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One of Meghan Markle’s friends has opened up about the attention he would get from the media after she got engaged to Prince Harry.

Canadian hockey player Michael Del Zotto,spoke on Tuesday 5 December’s Spittin Chiclets podcast episode where he discussed meeting her for the first time and what happened when Prince Harry entered the picture.

Del Zotto said that he first met Markle because “Suits was one of my favourite shows” and he was already friends with another actor on the show, Rick Hoffman, who played Louis Litt.

During their meeting the now-Duchess of Sussex was married to her first husband, Trevor Engelson, and living in Toronto while in the middle of filming Suits.

“I remember I got [Hoffman] a signed hat by all the boys and he was extremely thankful for it,” Del Zotto said on the podcast. “And through these times Meghan was around with him, you know, co-stars on the show and she was married at the time.”

“We had a picture of us together where I think it was the three of us were out. I believe it was Soho House, in Toronto. We had a drink before dinner.”

Meghan and Harry eventually met through mutual friends in London in July 2016 when one of the former-actor’s confidants, Markus Anderson, reportedly introduced them.

Anderson is linked with private members club Soho House, of which Harry is a member, but it wasn’t until months after the initial London meeting that their burgeoning romance made headlines.

The couple announced their engagement in November 2017.

He continued: “Fast forward, she’s now engaged to the prince and headlines are blowing up. Everyone’s digging into her past, her past dating history: who she knows. I started getting calls, like we’re friends, you know, I was friends with her through Rick. Sure enough, my mom’s getting called. They get access, the British press is getting access to my mom’s cell phone, asking ‘hey did your son and Meghan Markle have a relationship?’”

The hockey player explained that his mother called him right away to let him know, but that wasn’t the last of attempts to contact him. Another time he was leaving practice in Vancouver when he was approached and asked once again if he had “relations” with Meghan Markle.

“I’m like, ‘who the f*** is this guy? What’s this guy asking me?’ Del Zotto said. “And sure enough in the background, there’s probably I don’t know like four cars in the background and there’s numerous cameras taking pictures and video of me, the paparazzi’s back there, asking what the f*** is going on right now?”

After running to his car, he had to then explain to his teammates what exactly was going on. “I sprint to my car, a bunch of the boys come out. They call me after like, ‘what is going on?’ I’m like ‘I don’t know apparently I dated or was married to Megan Markle, so that’s a rude awakening for me,’” he said on the podcast.

“You got to be careful with who you’re friends with and what pictures you post out there because nothing ever happened but the paparazzi somehow found me.”

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