Jodie Turner-Smith says Meghan Markle’s royal exit was a “terrible missed opportunity” for the British royal family.
The actor, who is portraying Anne Boleyn in a Channel 5 drama by the same name, discussed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s step back from the royal family in an interview with The Telegraph published over the weekend.
Writer Sonia Haria asked Turner-Smith if she saw Meghan as “a great modernizer of the monarchy.”
“I think that Meghan could have been that,” the actor replied.
“It was a terrible missed opportunity, the way in which it was not allowed to be something that really modernizes that institution, and to change it to something for the better,” she said. “I think that’s why there’s dysfunction there.”
Asked about the current Netflix drama “The Crown,” Turner-Smith said that while she’s watched a few episodes, “it’s not really my kind of show.” She also added that she “would not consider myself a monarchist.”
“I think it’s interesting that the institution is not changing with the time, or quickly enough,” Turner-Smith said.
“We have to look at things in a modern context. And only then we will recognize that certain things are archaic, and don’t really serve us as a community and are limiting us. I think we should keep those things in stories and move on to something else in reality.”
Harry and Meghan stepped back as working royals on Jan. 8, 2020. The two told Oprah Winfrey this March that they faced difficulties including racist commentary during their time within the royal family.
“Here you have one of the greatest assets to the Commonwealth the family could have ever wished for,” Harry said of Meghan during the CBS interview.
Both the Duke and Duchess of Sussex traveled extensively throughout the Commonwealth prior to their step back on Jan. 8, 2020.
The Duchess of Sussex once memorably addressed a group of women in South Africa saying that: “While I am here with my husband, as a member of the royal family, I want you to know that for me, I am here with you as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of color and as your sister.”