The world premiere of the Alysa Nahmias-directed documentary Cookie Queens got a royal boost Saturday night in Salt Lake City from a surprise appearance by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.
The couple attended a celebratory Sundance Film Festival screening inside Salt Lake’s Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center where they posed with Amy Redford, daughter of the late icon and Sundance founder Robert Redford, festival director Eugene Hernandez and Cookie Queens filmmaker Nahmias.
The showing from the couple was not made public before the premiere but it perhaps wasn’t a shock to insiders as they are among the doc’s team of executive producers alongside a long roster that also includes Tegan Acton, Hallee Adelman, Trevor Burgess, James Costa, Geralyn Dreyfous, Stephen G. Hall, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Melony Lewis, Adam Lewis, Ann Lewnes, Ann Lovell, Emma Pompetti, Chanel Pysnik and Regina K. Scully. Nahmias also produced the film with Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw and Jennifer Sims.
The 91-minute film is set amid Girl Scout Cookie season and follows four “tenacious girls,” Ara, Olive, Nikki and Shannon Elizabeth, as they battle it out to be a top-selling “Cookie Queen.” Sundance programmer Stephanie Owens calls it a “sparkling film” that highlights the girls’ “charm and unsuspecting sharp business tactics” — “think future Supreme Court justices, CEOs and beyond.” It’s praise that seems to align with the Duchess’s past promotion of empowerment as the mother of two young children herself.
The appearance comes days after Prince Harry sat in the witness stand at London’s High Court to testify in an ongoing trial against the publisher of the Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers Limited. During his remarks, he stated how hard it has been for the couple to deal with the harassment by the press, revealing that “ANL have made my wife’s life an absolute misery.”
See more views inside Saturday’s premiere below.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, director of the Sundance Film Festival, Eugene Hernandez, filmmaker Alysa Nahmias, Amy Redford and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival )
Amy Redford and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex with guests.
(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival )
The couple with Redford.
(Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival )
