Meghan Markle Just Delighted Fans With a Makeup-Free Reel

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex speaks onstage during the Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen panel during the 2024 SXSW Conference and Festival at Austin Convention Center on March 08, 2024 in Austin, Texas.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 5 February 2025

This time, Meghan Markle has really joined Instagram.

On 1 January, the Duchess of Sussex surprised us with her first-ever solo Instagram post since joining the Royal Family, which was a video of her writing "2025" in the sand.

After that, she used her @meghan account (so cool) to share the trailer for her upcoming cooking show With Love, Meghan, and a tribute to her beloved beagle Guy.

But has a celebrity really joined Instagram until they've shared their first selfie reel? It's debatable.

This week, the California-based royal delighted fans with a surprise makeup-free video of herself opening up a special delivery she received to her Montecito home.

Speaking into the camera, a glowing Meghan explained that while visiting those affected by the recent California wildfires in Altadena, she met a 15-year-old who had tragically lost her house.

The teenager's mum told Meghan that her daughter was especially upset about losing her Billie Eilish T-shirt in the fire, as she'd only just gone to her concert and is obviously a very big fan.

After hearing this story, Meghan explained that she moved mountains to get a message to Billie Eilish via some of her own friends, as she doesn't personally know the singer.

And in the video, the Duchess shows her followers what her parcel contained: tonnes and tonnes of merch from Billie herself, including a signed vinyl and a "Lunch" box, which Meghan jokes she's too old to understand. (For those of you who aren't pop music fiends, "Lunch" is one of Billie's latest hits.)

Meghan then explained that she was about to email the teenager's mum and start the process of getting the merch to her daughter.

The Duchess disabled the comments on her post, but tagged Billie, as well as Adam Levine and Behati Prinsloo who also helped in the mission, plus her friend Kelly McKee Zajfen and the organisation Altadena Teen Girls Fire Recovery.

Among those who liked the post were Meghan's friends Delfina Blaquier and Serena Williams.

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Iris Goldsztajn is a celebrity and royal news writer for Marie Claire. As a London-based freelance journalist, she writes about wellness, relationships, pop culture, beauty and more for the likes of InStyle, Women's Health, Bustle, Stylist and Red. Aside from her quasi-personal investment in celebs' comings and goings, Iris is especially interested in debunking diet culture and destigmatising mental health struggles. Previously, she was the associate editor for Her Campus, where she oversaw the style and beauty news sections, as well as producing gift guides, personal essays and celebrity interviews. There, she worked remotely from Los Angeles, after returning from a three-month stint as an editorial intern for Cosmopolitan.com in New York. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles, she interned at goop and C California Style and served as Her Campus' national style and LGBTQ+ editor. Iris was born and raised in France by a French father and an English mother. Her Spotify Wrapped is riddled with country music and One Direction, and she can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.

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