Meghan Markle's 'mock curtsy' as she recalls first meeting with Queen left Prince Harry in 'discomfort'

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"There wasn’t like some big moment of ‘Now you’re going to meet my grandmother’. I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before," Meghan said. "We were in the car and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch, and he’s like ‘Oh, my grandmother’s here, we’re going to meet her after church.’ And I remember we were in the car driving up and he’s like ‘You know how to curtsy, right?’ And I just thought it was a joke." To which Harry responds: "How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you will need to curtsy. Especially to an American. That’s weird."

"Now I’m starting to realize ‘This is a big deal’. I mean, Americans will understand this… We have medieval times, dinner and tournament. It was like that," the former 'Suits' star continues. She goes on to perform an awkward and exaggerated curtsy while giggling away. "Pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty,” she says while the camera focuses on Harry.

The body language expert Judi James told Mirror that the whole scene leaves Harry suggesting his "discomfort" as he performs one telling "cut off" gesture. "Meghan is the more chatty and natural speaker during their interview and here she sits talking confidently and readily in a slightly gossipy style as though talking to a girlfriend she is keen to amuse," she told the outlet. "Her joke is self-effacing as she speaks about her curtesy when she first met the late Queen. Her smile becomes asymmetric, pulling up on one side to register a shared joke."

"Harry, however, is already watching her carefully, turning to gaze at the side of her face with his own facial expression looking less turned to 'fun' than hers," the expert continues. "Meghan does an extravagant mock-curtsey that does, as she says, look Medieval. It takes her eight seconds to perform, making it a long joke but there is no change in Harry’s more serious facial expression until the end, when he lets out a small, mirthless laugh."

"As Meghan mentions ‘Your Majesty’, the direct reference to the late Queen, it does seem a small step too far for Harry who quickly drops his head down to perform a cut-off ritual that partially hides his face, suggesting some discomfort at this point," she concluded.