Meghan Markle shared the cutest flirty exchange with her husband Prince Harry during her onstage moment at the SXSW Conference and Festival at the Austin Convention Center on Friday.
The Duchess, 42, sat onstage with Errin Haines, Katie Couric, Brooke Shields and Nancy Wang Yuen to form the Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen panel during the 2024 SXSW Conference and Festival.
The event is described as "providing an opportunity for the global community of digital creatives to encounter cutting-edge ideas, discover new interests, and network with other professionals who share a similar appetite for forward-focused experiences."
"I'm fortunate in that, you know, amongst the privileges that I have in my life, I have an incredible partner," Meghan said, gesturing with her hand towards her doting husband who was sat in the audience.
"My husband is such a hands-on dad and such a supporter of me and our family and that I don't take for granted," she continued. "That is a real blessing. But a lot of people don't have that same level of support."
"So I think for us it's just trying to put the same level of safeguards in so that women and moms especially can not feel like they're even more vulnerable when they go online. That they can somehow feel that they are going to a safer place," Meghan concluded.
But what fans may not have noticed was Meghan's subtle nod to Harry. The Duchess looked over to fellow panel-member Katie Couric as she began to speak but looked back to Harry in the audience and gave him a sweet wink to conclude her heartfelt tribute to him. Meghan even wore the 'Husband Shirt' by Guiliva Heritage for the special event.
Harry sat beaming in the audience, clearly so proud of his wife who opened up on the panel about her experience of online hate. "What I find the most disturbing frankly, especially as a supporter of women, is how much of the hate is women completely spewing that to other women," she said. "I cannot make sense of that."
The former Suits star went on to criticise women in high positions who allow "very inciting comments." She elaborated saying: "There are a lot of women at the highest executive level who are great champions of women and great philanthropists, and they are working in these spaces.
"And yet they're allowing this kind of behaviour to run rampant," she continued. "And at a certain point, they have got to put the dos behind the says and really make some changes on a systemic level."
The former actress refrained from mentioning the royal family as a whole or in terms of individual relatives of her husband. However, she did reflect on her experience of online abuse in the early years of raising her son Archie.
"The bulk of the bullying and abuse I was experiencing on social media and online was when I was pregnant or with a newborn," she said. "And you just think about that and you really have to wrap your head around why people would be so hateful."
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Followers of the couple will recall that Meghan and Harry spoke at length about their experiences of online abuse in their Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan which was released in 2022.