South African security confirms Meghan Markle’s story of Archie nursery fire

‘When we stopped at the residence, I can tell you that she didn’t get out of the car like a lady normally gets out. She bolted into the house.’

South African security has confirmed Meghan Markle’s podcast revelation that there was a fire in her son Archie’s nursery during a tour of the country.

Meghan talked about the previously unreported incident on the first episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes last week.

It led to a backlash in the country, with #VoetsekMeghan, or “Go away Meghan” trending after its release.

But a source familiar with the event told The Citizen newspaper that the fire had taken place at the official residence in Cape Town.

“The heater burnt. The house didn’t burn, the rooms didn’t burn. I didn’t see the fire itself, but I saw the heater when it came out of the room. The plastic was severely melted,” the source said.

“We were driving in convoy and all of a sudden, the convoy with Meghan broke away. We followed after... We weren’t sure what was going on.”

And they added: “When we got to the house, the house-keeper called me and showed me the heater that was burnt and told me what had happened and that the child was not in the room at the time the heater burnt, they smelt it, went up and saw the smoke.

“When we stopped at the residence, I can tell you that she didn’t get out of the car like a lady normally gets out. She bolted into the house.”

Serena Williams appears at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 27, 2022, left, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, appears at a service of thanksgiving for the reign of Queen Elizabeth II in London on June 3, 2022. (AP)

The source told the newspaper that British security traveling with the couple recommended they not make the incident public.

“When we were outside, we discussed what we are going to do about this. It was a new heater that was just purchased and the consensus was ‘guys this is gonna look bad for us or for Cape Town, South Africa, or for whoever,’” they said.

“The British Police guys actually told us ‘guys just leave it as is, don’t talk about this.’”

And they added: “We decided we are not going to expose this thing. That’s why we kept quiet about it back then because we knew we were going to get backlash.”

Meghan described the incident to tennis great Serena Williams on the premiere of the podcast and said that despite being “shaken” by it she had to carry on with her next royal engagement.

“And of course as a mother, everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken. And what’d we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement. And I said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’” she told her friend.