Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has claimed photographers paid her neighbours in Toronto, Canada to film her backyard when she was first dating Prince Harry.
During the first episode of their Netflix documentary series, titled Harry & Meghan, the 41-year-old recalled how she experienced a media "frenzy" shortly after the news broke that she was in a relationship with the British royal in mid-2016.
"It felt like all of the U.K. media descended upon Toronto," she recounted. "Then my neighbours texted me saying, 'They're knocking on everyone's door, they are trying to find you.' They had paid certain neighbours to put a live stream camera into my backyard."
Meghan had been living in the city while filming the TV series Suits.
She also discussed another day when she returned home after doing some shopping to discover nine or 10 photographers waiting.
While Meghan wanted to be "pleasant" to the snappers, Harry warned her that there were reports in the U.K. suggesting that she "loved" the attention.
"Suddenly, it was like everything about my life was just getting so much more insular. All the curtains were pulled and the blinds were pulled. It was scary," the former actress continued. "My house was just surrounded. Just men sitting in their cars all the time waiting for me to do anything. My face was everywhere, my life was everywhere. Tabloids had taken over everything."
Elsewhere in the episode, Meghan described how she received a death threat at around the same time.
"I would say to the police, 'If any other woman in Toronto said to you I have six grown men who are sleeping in their cars around my house who follow me everywhere that I go and I feel scared, wouldn't you say that it was stalking?'" she remembered. "And they said, 'Yes, but there's really nothing we can do because of who you're dating.' I was like, 'So, I'm just supposed to live like this?' And then I got a death threat and things changed because I needed to have security."
Harry and Meghan got engaged in November 2017 and tied the knot in May 2018. They are parents to Archie, three, and 18-month-old Lilibet.
The first volume of Harry & Meghan is now available to stream on Netflix. The second volume will drop on 15 December.
