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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle eased themselves back into the limelight Monday night, when they were picked up by the Jumbotron screen at a high-profile Los Angeles Lakers game, as they beat out the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA playoffs.
Despite vocal encouragement from the crowd of 20,000, including Adam Sandler and Kim Kardashian, the couple declined to lock lips for a kiss-cam moment at the Crypto.com arena.
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To be fair, Harry looked like he might be up for an on-screen PDA, but Meghan laughed his advances off, leaving him to pull a face of (mock?) dismay.
Harry’s critics were quick to point out that by contrast, his brother Prince William was up at dawn, at almost the exact same moment, to lay a wreath for fallen Australian soldiers at a memorial at Hyde Park Corner in London.
Harry and Meghan’s appearance represented the first time the couple have been seen together in several months, with Meghan not regularly appearing by Harry’s side since the launch of his book Spare at the beginning of the year. In fact, Meghan has been barely visible since the debut of their Netflix series, Harry & Meghan.
There is evidence, however, that she is in the midst of something of a comeback, appearing Monday on a video for the photographer, Misan Harriman, introducing his TEDTalk.
Harriman has taken many photos for the couple, and in her introduction, Meghan said, “Our next speaker has an unmatched eye for a good photograph. I have experienced his talent firsthand as he has captured many meaningful milestones for me and my family.”
Meghan was also back in the news this weekend, after it was revealed that she and King Charles exchanged letters in the wake of her interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which she accused an unnamed member of the royal family of having raised “concerns” about likely skin tone of her then unborn, son, Archie.
Meghan and Charles are understood to have written to each other in letters, which identified the person who made the comment, with both accepting that it was not made maliciously.
However, the Telegraph said that part of the reason that the Duchess was not attending the coronation next month was because she felt she had received an unsatisfactory response to the issues she had raised about unconscious bias within the royal family.
Meghan subsequently issued a statement denying this.
Meghan appears to also be debuting a new look, with poker-straight hair. In an analysis of her new hairstyle, the Daily Telegraph beauty writer, Annabel Jones said that her “minimal polish look” suits her “new situation as a working mother of two and co-founder of non-profit foundation, Archewell,” adding “Her new look alludes to the Gwyneth Paltrow, polished chief executive school of thought, rather than the beachy Californian look she adopted when she first moved back to the West Coast.”
