Meghan Markle claimed she was hounded by paparazzi so much that her neighbors accepted cash in exchange for streaming access to her Toronto backyard.
The Duchess of Sussex detailed the early days of her relationship with Prince Harry in their new Netflix documentary “Harry & Meghan” — in which the exited royals open up about life before, during, and after the palace.
As news of her romance with King Charles III’s youngest son came to light, the actress was on location in Toronto, Canada, while filming the television series “Suits.”
“It felt like all of the UK media descended upon Toronto,” the mom-of-two said in the documentary’s second episode.
“Then my neighbors texted me saying ‘they’re knocking on everyone’s door, they are trying to find you.’ They had paid certain neighbors to put a live stream camera into my backyard,” she claimed.
The actress, who, along with her husband, quit royal life in 2020 and moved across the pond in a desperate bid to start afresh, said the hounding of paparazzi had a knock-on effect on her life.
“Suddenly, it was like everything about my life was just getting so much more insular,” Markle recalled. “All the curtains were pulled and the blinds were pulled. It was scary.”
“My house was just surrounded. Just men sitting in their cars all the time waiting for me to do anything,” she went on, adding, “My face was everywhere, my life was everywhere. Tabloids had taken over everything.”
Some 3,547 miles away, Prince Harry said he was trying to do all he could to minimize the press for his girlfriend.
“I was hearing all of this from thousands of miles away and trying to do something about it but being completely helpless,” the “Spare” author, 38, said.
“There were things that were written that I then had to ask her about,” he added.
Elsewhere, Markle described how she received a death threat at around the same time.
She recalled, “I would say to the police, ‘If any other woman in Toronto said to you I have six grown men who are sleeping in their cars around my house who follow me everywhere that I go and I feel scared, wouldn’t you say that it was stalking?'”
“And they said yes but there’s really nothing we can do because of who you’re dating. I was like so I’m just supposed to live like this? And then I got a death threat and things changed because I needed to have security.”
