ust three months after her engagement to Prince Harry was announced, Meghan Markle made her very first speech as a soon-to-be official member of the royal family.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go very smoothly.
Meghan’s speech didn’t go smoothly (Credit: Shutterstock)

Meghan Markle’s speech script mishap

Appearing at the esteemed 2018 Endeavour Fund Awards, which seeks to recognise the achievements of wounded army personnel, Meghan Markle took to the stage to make a speech.

However, things didn’t exactly go to plan. In fact, things were a little fluffed.

Meghan reportedly “oozed” confidence ahead of her muck up.

She was said to have walked onto London’s Goldsmiths’ Hall to co-present a Celebrating Excellence Award with the previous winner, Neil Heritage.

Meghan began: “The second prize of the evening is awarded to an individual who has endeavoured to achieve excellence in their chosen sport or adventures challenge.”

She then handed over the microphone to British army veteran Neil.

Unfortunately, Neil had appeared to lose his spot in the script.

Despite the mess up, Meghan smiled at the audience as the moments ticked by. She even let out a giggle as she rifled through the notes with Neil.

Neil eventually quipped: “Who organised the notes?”

Meghan’s smooth recovery

Being a script-memorising pro, former Suits star Meghan managed to recover smoothly from the mishap.

Five years later, it was revealed what really caused the confusion.

David Wiseman, Director of the Invictus Games Foundation, admitted in an interview that he had “messed up” by giving Meghan the “wrong script”.
Meghan at the Endeavour Fund Awards the following year, 2019 (Credit: Rupert Hartley/Shutterstock )
Speaking on HELLO! Magazine’s A Right Royal Podcast with hosts Andrea Caamano and Emmy Griffiths in 2023, Wiseman confessed: “I was writing the scripts and there was a last-minute request for a change from her team. But she got the old version, and the new version was sent to her co-host.

“I don’t know if you remember, they were both sort of not arguing, but saying ‘No, this is the version’. And so there was a fluff of the lines in front of everybody on her first opening speech as the [future] Duchess of Sussex.”

David Wiseman admitted he “died a little bit inside,” over the fluffed lines.

Seated next to Harry, he said he almost had his head in his hands.

He described that on the inside he was going: “‘Oh, oh, just, just skip it. Just skip it. Move on, move on, move on’.”

David even admitted he sent Meghan an apologetic text afterwards.

How the Duchess of Sussex reacted

“Meghan jumped on the text: ‘David, it’s M, honestly, really really, don’t worry about it’. She was just so kind,” he recalled.

At the time, it was quite unusual that Meghan had been asked to present the award in the first place.

At the time, she and Harry were not yet married and Meghan was quite a way off being a working royal.

In contrast, Kate, who wed Wills in April of 2011, didn’t make her first public speech till March 2012.

Thankfully, it seems that Meghan didn’t go on to make a bad impression.

She went on to speak at the following Endeavour Fund Awards in 2019 and 2020.

Last week, Meghan proved she is an expert at delivering speeches as she spoke at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of a screening of the documentary ‘Cookie Queens’ executively produced by her and Prince Harry.