Meghan Markle’s former bodyguard has come to the duchess’s defence, following reports by former staff members that she is a “dictator in high heels”.
Steve Davies has explained what it was like to work for the Duchess of Sussex, 43.
He said: “She gets a bad rap for being a not very good person to work with, that she was this evil person in the Royal Family.”
Davies had an intimate, firsthand perspective on Meghan as she transitioned from being an actress to a duchess.
He added: “I saw her, from working at the studio to working with charities to working with dog walkers and cleaners. There’s one huge lesson I learned from her: It’s give respect to get respect.”
When they first met in 2016, Meghan’s life had changed overnight.
Davies continued to tell In Touch: “I felt sorry [for her] because she’d gone from being a celebrity to being a member of the biggest family in the world.”
The bodyguard was hired by NBC to watch over the Suits star while she was living in Toronto as Prince Harry’s then-girlfriend.
“It was stressful for her — all the publicity.”
Davies claimed Meghan was “paranoid” with the paparazzi descending on her Toronto home.
He added: “We had people following us around everywhere we went. We had problems with drones, vehicles chasing us. It was a nightmare.
“After a couple of weeks of working with her, I said, ‘What do you really want to do?’ She said, ‘I’d love to be able to go and shop in a grocery store.’
“The previous security team wouldn’t let her do that. So I pushed the cart around the grocery store, and she was putting stuff in it. She really enjoyed that.”
When Davies later visited the duchess in the UK, he likened her life to being in a “goldfish bowl”.
He claimed it did not help that “Buckingham Palace was controlling the PR and Meghan was always used to being able to control the PR herself with her team”.
It was around this time that employees started complaining: “The staff at Buckingham Palace [said they] couldn’t stand working for her.
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“Nobody had a bad word to say about her [in Toronto]. Even with the pressure that she was under, she was warm and considerate all the time.”
He added that what might surprise people most is “how friendly she is and what a big heart she has. She’s great to her fans, and she would go out of her way to help people. That’s what hurts me — that people believe [otherwise].”
Though he no longer works for her, Davies considers Meghan a friend.
“My wife and I got invited to the wedding, that’s how close we became,” he said, adding that they exchange emails on birthdays and holidays.
“I would work with her again, not a problem at all. She was a good person to work for, and she still is a good person.”
