YOU might think the last thing the Royal Family needs is another Meg, but it looks like the perfect one is set to light up the Palace – on TV, at least.
For little-known actress Meg Bellamy is joining the sixth and final series of Netflix hit The Crown . . . not as her Duchess of Sussex namesake, but as Kate Middleton, and she looks like a remarkable match.
As she walks down the street hand in hand with actor Ed McVey as Prince William, any passer-by might do a double take.
With her long brunette hair and slender figure in a Barbour jacket and riding boots, she could pass for William’s wife.
But the similarities don’t end with mere appearance.
Meg, 21, grew up in Wokingham, just a few miles from Kate in Royal Berkshire, shared a love of team sports and was a high achiever at school.
They both performed in school musicals and have developed a love for fashion since finding themselves in the public eye.
And the signs are that Meg is making the most of her time in the spotlight, just as Kate has.
It has been reported that she has signed a promotional deal with luxury French brand Dior, a much-prized tie-up that had previously falsely been linked to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
It is a remarkable rise for Meg, who not so long ago was wearing a brick costume for her job at a Berkshire theme park.
She said: “I had left school and I was working at Legoland, which was the best job ever.
“I didn’t have an agent at the time so I was just doing everything I could on my own, self-submitting for student films and shorts.
“Then in April last year the opportunity in The Crown popped up on my Twitter, and at the same time my neighbour sent it to me and told me that I should go for it.
“She’d just seen it and she thought I looked like Kate.”
Meg’s neighbour was right. The producers realised they had found the actress to portray the future Princess of Wales during the early stages of her romance with William.
She joins Imelda Staunton as the late Queen and Dominic West as the then Prince Charles.
The Emmy-winning drama will show William meeting Kate at St Andrews University, where they lived in the same halls of residence.
Kate is said to have caught his eye when she wore a see-through dress at a student fashion show.
At the first round of auditions for the role, Meg had to tell the producers a “fun fact” about herself.
She chose to tell them: “I was a red brick at Legoland.”
Having got through to the next round, she studied Kate’s make-up and watched videos of her to get the likeness just right.
The daughter of an air stewardess, like Kate, Meg knows what it is like to be an outsider.
She was born in Leeds and her family moved to Berkshire when she was five.
They are not an acting family but her parents supported her ambitions, just like Kate’s did.
Meg, who loved to sing and dance, joined the Stagecoach performing arts school aged around three or four.
Her passion for drama continued into secondary school, where she played the lead role of Sandy in the musical Grease.
As for Kate’s acting ability, she once won the starring role of Eliza Doolittle in a school production of My Fair Lady.
Meg’s drama teacher, Claire Louise Rosser, said: “Her actual sensibility is so similar. I think Kate comes across as a genuine, beautiful person.
“She is statuesque, beautiful and seems humble. Meg is similar and ridiculously humble. She was very popular, the type of student you had to encourage to come forward.”
At school both women were sporty. Meg played netball, while Kate captained a hockey team.
They also had to deal with the disadvantages that being tall can bring.
According to one former classmate, 5ft 9in Kate was bullied at school for her height, while Meg once said: “I would love to be a dancer but sadly I’m very gangly.”
Their education was one area that was very different.
Meg attended St Crispin’s School in Wokingham, a state school most recently rated good by Ofsted inspectors.
In contrast, Kate was privately educated from the age of four, ending up at Marlborough public school in Wiltshire.
Both did well though, with Meg becoming head girl and Kate getting two As and a B at A-level.
Kate then went off to university in Scotland, whereas Meg considered higher education to study drama but now hopes her appearance in
The Crown will secure her acting career.
There is also the opportunity to earn some much-needed money by modelling.
Meg used to shop at high street stores Primark and H&M before finding fame, but she now wears more high-end gear.
She promoted Cartier clothes at the Goodwood Festival of Speed motorsport junket this year, modelled Gucci for Grazia magazine, wore a hip Eudon Choi jacket for the Bafta Television Awards for Vogue and sat on the front row at a Dior fashion show.
She told one style magazine: “I’m now lucky enough to have the opportunity to wear brands that I never would have dreamed of wearing before.”
Most of her style choices would not be out of place in the Princess of Wales’s wardrobe.
But the plunging black Stella McCartney dress Meg wore at The Crown’s world premiere in Los Angeles this week was definitely too risque for a senior royal.
Having been plucked from obscurity, she clearly seems to be enjoying her first flush of success.
So far she has not stepped out on the red carpet with any men.
She is believed to be dating acrobat and film crew member Connor Dutton, who congratulated his “gorgeously talented girlfriend” after it was announced in September 2022 that she had been cast in The Crown.
And up until now her links to royalty have been very limited.
Meg sang for the Duke of Kent, the late Queen’s cousin, when she performed part of the Hamilton musical at a concert in 2018.
And it seems her mum Sue is enthusiastic about the Royal Family, holding a celebration party when William and Kate married in 2011.
Meg, who was then still in primary school, recalled: “I remember saying, ‘Tell me when they kiss, tell me when they’re on the balcony’.
“I sat watching the TV and was totally in awe of her, like we all were.”
Now Meg is set to be the regal centre of attention herself when The Crown streams the first part of the final series tomorrow.
By Rod McPhee
IT’S been mooted as a Princess Diana “mini series”, but in reality the first chunk of The Crown’s closing season feels more like Diana: The Movie.
In fact it feels like no other series of the Netflix drama, ever.
Though it almost defies comparison to its pred-ecessors, it is much slower, considered and emotive.
The Crown always gave the broad brush strokes of The Windsors’ story, often covering a dozen years in ten helpings.
This four-part helping of Season Six (with the final six episodes dropping next month) examines just the final few months in the life of the doomed princess.
It tries, and largely triumphs, in explaining the whirlwind relationship between Diana and Dodi and his difficult relationship with his pushy father, who almost emerges as the villain of the piece for creating the circumstances that led to the infamous Paris car crash.
The performances by Elizabeth Debicki and Khalid Abdalla are, at times, hypnotic, and the recreation of what Princes William and Harry must have gone through is utterly heartbreaking.
Do the creators manage to handle it all with tact and taste?
Yes, unquestionably.
And they deserve huge credit for it.
There has always, rightfully, been lots of negative scrutiny of The Crown, but these four tear-jerking, stomach churning episodes are the best riposte to any critics.
