Even though she and Prince Harry ultimately decided to step away from royal life, Meghan Markle reportedly made at a big impact on the royal family during her time as a working royal.
According to the Mirror, that's the argument made in The Meghan Effect: How She Shook Up the Royal Family, a new Channel 5 documentary the covers the Meghan's impact on the Firm when she married Harry.
The documentary "suggests that Meghan actually forged a 'new formula' for the Royal Family's philanthropic work," according to the Mirror report, which points to a segment from the documentary that focuses on the time before the Sussexes' royal exit—a period when Meghan reportedly "forced everybody to up their game."
Specifically, the documentary calls attention to Meghan's first joint engagement with the late Queen Elizabeth, which took place just weeks after her royal wedding to Harry and saw the newly-minted Duchess of Sussex travel on the Royal Train to open two venues in the North West of England.
During the engagement, Meghan and the late Queen visited Chester, where they participated in a one-minute silence to mark the first anniversary of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, a tragic event described by the London Museum as "one of modern London's worst disasters," in which 72 people lost their lives and hundreds more were displaced.
Queen Elizabeth and Meghan Markle observing a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire during their visit to Chester, Cheshire on June 14, 2018.
The documentary's narrator described Meghan as the "best placed" royal to respond to the disaster and a royal expert featured in the special pointed her first solo project as a working royal, a charity cookbook called Together: Our Community Cookbook, which she created with the women of London’s Hubb Community Kitchen, which was itself set up by women who were displaced by the Grenfell Tower fire.
All profits from the cookbook directly to benefit the Hubb Community Kitchen, "helping widen its reach to others in the community, and enabling similar projects to continue transforming lives through the power of cooking," according to a release shared by the book's publisher.
"By the end of 2018, over 130,000 copies of Together had been sold worldwide, meeting and exceeding the fundraising target of £250,000," according to the publisher's release. "Thanks to this, the kitchen has been renovated and furbished, so the women and local community can use the kitchen seven days a week, and have been able to start their own projects. The women have lots more exciting ideas for the kitchen and a long-term vision, so every book sold will continue to support the future of the Hubb Community Kitchen."
Meghan made a true commitment to the women at the Hubb Community Kitchen and, as Vanity Fair reported in November 2018, she had "made many private visits to the kitchen" during the year before making a public return that month to see the renovations that the profits from the cookbook's sales had funded. During that public return visit, the history Meghan had built with the women at Hubb during her under-the-radar visits was clear, as she was heard telling the women, “I’m so proud of you,” and “quickly abandoned any formality” and hugging the women and chatting with them like old friends.
Speaking in The Meghan Effect, royal commentator Afua Hagan pointed to this as the moment when Meghan forced the rest of the royals to "up their game" when it came to their approach to charitable work.
"When Meghan joined the royal family, she kind of forced everybody to up their game when it came to philanthropy. The causes that Meghan wanted to work with, and one of the most prominent ones, was Grenfell," Hagan said (per the Mirror). "Suddenly, it seemed like the Royals were working on really, you know, different projects and things that they possibly wouldn't have been involved in beforehand."
Meghan's commitment to the Hubb Community Kitchen and the women who run it continued after her royal exit. In June 2020, the Duchess of Sussex sent a heartfelt audio message to its volunteers, calling them "the example of love in action."
Duchess Meghan has connected with the women of the @almanaar Hubb Community Kitchen, who have unveiled a new meals delivery service for families struggling to feed themselves during the coronavirus lockdown. Starting Monday they’ll cook 250-300 meals a day, three days a week. pic.twitter.com/BGI8rjRzSGApril 17, 2020
"I think back to when I met all of you and how you had all come together in the wake of what you experienced in your community," Meghan said in the audio message. "And now what you have done is such an inspiration—you continue to give back, you continue to to put love in action. And that’s really what Hubb is all about...we know it means love but you are the example of love in action, and that is your purpose."