• Kimberly Birch is the winner of "I Wanna Marry 'Harry,'" the 2014 Fox reality series that attempted to convince women they were competing for the affections of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. The series was canceled after four episodes due to low ratings. 
• Back then, Birch was an aspiring actress in her 20s who faced criticism for appearing on the show.  
• This is Kimberly's story, as told to journalist Charlotte Walsh. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with "I Wanna Marry 'Harry'" winner Kimberly Birch. It has been edited for length and clarity. 

When I was 23, I was approached by a casting agent seeking high-energy young women who were looking for love.

It was the early 2010s and I was working as a brand ambassador on Long Island while pursuing a career as an actor. I was really hesitant — I just knew a reality show wouldn't be a good look for me. 

But one of my coworkers (who'd later become my castmate) was really enthusiastic about it, so I went along with her for moral support and auditioned for the hell of it. During the audition process, nobody mentioned the royal family — only "a really great bachelor." 

I thought the Fox show was gonna be like a cheesier rip-off of ABC's "The Bachelor" with a much lower budget.

I was cast on the show alongside 11 other American women and flown into Heathrow airport. It was dark out and I was scared and anxious — I didn't know where I was going or what would happen next. 

From there, I was placed in a hotel room, alone, for a week. My phone was taken away and I wasn't allowed to have access to books or television. It shifted my emotional and mental well-being and broke me down a bit. 

By the sixth or seventh day, I was much more willing to listen to whatever I was told. 

On the day we started filming, a Rolls Royce took me and the other girls to Englefield House, a giant estate that looked like a castle. That's when some of the girls started to think the show could have something to do with a royal. 

We met our red-haired English bachelor during a masquerade ball on episode one. We were all masked, and so was he.

I remember one of my castmates throwing out the idea that he could be Prince Harry, but we didn't really believe it because it'd never been told to us. Showrunners kind of let us come up with the idea he was Prince Harry on our own. 

I began believing the bachelor was Prince Harry after my date with him was crashed by 'paparazzi' 

I was chosen for the second individual date with the bachelor, a hot-air-balloon ride and picnic.

At some point — because we were just sitting and there were cameras everywhere — he asked me if we wanted to go for a walk away from everything. We walked into the nearby woods and "paparazzi" jumped out.

I found out later that production had hired them to take pictures of us. It was so well-planned that I 100% believed it was real and I'd end up in English newspapers or on television. 

On another date, "security" rushed in and pulled him away. No one told us he was royal, but after all of that, more of us started to wonder if we really were going on dates with Prince Harry. 

I didn't know much about the royal family at the time. We couldn't look anything up online or get a photo of Prince Harry to reference. I was trusting the people around me and thinking the point of the show might be dating a royal. 

On some days I thought there was no way he could be royal. On others, I thought about how no one back home would believe I was on a dating show with Prince Harry.

The bachelor wasn't physically the type I'd go for at the time, but I felt like he was a good guy and he was very endearing. I still don't know the level of romantic feelings I actually felt for him because, in that bubble, it's hard to process what you're actually feeling and what you're just going along with. 

I realized the bachelor wasn't Prince Harry during a cast trip to London

When the show was down to the final three girls, we went on a cast trip to London and I saw a Prince Harry mask on a stick, the kind with the eyes cut out. 

It didn't look like our bachelor and it took me right back to reality — this guy is not who we think he is.

I told the other two girls that I saw a mask and that we weren't dating Prince Harry but neither believed me. They're like, "Kim, of course he looks different on a mask."

A production member pulled me away and quarantined me for the rest of the day. Another producer tried to talk me through what I "thought" I saw so that I didn't ruin the twist for the other girls. But I knew what I saw and they weren't going to convince me otherwise. 

From that point on, I was much more relaxed because I knew something I wasn't supposed to know.

I still hadn't realized that the premise of the show was to get us to think that the bachelor was a prince. But, at that point, I knew I wasn't going to marry the real Prince Harry. 

Much to my surprise, I won the show. The bachelor confessed to me he wasn't a royal — just a regular Englishman named Matthew Hicks. I told him I knew he wasn't the royal, but that part didn't air. 

After the show, he stayed in England and I went back to New York. We weren't allowed to speak to each other for about three months. He was a nice guy, but we agreed: You go on with your life, I'll go on with mine. 

After the show premiered, I faced public scrutiny — but I felt vindicated after the real Prince Harry married a Hollywood actor

I found out about the show's premiere while driving in my car listening to the local radio station in the summer of 2014.

The host had said something like, "Did you hear about this new reality show about these American girls that think they're going to be dating Prince Harry? What idiots!" I had to pull over and I just kept saying, "No, no, no, no, no." A part of me hoped the show wouldn't actually air because it was scary to think about how I'd be portrayed. 

When it debuted, I definitely felt a bit embarrassed but thank God I had a therapist at the time to help keep me stable. I can't even blame viewers for thinking we were a bunch of idiots. I'd think the same thing watching it — people can only go off of what they see on TV.

Still, I'll never regret doing the show. Production gets a lot of heat for "brainwashing" us, and I don't think this show's premise would fly in today's world, but I give them credit. They did a really great job of getting us to believe what they needed us to.

At the time, the concept of a royal being on a dating show seemed so far-fetched. A lot of people asked me if I really thought Prince Harry would ever date some nobody American actor like me. No, I never thought that could happen or that the royal family would have anything to do with a reality show.

But a few years later, I heard the real Prince Harry was dating Meghan Markle. She was an American actor just like me and now they're married. It's just so ironic to me. I feel so vindicated, in a way.

To me, it was life imitating art.

Representatives for Zig Zag Productions and Ryan Seacrest — "I Wanna Marry 'Harry'" cocreator whose production company Ryan Seacrest Productions produced the show — didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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