That’s not the title of Lifetime’s movie about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle but it should be. Instead, they went with Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance. BORING. The good news is that the first photos from the Vancouver set of the TV movie are not boring at all. They are AMAZING. They are amazingly hilarious, hysterically awful and extraordinarily bad – and that’s just the wig. 

I’ll come back to the atrocity on Parisa Fitz-Henley’s head. Let’s talk about the casting. Parisa Fitz-Henley may look familiar, which is rare for the stars of Lifetime TV movies like this one. She played Reva Connors in a multi-episode arc on Jessica Jones. She also stars as Fiji in Midnight, Texas, which was just picked up for a second season by NBC. Parisa Fitz-Henley actually looks pretty similar to Meghan Markle. When the casting announcement was made, I wasn’t snarking on the choice. I was relieved they picked a biracial actress and the fact that she’s got some TV shows under her belt already means that her acting may not be as sh-t as we’ve come to expect from Lifetime.

These were the pictures released with the casting news. 

As you can see, Murray Fraser, the dude playing Prince Harry, looks nothing like Prince Harry. Once again, I was relieved by this. Come at me, Prince Harry lovers. In the photos from the Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance set (I can’t with this name), Murray Fraser is pulling it off. He looks more like Harry now that his hair is red but by contrast, he looks rather handsome. What? You know the only Hot Harry I recognise is Styles. I think these pics have solidified that I’m really into Murray Fraser. 

It’s not the casting that is the issue here. It may not be the casting that makes this movie so-bad-it’s-good TV. That responsibility is on Parisa Fitz-Henley’s hair. WHY is this wig so bad? Did Lifetime blow their budget on craft services? Did they get this wig at Party City? Did they borrow the hairstylist from the Inhumans?  How hard would it have been to get this woman a half-decent lace front? I was so appalled by this hair, I did a deep dive into Parisa’s Instagram to see if other productions have done her this wrong in the past. 

Parisa Fitz-Henry’s hair is naturally curly, as is Meghan Markle’s based on photos and videos from her childhood. MAYBE Parisa was like, “Listen, I’m not relaxing my beautiful curly hair for this budget-ass Lifetime movie so y’all better get me a wig!” and so they pulled one out of the Wig Rejects bin on the set of Game of Thrones and said, “cool, we’ll use this one!” My deep dive discovered that Parisa has straightened her hair for roles in the past and it has never looked this janky. 

Exhibit A: 

Exhibit B:

See? It’s not that hard, Lifetime. 

Even though this hair offends me on a deep level, it’s probably going to be fun to watch Lifetime try to make Vancouver look like Toronto and to relive the summer of 2016 when Harry met Meghan. The inevitable laughs may just be worth sitting through two hours of this wig.