Before he met Duchess Sophie, Prince Edward dated musical theater star Ruthie Henshall for five years, and she shared some of the stories from their relationship in her new book, The Showgirl and the Prince. During a recent appearance on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch program, Henshall discussed her new memoir and her time dating Prince Edward, noting that marrying into the Royal Family “was never going to work.”
The West End performer revealed (via Hello!) that Edward once told her that “in a perfect world” he would have “two wives: one for the job, and one for the woman you loved—because you wouldn't want the woman you love [to go] through the job.”
By “the job,” he meant being a full-time working member of the Royal Family, and Henshall knew that her career as a singer, dancer and actress couldn’t continue if she married Prince Edward. “It was never going to work,” she said.
The actress wasn’t willing to give up her career, and after their breakup, Edward met public relations executive Sophie Rhys-Jones, now the Duchess of Edinburgh. Sophie eventually quit her PR job to take on full-time royal charity work, but for Henshall, it wasn’t an option.
The performer told Hello!’s “A Right Royal Podcast” that she “always thought we'd find a way,” and even made comparisons to the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson’s situation. “I thought this could be the greatest role of my life,” she said of potentially marrying Edward, but explained that she ultimately decided she “was born to sing, dance and act.”
“If I'd have given it up, I would have been miserable,” she admitted. “It's not my kind of life.”
