Meghan Markle says British friends warned her not to marry Prince Harry

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex has described the past year as a member of the royal family as ‘hard’ and said her British friends warned her not to marry Harry.

The US-born former actress said she had tried to cope with the pressures of her new life, since marrying the Duke of Sussex in May 2018, by putting on a ‘stiff upper lip’ but she was not prepared for the intensity of tabloid interest.

She told ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey: ‘It’s hard. I don’t think anybody could understand that, but in all fairness I had no idea, which probably sounds difficult to understand … but when I first met my now-husband my friends were really happy because I was so happy, but my British friends said to me, ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life’.’

"And I very naively — I'm an American we don't have that there. 'What are you talking about, that doesn't make any sense.' I didn't get it. So it's been complicated."

 The 38-year-old says she tried to steel herself for the pressure she would face in marrying Harry, but she still was not fully prepared for it.

"I've said for a long time to H — that's what I call him — it is not enough to just survive something, right?" she said. "That's not the point of life. You've got to thrive, you’ve got to feel happy, and I think I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip.

"I tried, I really tried, but I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging, and the biggest thing that I know is that I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought that it would be fair, and that's the part that's really hard to reconcile."

Harry released a rare statement during the couple's recent trip in to Africa speaking out against the treatment his wife has received from the media.