; He also photographed her a few months ago for the launch of her new podcast and he has not hesitated to say that she is “like a sister” to him, as he told People. Harriman made his directorial debut last year with a short film called The after (The After), released on Netflix, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2024.
Markle wanted to support Harriman’s new career with a private screening and a subsequent chat with the director and star, David Oyelowo, of Nigerian origin. In fact, she herself learned a few years ago through a genetic test that she had Nigerian ancestry; and this week it was learned that the couple will visit the country this May, according to a spokesperson invited by the chief of the Defense Staff. Being in Africa, you may have the opportunity to see Prince Seeiso of Lesotho. The younger brother of the king of the small South African country was the only member of a foreign royal family to attend his wedding and together they founded Sentebale, a charity that helps children in southern Africa. Enrique himself stated that traveling to Lesotho when he was 18 years old and meeting Seeiso, who had also just lost his mother, changed his life, and that they are “like brothers”, “a second family”.
Because the prince has also brought friends to the couple. His friendship with polo jockey Nacho Figueras is as old as Markle’s with Abigail Spencer. They met in 2007 and since then their mutual love of polo has given them moments to share across half the globe; the last one, just a few days ago in Florida, where Enrique was participating, in the midst of preparing a project abou
t that sport that will be released on Netflix in a few months. He and his wife of almost a quarter of a century, Delfina Blaquier, are as famous as they are discreet and that has made them become a reference for the Sussexes.
Figueras is one of those friends of the couple who appears in the controversial autobiographical documentary they released a year and a half ago on that same platform. Other friends of both of them also appear in it, many linked to previous stages of their lives. But there are others that still remain. Among them, Serena Williams, who over time has become one of Markle’s closest friends: she attended her wedding and was the first guest at her podcastthe failed Archetypesin 2022. In that polo competition in mid-April, she was also accompanying her friend and they both walked together on the lawn of the Grand Champions Polo Club in Wellington (Florida), laughing and drinking champagne.
There are other supports that were important for the dukes in their day and that today seem to have less weight. This is the case of Oprah Winfrey, who helped them choose Montecito as their destination and interviewed them at her mansion in March 2021. The relationship is now more professional than personal. They also do not maintain a close bond with other celebrities with whom they were previously associated, such as James Corden or the musician and producer David Foster. His wife, the actress and singer Catherine McPhee, went so far as to say that they had “a beautiful relationship, like a father and son” with Enrique when he decided to spend time with his family in Canada (the house where they lived belonged to Foster), before moving to California. They haven’t been seen together for years.
On May 8, Enrique will be in the United Kingdom for a ceremony for the Invictus Games (the sports competition he created for soldiers injured in combat), but his wife will not accompany him on that trip. There he will probably meet old friends and, perhaps, some of his relatives; He has invited them to the event at St. Paul’s Cathedral, but they are not expected to attend. His father is recovering from cancer, and his sister-in-law, Kate, Princess of Wales, is undergoing treatment for another. For now it has not been confirmed whether he will see one (whom he visited in February after his diagnosis) or the other (with whom he once had a loving relationship, now practically broken), but there is another member of the family with whom he will deal. : his cousin Eugenia de York, 34 years old, the youngest daughter of Andrew of England and Sarah Ferguson. Both are intimate, since childhood, almost inseparable. They write to each other frequently, they are like best friends. Eugenia has visited her cousin in California. And Enrique and Meghan, upon leaving the United Kingdom, left Eugenia and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, the house where they lived and which they restored, Frogmore Cottage, where they now reside with their children. Enrique continues to stay there when he goes to London. In the US friends are family; At home, the family, although it is increasingly dwindling, remains.
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