How Meghan & Harry: Escaping The Palace Cast Its Royal Family Lookalikes - Exclusive
The third installment of Lifetime's "Harry & Meghan" series, which was released on Labor Day, covers a tumultuous period in the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. From their shocking announcement that they were stepping down as senior members of the royal family to their dramatic move to Los Angeles, California where they appear to be thriving, the film "Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace" takes fans behind the scenes of the royal drama.
It's undeniable that Lifetime did a fantastic job of finding doppelgangers of several royal family members for the new movie, and viewers will likely agree that Sydney Morton's Meghan Markle sounds almost exactly like her real-life counterpart. While it couldn't have been easy to find convincing royal family lookalikes to star in "Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace," executive producers Merideth Finn and Michele Weiss were up for the job.
Nicki Swift caught up with Finn and Weiss to find out how they discovered the actors portraying key members of the royal family, and whether anyone was particularly difficult to cast in the "Harry & Meghan" trilogy. Read on to see what they said!
Casting the royal family wasn't easy
In "Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace," Jordan Dean plays Prince Harry, and Sydney Morton takes on the role of Meghan Markle. As the movie covers such a challenging time in the lives of the royal family, casting the right actors was crucial. Executive producer Michele Weiss told Nicki Swift, "It's funny, because it seems like it would be difficult. I mean, it is difficult to cast ... to find great actors, but often, because the people they're portraying are so in the public eye, and people get a sense of their cadence, and how they speak ... we've often found that if we find two people with good chemistry with each other, who sort of generally fit the bill and are really trying to sort of capture something about the people they're representing, that we feel like we've been fortunate."
Different actors have played Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in each of Lifetime's three "Harry & Meghan" movies to date, something which has actually been quite fortuitous, according to Weiss. "And what works for us is that people have said, 'Oh, this is the one that you cast that we think is the most like Meghan.' But people don't agree on which one that is, suggesting that they each capture something."
Producers thought Sydney Morton has the 'quiet confidence' of Meghan Markle
Casting the lead roles in "Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace" was no small task, especially since the parts of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had already been played by other actors in previous installments. Discussing the casting process, executive producer Merideth Finn explained, "But they all have brought something special and different. And ... for Sydney Morton [of "Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace"], it was her voice. I couldn't believe when she opened her mouth in her taped audition, it was like, oh my gosh, I'm listening to her. And also she had that quiet confidence that Meghan has and she carries with her."
Even though the people playing Harry and Meghan have changed, Michele Weiss told Nicki Swift, "Our hope is always, by the way, that you get engrossed enough in the story, and interested enough in the characters, that there's a buy-in right at the beginning where you have to accept that this is Meghan, and this is Harry, but that hopefully, the story will [pull you in and] you can forget about that once you start watching these two characters."
"Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace" is available to watch on Lifetime.