Invictus Games Executive Who ‘Messed up’ Meghan Markle’s First Royal Speech Reveals Her Reaction: She ‘Jumped on the Text’
Oops. Meghan Markle’s first public speaking engagement as the future Duchess of Sussex hit a snag. The director of the Invictus Games revealed during an October 2023 podcast interview that he “messed up,” which is how Meghan found herself at the 2018 Endeavour Fund Awards with different copies of her speech.
Meghan received the wrong speech at the 2018 Endeavour Fund Awards after a ‘last-minute request for a change’
On the Oct. 25 episode of Hello! A Right Royal Podcast, David Wiseman, director of the Invictus Games Foundation, shared how a mix-up with Meghan’s speech came about at the 2018 Endeavour Fund Awards, which were established by Prince Harry. Prepared to address the crowd, the now-42-year-old soon realized there were different versions of the script.
“I messed up at work!” Wiseman said. “It was the first time she’d spoken in public as the [future] Duchess of Sussex. There weren’t many of us at The Royal Foundation, so everyone sort of mucked in for everything.”
“I was writing the scripts, and there was a last-minute request for a change from her team — yeah, no problem, put it in,” he continued. “But she got the old version, and the new version was sent to her cohost, my mate [British Army veteran] Neil Heritage. And they were there on stage, and they had two different versions of the script.”
“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,” Wiseman said.
Sure enough, there are photos and video footage from the Feb. 1, 2018, ceremony showing Meghan and Heritage laughing as they shuffled papers on the podium before presenting the Celebrating Excellence Award.
Meghan had a ‘kind’ reaction to the 2018 Endeavour Fund Awards speech slip-up
Wiseman continued, joking he “died a little bit inside,” sitting in the front row next to the Duke of Sussex, watching as Meghan and Heritage looked at the different copies of the speeches. Eventually, the mix-up was resolved, and Meghan delivered her remarks, later receiving positive coverage in the press.
Following the Endeavour Fund Awards, Wiseman apologized to Harry via text for his mistake. Instead of a response from Harry, he got a reply from Meghan. “Meghan jumped on the text,” he recalled. She replied, “‘David, it’s M. Honestly, really, really, don’t worry about it.’”
“She was just so kind,” he concluded.
Meghan’s first walkabout didn’t go entirely to plan either
Two months before speaking at the Endeavour Fund Awards, Meghan had her first experience going on a “walkabout” where royals greet the public. Just like her speech, not everything went smoothly. The problem, as she and Harry recalled in their December 2022 Netflix docuseries, was a last-minute wardrobe malfunction.
On Dec. 1, 2017, shortly after announcing their engagement, Harry and Meghan visited Nottingham, England. The pair smiled and chatted with people in the crowd when, just minutes before, they’d been stressing over a zipper.
“You’d be there with the scissors like, ‘Guys, be ready. We have five minutes,’” Meghan recalled. “And I was like, ‘Should I wear these earrings? Are these a British designer? I just ordered these online. Is this good? Wait, my tag’s on. Cut the tag.’”
“And then the zip breaks,” Harry told Netflix. “The whole thing was just ridiculous.” Meghan explained Harry’s quick thinking at the time, saying he told her to “‘just safety pin it.’”
