When Suits star Meghan Markle resigned from the much-loved legal drama back in 2017, fans were somewhat unsurprised.
After all, the actress' relationship with Prince Harry was getting pretty serious at that point - and a year later, the couple married.
Apparently, however, it wasn't just Meghan's new 'Duchess' title that sealed her fate, with one of the show's writers making a pretty shocking claim about the 'real reason' she was written out of the show.
For those in need of a reminder of her pre-royal antics, Meghan was cast as paralegal Rachel Zane in the series back in 2011, going on to feature in a grand total of seven series.
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During her time on the show, her character became the love interest of lead lawyer Mike Ross (played by Patrick J Adams), and just prior to her departure the pair tied the knot, supposedly fleeing to Seattle to form their own law firm.
Meghan's final appearance on the show aired in 2017 - a year prior to her real life marriage to Prince Harry - with many believing her new royal responsibilities would prohibit her from on-screen roles again.
However, one of the Suits writers previously let slip that he'd 'taken a gamble' on the fact the pair's relationship would work out in the end - and while he didn't explicitly say so, Aaron Korsh' comment implies he'd planned on writing her character out for a while.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 back in 2017, he confessed: "I knew from a year ago that this relationship was burgeoning.
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"And I had a decision to make because I didn't want to intrude and ask her, 'hey what's going on and what are you going to do?'.
"So collectively with the writers, we decided to take a gamble that these two people were in love and it was going to work out."
The 58-year-old producer went on to explain: "What we decided to do (was to) say, 'look, I would rather have good things happen to Meghan in her life' - which would likely mean her leaving the show.
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"So let's plan on that and it's much easier to undo that, if it came to it, than to just plan on her staying forever and then finding out she's going to go. And the only way to write a character out like that would be if they got hit by a bus or something."
Korsh's claims were also included in royal author Tom Bower's 2022 bombshell exposé Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors, where Bower claimed Meghan's career was failing long before she officially departed from the series.
The writer - who claimed he'd spoken to around 80 people who'd been personally acquainted with the mother-of-two - alleged that her former agent Nick Collins had told him her professional prospects were 'not encouraging' during the early days of her romance with Harry.
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"No film producer was offering her any major roles and no serious Hollywood director spoke about featuring Meghan in his movie or TV series," Bower wrote.
"Just as she feared, her acting career was stymied. Her income after 2017 would plummet."
Elsewhere in the book, he added: "Fearing the worst, from bitter experience, the Palace stepped in to control Meghan's life. Aaron Korsh was told to submit all future Suits scripts to Nick Collins, Meghan's agent.
"Scripts were thereafter forwarded to Kensington Palace for approval. Orders for changes of words were sent back from London to Los Angeles."
Topics: Meghan Markle, Royal Family, UK News, US News, TV And Film
Rhianna Benson