When Meghan Markle, a divorced, mixed-race American actress, married Prince Harry in 2018, their unexpected yet idyllic romance seemed like something straight out of a rom-com. In the years since then, Harry and Meghan have been covered breathlessly in the media, and their 2020 decision to step away from their royal duties shocked the world.
Given Meghan’s royal status and all the conversation she’s provoked, it’s easy to overlook the fact that she had a long resume before she even married Harry, and while her roles in the legal drama Suits and the game show Deal or No Deal have been much discussed, many people forget that she starred in two Hallmark movies a few years before she lived out a real-life fairytale.
Here’s a look back at Meghan’s Hallmark movies, When Sparks Fly and Dater’s Handbook, and what the actress turned Duchess of Sussex turned international celebrity had to say about them.
Meghan Markle’s first Hallmark movie: When Sparks Fly (2014)
Meghan’s first Hallmark movie was the 2014 4th of July-themed romance When Sparks Fly. She starred as a big-city journalist who gets sent back to her hometown for a writing assignment about her family’s fireworks business. Once there, she encounters her ex-boyfriend, who’s about to get married to her best friend and—you guessed it—sparks start to fly.
In an interview, Meghan called the movie “exactly the kind of project I wanted to be part of,” and claimed her character was “closer to my true personality” than the one she played on Suits, saying, “It was fun to eat ribs and get barbecue sauce all over my face and run around in jeans all day.” She also revealed that she wore her own Converse sneakers in the down-to-earth role, and she even shared her recipe for meatless tacos on Hallmark’s website.
Meghan Markle’s second and final Hallmark movie: Dater’s Handbook (2016)
In Dater’s Handbook, Meghan plays a woman who sets out to fix her unsatisfying love life with advice from a self-help book. In following the titular handbook, she finds herself making a difficult choice between two very different romantic prospects (Jonathan Scarfe and Kristoffer Polaha).
While promoting the rom-com, Meghan said she had natural chemistry with her costars and appreciated that the film’s relatable plot was all about following one’s heart. She also spoke highly of Hallmark, calling the channel’s movies “heartwarming, affirming and validating.”
Reflecting on working with Meghan before she became a Royal, her onscreen love interest, Kristoffer Polaha, said, “Meghan and I hit it off like gangbusters, and we had the best time making that movie . . . That movie became special because, obviously here was a movie that we didn’t think many people would see beyond—we didn’t understand what Hallmark was at the time, neither one of us. And then, of course, Meghan met Harry later that year and the entire Commonwealth watched that movie over and over and over again. That was kind of the high point of that, getting to know her.”
Dater’s Handbook was one of Meghan’s final projects as an actress, and she married Harry two years after it came out. Polaha shared a sweet memory of this pivotal moment, saying, “She was dating a guy in Toronto and she wasn’t really into the dude and I was like, ‘You just got out of a marriage, why are you jumping into another relationship? Go be single, be free.’ She texted me in January and she was like, ‘I took your advice. I’m single, I’m free. I’m going to see who’s out there.’ In March, I get this other text and she’s like, ‘Well, I met someone.’ I said, ‘Do you like him?’ And she said, ‘I kinda do.’ And then of course, it was Harry.”
Once Meghan became royalty, many viewers tried to find parallels between the movie and her life, and while you can make connections if you try hard enough, it’s clear that no Hallmark movie can top her offscreen story.
