Whatever Happened To Prince Harry's Ex, Cressida Bonas?

Way back before Meghan Markle was even on Prince Harry's radar, he was introduced to a potential girlfriend by his cousin, Princess Eugenie. That potential love interest turned out to be socialite and actor Cressida Bonas, and for a while, she and Harry became the hottest couple in England. 

Looking back at Prince Harry's relationship with Cressida Bonas, we can see a lot of the warning signs that would eventually lead to Harry's exit from the royal family and his exodus to America; as a couple, they were uneasy about press attention, nervous about how it would affect their relationship, and ultimately doomed because of how they succumbed to pressure from the outside world.

Everyone knows that Harry would eventually meet "Suits" star Meghan Markle, and Bonas has also moved on since their royal courtship in the early 2010s, building a life for herself that doesn't solely rely on the fact that she used to be the girlfriend of one of the most sought-after young bachelors in the world. Of course, that being said, Bonas often does get recognized because of her relationship history, and while she's moved on to numerous other projects that trade on her talent rather than her past, she has had to learn how to navigate the fact that she's probably never going to escape her association with the royal family. Here's what happened to Cressida Bonas after her breakup with Prince Harry.

Shortly after Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas ended things in 2014, she tried to prove that she had staying power beyond the fact that she might have some day become a royal. Bonas had always hoped to be an actor, after all. She told W Magazine, "I'm much more confident performing than I am in social situations." It made more sense to her to slip into the role of someone else, rather than having to perform herself for the tabloids.

In the wake of her split from the prince, Bonas finally booked a role in what should have been a high-profile film. The movie was called "Tulip Fever" and starred a then-recent Oscar winner in Alicia Vikander; Bonas was cast in a relatively smaller part, playing Mrs. Steen, a member of Dutch high society. A source told The Standard that the casting decision was meant to reflect real life, explaining, "It's so clever. They've cast actual models like Cara [Delevingne] and Daisy [Lowe] to play the artists' models and for the part of the society lady they've cast Prince Harry's ex."

Unfortunately for Bonas, the role did not kickstart the illustrious acting career she'd probably always wanted. The movie was delayed for years, in part because of its association with disgraced criminal Harvey Weinstein. When it finally hit theaters in 2017, it only made waves because of how bad the reviews were and how little money it made.

When the endlessly-delayed "Tulip Fever" failed to launch Cressida Bonas' acting career into the stratosphere, she took her acting talent to the stage instead. In 2016, she starred in a West End stage adaptation of "The Great Gatsby," playing Daisy Buchanan. Once again, it was great casting as Daisy is a bored, restless high-society girl trying to find her place in the world, something Bonas likely related to all too well. 

"From the moment Cressida walked into the audition space we could see she had the quality necessary for the playing of Daisy Buchanan," Linnie Reedman, who directed this version of the story, told the The Standard. "She has a strong understanding of the character and already had made decisions about the direction she wanted to take and we were impressed with the amount of prep she had done."

Bonas received raves for her stage turn. Londonist wrote that she "dazzles" in the play, and The Upcoming penned in their review, "The real standout is Cressida Bonas, looking and sounding every inch the variously beguiling and unlikeable Daisy, who in the end shuffles back into the safety of her wealth to avoid accountability for her actions."

Cressida Bonas has a regular column in The Spectator, frequently sharing essays with her readers about various aspects of her life. For example, in 2022, Bonas wrote a piece about dreaming. Through a discussion of the Netflix show "The Sandman," Bonas' essay opened up into an exploration of fantasy and the very nature of truth. "Civilisation depends on society knowing when to be truthful and when not to be," she wrote. "And yet we criticise the liars and reprimand the truth-tellers. Can we ever win?" Cressida Bonas: actor, model, ex-girlfriend, podcaster, writer ... philosopher?

A few weeks later, Bonas wrote a column about how much she loves her dog, Budgie. "Last week she wasn't allowed in the Post Office and I took it as a personal affront. A nice man looked after her outside while I posted my parcel," Bonas wrote. "I gave the lady in the Post Office a firm look as if to say: 'How could you?'"

Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas broke up in 2014, but it seems the pair stayed in touch on some level. After all, Bonas' attendance at the most coveted event of the year was one of the best moments from Harry and Meghan Markle's 2018 wedding. Bonas wore a striped midi-dress with layers of pink, green, blue, red, and yellow, an unconventional if eye-popping choice for a wedding.

Bonas usually decides to stay mum about her ongoing friendship with her ex-boyfriend, but that year, she wrote a piece for The Spectator about what it was like to attend the royal wedding. Studiously avoiding any juicy details about the couple, Bonas instead chose to focus on her difficulty in finding appropriate headwear for the occasion. 

"Last weekend I attended the royal wedding. The invitation clearly stated that guests must wear hats. Yikes," she wrote. "I opted for a minimal feathered number — and can only hope I got it right." The blog post has since been removed from The Spectator's website, perhaps suggesting that Bonas regretted the window she gave fans into what her experience was like on that day.

Cressida Bonas isn't just an actor; she's also a podcaster. She launched a show called "Fear Itself" in March 2020, and you'd be forgiven if that escaped your notice because we were all kind of busy then. The podcast invited people to share stories around fear, discussing the ways it affects their industries, lives, and hopes for the future. Bonas told The Standard that fear had ruled her own career, so she decided to dive deep and investigate why. "I have anxious thoughts and I was afraid of failure. I started writing these fears in a journal and thought it would be interesting to make a recording about them, talking to people about fear and how it can motivate them," she said.

While promoting her podcast, Bonas had to contend with the fact that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had famously split from the royal family mere weeks earlier. Bonas was asked about the situation in the same interview but declined to speak about what the Duchess of Sussex might be feeling in the glare of the media spotlight. "I wouldn't take a position on that because it would be a headline. Also out of respect," she said. "It feels like a long time ago. When it comes up it feels strange because I'm in a different place."

Bonas doesn't need to speak on the royal couple's behalf. Harry and Meghan revealed how "Megxit" really went down all on their own, in a now-infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Cressida Bonas' new podcast wasn't the only thing she was promoting in early 2020. She also starred on "White House Farm," an ITV drama about an infamous crime in Essex where five family members were all killed. She played Sheila Caffell, the adopted daughter of the victims; initially, cops suggested that she was the one who had committed the murders, and that it was a murder/suicide situation. Ultimately, a more sinister truth came out, giving Bonas plenty of juicy thematic material to sink her teeth into on the show.

Appearing on the U.K. chat show "Lorraine" (via Hello!), Bonas spoke about her compassion for Sheila's situation. "If this happened now, she wouldn't have been attacked like that for having a mental illness because now it's talked about in such a different way, and that's so shocking," she reflected. "I wasn't alive when it happened, so when doing all this research I couldn't believe how she was treated."

As with her role in "The Great Gatsby," Bonas won glowing reviews for her performance. One such review came from Colin Caffell, the real-life husband of Bonas' character. On "Lorraine" (via Tatler), he told her, "You really did pick up the fragility of her character. You added a very heartfelt insight to that, and I thank you for it."

Cressida Bonas attended her ex-boyfriend Prince Harry's wedding, but she wasn't the one walking down the aisle to meet him at the altar. Instead, two years later, she married a different Harry entirely, tying the knot with a boyfriend named Harry Wentworth-Stanley. They got hitched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, which was of course inadvisable, but it seems they tried to take every precaution they could. "A 30-person, socially-distanced, sanitised church service was organised in under two weeks," Bonas later wrote for The Spectator. "Restrictions meant no hymns, no wind instruments and no speaking too loudly. A disappointment for a musical family."

Still, it seems that the unusual event actually wound up being even more special because of how odd the experience was. Bonas had gone searching for a wedding dress, but again, it was the height of lockdown, and her options were few and far between. Instead, she decided to wear the dress that she'd worn in a music video she'd been in, for the song "Naked" by James Arthur. "I went home and found the dusty frock at the back of my cupboard. After some ironing, it looked good as new," she wrote.

The day was rainy, but Bonas decided to consider that a good omen. The service was small and quick, and afterward, they rode horses away from the venue. "At first my horse looked at me nervously. He didn't seem keen on my dress," she wrote. "Once finally aloft, with hearts full, we rode off into the stormy weather and into our future life."

While many of Cressida Bonas' columns for The Spectator find her ruminating on various topics she's been thinking about, she can also occasionally get incredibly personal. For someone who has tried to dodge the public interest in her personal life that followed her relationship with Prince Harry, Bonas isn't shy about expressing her truth in written form ... perhaps she wants to be the one to tell it, rather than having someone else ask her about it.

In a 2022 essay for The Times, Bonas revealed that she'd recently given birth, and dove deep into the experience with IVF that led to her child's arrival. It had taken her two years to conceive, and in that time they sought as much advice and testing as they could find. "It became frustrating when we were told by specialists that there was nothing fundamentally wrong," Bonas wrote. "I wanted something to blame." Instead, she sought answers anywhere and everywhere. "I spent time and money on reflexology, nutritionists, acupuncture and psychics ... Even a German healer who speaks to angels," she recalled.

Finally, they underwent IVF. "I count myself extremely lucky that IVF worked for us the first time," she wrote before offering advice to others. "What I learnt from my experience is that whether you've been trying for months or years, there are too many couples who struggle along the infertility path in silence." Well said, and we're here to help too; here's every step of the IVF process, explained.

Over the years, Cressida Bonas has been asked endlessly about those few years when she dated a prince. In 2020, she pushed back against an interview with The Standard that tried to get her to open up about the experience. "The hurdles for me are when I'm trying to do my work and people want to talk about him," she said. "I work very hard and love what I do but it is still something I have to contend with."

In 2023, the topic became unavoidable, because even though she'd eschewed speaking about Prince Harry, he decided to open up about her in his memoir "Spare," which detailed the difficulty he faced growing up as a member of the royal family. The intimate description of their relationship and breakup wasn't necessarily one of the most startling revelations from Prince Harry's "Spare" but it was still an interesting window into what Bonas had gone through that made her retreat from the tabloids. 

Harry wrote about the time he was photographed partying naked in Las Vegas. He insisted to Bonas that he had simply gotten too drunk, and ultimately she believed him. "I'd been a dummy, not a debaucher," he wrote. "I apologised for embarrassing her." Later, after his deployment to Afghanistan as part of his military service, Harry returned home and found that everyone was treating him differently. After finally opening up to Bonas about the death of his mother, Princess Diana, they decided to go their separate ways. "There was massive affection, deep and abiding loyalty," he wrote, "but not love everlasting."

In 2024, after 25 years of fighting cancer, Cressida Bonas' older sister, Pandora Cooper-Key, died. The sisters were 15 years apart in age, but were incredibly close growing up. "When we were adults, the 15-year gap more or less disappeared as we became two loving friends," Bonas wrote in a tribute for The Times. "I could share my thoughts and she'd listen."

As adults, the women bonded over just about everything. They talked frequently about other women they admired, and Cooper-Key reminded Bonas to take life slowly and enjoy little things like flowers. Bonas also opened up about her sister's years of medical crises, writing that a genetic disorder called Li-Fraumeni syndrome made her unusually susceptible to cancer. "She endured recurring episodes of cancer, seizures and life-threatening infections," Bonas wrote. "Every time, she fought back with courage, determination and humour."

Unfortunately, in 2024, a carcinoma turned out to be inoperable. "Though she sometimes felt frightened, she was always brave, and towards the very end she seemed to accept that she was dying," Bonas wrote. They spent as much time together in those last few weeks, Bonas trying to say everything that had gone unsaid between them before it was too late. "During my last moments with her," she recalled, "I got to hold her tight and say: 'Thank you for being my big sister.'"

In her moving essay in The Times about the tragic loss of her sister, Pandora Cooper-Key — one of several tragic details about Cressida Bonas' life — there was one particular thing she said she wished she could still talk to her sister about. After all, in those last few years, they were both mothers. "Her boys are teenagers and I'm just starting out with an almost two-year-old, so she had already walked the path that I'm beginning," Bonas wrote. She recalled a diary she kept of things her sister had said, revealing, "On one page, I had written down something Pandora said just after I'd given birth to a boy: 'No matter what, they'll always love and want to protect their mums.'"

In 2025, Bonas' family grew again. With her husband, Harry Wentworth-Stanley, Bonas welcomed a baby girl. She wrote about her experience on Instagram alongside a carousel of black-and-white photos of her newborn. "Before she arrived, I wondered how it was possible to love anything as much as we love our boy," Bonas wrote. "Then this little love bug showed up with a Mohawk hairdo and our hearts just expanded."

The couple decided to name their daughter Delphina Pandora, taking her middle name from Bonas' dearly-departed big sister. Bonas explained the decision on Instagram, concluding her post, "Sometimes when I look into her eyes, I see a twinkle that reminds me of my sister."