Just days after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their plans to move back to the UK, Tina Brown announced in her Fresh Hell Substack that Meghan had basically only agreed to move back because she had scored an acting job. Soon after, gossip settled on The Gentlemen, which films in the Cotswolds and would be a somewhat natural fit for Meghan, I guess. Except that all of the rumors amounted to nothing – there was no offer, no script, no contract, no audition. In fact, Variety reported on August 26th that the whole thing started as Guy Ritchie throwing out some ideas:

The real story behind Meghan’s potential appearance on the show, Variety has learned from a well-placed source with knowledge of the situation, is that it was an “incredibly nascent concept” — so nascent, it was hardly considered “real on any level.” Effectively, Ritchie threw out the duchess’ name while brainstorming ideas, well before the royal couple announced they were relocating back to the U.K. Meghan’s was just one of “a smorgasbord of names” Ritchie mentioned, says the source: there was certainly no suggestion of contracts about to be signed. The source was puzzled as to how Meghan had even heard about Ritchie’s suggestion unless she’d had direct conversations with him (if she did, the source wasn’t aware of them). The idea may also have been shared via their agents, since they’re both repped by WME.

[From Variety]

Around this time, I developed a theory that Ritchie and his team actually used Meghan’s name to promote the second season (which premiered last week) and ensure that Netflix greenlit a third season, which Netflix did just days into the Meghan rumor mill. Well, weeks later, Page Six now claims that there was one conversation… and Meghan was the one who took it too far.

It appears as though someone jumped the gun. Meghan Markle never had a role in Guy Ritchie‘s series “The Gentlemen” — but rather misinterpreted a casual conversation with a casting director as an offer to be on the show, Page Six Hollywood has learned. The lost in translation moment became an international incident worthy of a royal “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode.

The trouble all began on Aug. 21, when Deadline published an “exclusive” report that Markle was in “preliminary conversations to join Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series ‘The Gentlemen’ for Season 3.” For most of the day, that language stood, according to seven subsequent captures on the Wayback Machine. But then, the wording was tweaked to “in talks to join Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series ‘The Gentlemen’ for Season 3.”

Preliminary conversations vs. in talks is an important distinction. In trade lingo, conversations are usually just that, while talks usually mean an offer has been made. Negotiations mean the agent has come back with a counteroffer. And “signed on” means the deal has closed.

Why Deadline strengthened its verbiage remains a mystery. Perhaps it was because former New Yorker editor Tina Brown was teeing up her own item on Substack that posted the following day. Brown wrote: “The casting … has been withdrawn. The backlash in the UK was so intense, it became untenable to go forward.”

Sources tell Page Six Hollywood that the Duchess of Sussex never actually had an offer and had just one conversation with the series casting director. “She took it as an offer. And it wasn’t,” says one insider. “And [she and Prince Harry] thought it would be helpful in the moment for there to be a reason for their move.”

Another source concurs that there was never a formal offer but counters that the interest in Markle joining the cast was initiated by Ritchie himself. WME, which reps both Markle and Ritchie, did not respond to a request for comment.

One source who has worked with the couple calls the entire Megxit arc a bungled effort to control the narrative. “They can’t help themselves.”

[From Page Six]

So now, after The Gentlemen’s Season 2 has premiered and Season 3 has been greenlit, magically all of the speculation about Meghan came from Meghan herself, because she confused one conversation with a genuine offer? Yeah, I don’t think that’s what happened at all. Of course, even when people believed that she was close to booking the job, I still didn’t believe that this was “the reason” why she agreed to live in the UK. I think Guy Ritchie probably did pitch her name as a possible “get” for the third season, and maybe there were some calls within WME and Netflix. But make no mistake, ALL of the speculation helped Ritchie and the show. It was all promotion.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.