Welcome to The Scoop — the ultimate back-to-the-office water cooler cheat sheet, your go-to source for all things everyone really wants to know! Get the latest on everything from the political swamp maneuvering in D.C. to Hollywood drama to jaw-dropping small-town shenanigans from Paula Froelich. Subscribe to her newsletter here. 

(NewsNation) — Meghan Markle may be a fan of Taylor Swift, but Swift is #TeamWilliam all the way.

Insiders say when Markle attended the Eras Tour on August 3 at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium with her friend Lucy Fraser, she very much wanted to meet Swift in person.

“Meghan asked to go backstage,” a source said. “She wanted to meet Taylor and get a picture with her … but was denied and told, ‘Taylor is on vocal rest.’”

Swift notoriously doesn’t do many meet and greets backstage at her shows — even declining to meet (her now boyfriend) Travis Kelce when he attended last summer. Kelce, on his “New Heights” podcast, said he tried to slip her a friendship bracelet with his phone number when he was at her Arrowhead concert last July but was blocked. (The two eventually met soon after when someone on her team helped set the duo up).

A rep for Markle declined to comment.

So it must have rankled Markle when Prince William took his children Prince George and Princess Charlotte to the London Eras Tour … and got a coveted photo backstage with Swift and Kelce.

Not that this should have shocked Markle — Swift has a longstanding casual friendship with Prince William and his wife, Princess Catherine (who, due to her ongoing chemotherapy and cancer treatments, was unable to attend the Eras concert). 

Swift had previously met Prince William and Kate when she sang at Kensington Palace in 2013. During that performance — part of a fundraising concert for the homelessness charity Centrepoint — William joined Swift and Jon Bon Jovi on stage to belt out “Livin’ On a Prayer.” 

Regarding that memorable moment, William told Apple Fitness+’s Time to Walk podcast: “I’m sat next to Taylor Swift. She’s on my left. And after Jon does his first song, there’s a pause, and she turns to me. She puts her hand on my arm, looks me in the eye, and says, ‘Come on, William. Let’s go and sing…To this day, I still do not know what came over me. Honestly, even now I’m cringing at what happened next, and I don’t understand why I gave in. But, frankly, if Taylor Swift looks you in the eye, touches your arm, and says, ‘Come with me…’ I got up like a puppy and went, ‘Yeah, okay, that seems like a great idea. I’ll follow you.’”

The A-list of Hollywood, many of whom flew thousands of miles to show up for Swift’s London shows and to pal around with Prince William, are particularly keen to distance themselves from Markle and Harry.

As I reported last year: “Everyone’s got a movie to sell and a Broadway play they want to debut on screen in London or [London’s] West End, and they know that Prince William and Kate — who are the biggest [celebrity] gets over there won’t show if they think someone is friends with Harry and Meghan.”

A Hollywood resident sniffed: “William and Kate are the real deal. Harry and Meghan are the Kardashian ‘royals’ of California.” 

Meanwhile, I hear from another impeccable royal source that, even if the two brothers make up, Harry and Meghan “will never be on the (Buckingham Palace) again.

“They are not working royals — even though they are trying to create their own royal tours,” the insider sniffed, referring to their disastrous Nigerian tour where Markle shocked the majority Muslim country by wearing revealing dresses (prompting the wife of the country’s president, Oluremi Tinubu, 63, to say “Nigerian women and girls ‘do not want to mimic and try to emulate film stars from America’ with their ‘nakedness… The message here is we have to salvage our children. We see the way they dress.'”).

Citing long-held rumors that Harry will write a sequel to his devastating biography, “Spare” (along the lines of his becoming American), the insider said, “They are not to be trusted.” (A friend of the couple swears to me Harry is not writing a sequel, saying that’s “absolutely not true.”). 

Here’s hoping Markle’s American Riviera Orchard homegoods brand and Harry’s Netflix show about polo work out for them. It will be awfully lonely (and expensive) otherwise.