Oprah Winfrey shares more of her groundbreaking interview with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, after the two-hour program aired Sunday night on CBS.
In the previously unveiled clips, the couple discuss why I think the race made a difference in the way Meghan was treated by Buckingham Palace and the British tabloids. They also opened a visit to see Queen Elizabeth, who was abruptly canceled after the couple’s decision to relinquish their royal duties in early 2020.
Sunday’s special saw the Duchess of Sussex break with previous media narratives, telling Winfrey that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, made her cry days before her wedding. Earlier reports said Meghan had made Kate cry over the ceremony arrangements.
The Duchess of Sussex also revealed herself the second child, which will take place this summer, would be a girl. They also claimed that there were concerns expressed at Buckingham Palace before the birth of their first son, Archie, about how dark his skin color might be. Winfrey, who joined CBS This Morning the day after the interview aired, said Prince Harry wanted to make it clear that the remarks were not made by Queen Elizabeth or Prince Phillip.
CBS co-host Gayle King said Winfrey called it “the best interview” of his career.
“Did you leave the country because of racism?” Winfrey asked the couple in the first previously unveiled clip.
Prince Harry said that “it was a big part of him”, especially mentioning an event.
“I remember the Sentebale fundraiser,” he said. “And one of the people at that dinner said to me, ‘Please, don’t do this with the media. They will destroy your life. ” This person is friends with many publishers and so on. “
Harry continued, “I said, ‘I’m sorry, explain what you mean by that?’ “It simply came to our notice then. He said: “Please understand that Britain is very fanatical.” And I stopped and said, “Britain is not a fanatic. The British press is a fanatic, especially the tabloids. Is that what you mean?”
“No, Britain is a fanatic,” he says. And I said, “I don’t completely agree.” But, unfortunately, if the source of the information is inherently corrupt or racist or biased, then it is filtered to the rest of society. “
In the second clip, the Duke of Sussex told Winfrey about how a trip to see Queen Elizabeth II was abruptly canceled following a letter to Buckingham Palace in early 2020, in which they told the royal family. that they will withdraw from their formal duties. .
“The announcement I posted on January 8, 2020, was – the content was put in a letter to the institution, to my father, which was then shared at the end of December while I was in Canada,” Said Prince Harry. “And then come back on the 6th after my grandmother said, ‘When you land, come up.'”
Meghan said she and Harry asked if they could go to the monarch.
According to Harry, the queen said, “Yes, come to Sandringham. I like to talk. Come to tea. Why don’t you stay for dinner? It will be a long journey and you will be exhausted.”
“He wanted us to stay the night,” Meghan added.
The prince said he would have “loved this” until he received a message from his private secretary “the moment I landed in Britain”.
“The private secretary is a kind of CEO role within the institution,” Meghan said.
Harry said his then-private secretary, Fiona, “was practically cutting and pasting a message from the queen’s private secretary.”
“Please convey to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that she cannot come to Norfolk. The Queen is busy. She is busy all week,” he said in the letter.
He continued: “He had just invited me. The queen is busy. It’s busy all week. Don’t come here. ”
Harry said he called his grandmother at Frogmore Cottage that night, where the couple had lived before Archie was born. He asked her if she could come anyway, but she heard she was busy.
“And she said, ‘Yes, I have something in my diary that I didn’t know I had.’ And I said, “Well, what about the rest of the week?” She says, “Well, that’s still busy.”
He said he didn’t want to push, “because I knew what was going on.”
“Doesn’t the queen get to do what the queen wants to do?” Winfrey asked.
Harry said no.
“When you’re the boss, there are people around you who give you advice,” he said. “And what really saddened me was that some of that advice was very bad.”
In the two-hour special interview, Meghan and Harry discussed the feelings of the rest of the royal family, with Harry classifying his relationship with his older brother William, Duke of Cambridge, as needing “space.”
Winfrey’s third video on “CBS This Morning” features the couple describing the environment in which Harry was raised and how the royal family compared Meghan’s tabloid coverage to that of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.
“You had these conversations with your family members. They know why you left,” Winfrey said. “So someone said, ‘I’m sorry you had to make that move,’ or ‘I’m sorry you felt you had to do this because you felt we didn’t support you’?”
Harry said no one had it.
“The feeling is that this was our decision, so the consequences are on us. And despite three years of asking for help and seeing or visualizing how this could end – it was, I don’t know, just – look , it was very hard. Because I try. I’m part of the system with them. I’ve always been. “
The prince said he was aware that his older brother, second in line to the throne, could not leave the system as he did.
Asked if Prince William wanted to leave the system, Harry said, “I don’t know. I can’t speak for him.”
“But because of this relationship, the control and fear of the tabloids in the UK, it’s really a toxic environment. But I’ll always be there for him. I’ll always be there for my family. And like I said, I tried to I’m helping to see what happened, “said Prince Harry.
Winfrey asked him if his family – his father Charles, for example – agreed that the environment was toxic.
“No, I think he had to make peace with that,” Harry said.
Meghan said she could not make peace with herself because the situation was different.
“I think they – and that’s why I would say, and I can’t speak for them either – if they can’t see that it was different, then what happened to Kate when she was, you know,” Meghan said.
Winfrey asked if the race was the difference.
“And social media,” Meghan replied. “It simply came to our notice then. And so it was like the wild, wild west. It spread like wildfire. In addition, being my American, it translated differently across the pond. So you had a noise level that was very different. But I can’t see that it’s different. “
“So you felt aggressed internationally?” Winfrey asked.
Meghan said: “I think the volume came and the interest was higher because of social media, because I wasn’t just British and that unfortunately if her family members say,‘ Well, this is what happened to all of us’ – if I can compare what the experience we went through was similar to what was shared with us. “
He used a nickname given to his sister-in-law before marrying William as an example.
“Kate was called ‘Waity Katie’, waiting to marry William, while I imagine it was very hard and I do. I can’t imagine how she felt. It’s not the same thing,” Meghan said. .
She continued: “And if a member of her family says comfortably that we have all dealt with rude, rude and racist things, they are not the same.”
The Duchess of Sussex claimed that the press team that would defend the royal family “when they know something is not true” did not come to their defense.
Winfrey asked Prince Harry if he hoped his family would ever recognize that the differences in treatment were racial.
“It would make a big difference,” he said. “Like I said, there are a lot of people who have seen it for what it was … it’s like it’s been talked about all over the world.”
People who don’t want to see him, Harry said, “choose not to see him.”