Suits creator says Palace 'weighed in' to remove lines from Meghan Markle’s dialogue

Before she became the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle had established a successful acting career in the US with her breakout role as Rachel Zane on legal drama Suits. 

Meghan played the part for seven years but revealed that she would not be returning for an eighth season in 2017, shortly after it was announced that she was engaged to Prince Harry. 

Although she retired from acting to focus on royal duties, there was a period of time when her role overlapped with her new royal life. 

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Suits creator Aaron Korsh opened up about how the process changed when Meghan and Harry started dating, and claims that the Palace stepped in to give script feedback and remove a line of dialogue for her character. 

According to Korsh, the Palace 'weighed in on some stuff' and he found it 'a little irritating'.

He said: "I remember one was a particular line of dialogue and, look, I’ll just say what the line was. My wife’s family, when they have a topic to discuss that might be sensitive, they use the word ‘poppycock’.

"So, in the episode, Mike and Rachel were going to have a thing, and as a nod to my in-laws, we were going to have her say, 'My family would say poppycock.' And the royal family did not want her saying the word. They didn’t want to put the word 'poppycock' in her mouth."

While he didn't know how the Palace were able to see the scripts to give feedback, he added that he did change the word, explaining: "I presume because they didn’t want people cutting things together of her saying 'cock'. So, we had to change it to 'bullshit' instead."

Despite admitting he found the interference 'irritating', he eventually found it to be a 'reasonable' request, adding: "I had some sympathy because I wouldn’t want somebody doing that to her either."

Harry spoke about the Palace's involvement with her work on Suits in his memoir, Spare. 

In his book, he writes: "Meg packed up her house, gave up her role in Suits. After seven seasons. A difficult moment for her, because she loved that show, loved the character she was playing, loved her cast and crew—loved Canada.

"On the other hand life there had become untenable. Especially on set.

"The show writers were frustrated, because they were often advised by the Palace comms team to change lines of dialogue, what her character would do, how she would act."