Meghan Markle's Co-Star Says U.K. Tabloids Offered Him $70K to Lie and Say He Dated Her
Meghan Markle announced last year that she was suing The Daily Mail's publishers because of the outlets' multiple libelous, false stories about her. A new interview with Meghan's 2005 Cuts co-star Simon Rex further illuminates the extreme lengths some British tabloids went to smear Meghan.
Rex claims that multiple outlets offered him thousands of dollars to lie and say the two dated. (Many tabloids describe Rex as Meghan's "porn star ex" although they never actually dated.) In May 2018, The Sun ran "an exclusive" interview with Rex where the outlet claimed he spoke about why he didn't get a "second date" with her.
Rex said in reality, they just had a platonic lunch. “Nothing happened. We never even kissed. We hung out once in a very non-datey way,” the actor said on the Hollywood Raw podcast. “She was just someone I had met on a TV show and we got lunch. That was the extent of it.
“When that story broke, a couple British tabloids offered to pay me a lot of money to say a lie that we actually hooked up," he continued. "I said no to a lot of money because I didn’t feel right lying and fucking up the royal fucking family."
Rex gave a dollar figure for that amount: "It was a lot of money, man. I think they offered me like $70,000."
In October, Meghan spoke about the warnings her friends gave her about dating Prince Harry because of tabloid culture in the U.K. "It's hard," Meghan said during her ITV documentary interview. "I don't think anybody could understand that, but in all fairness, I had no idea—which probably sounds difficult to understand here—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...we're American, we don't have that there, 'What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. I'm not in tabloids!' I didn't get it. So yeah, it's been complicated. "
Meghan and Harry announced their intentions to step back from the royal family months later, in January. The couple will begin their transition out of their senior royal family roles at the end of March.
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