Harry, however, admitted that his relationships with his father and heir to the throne, Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William, have suffered severe tension in recent years and suggested that the institution may have planted stories in the media that put him and Meghan in a negative light.
The palace faced storms on several fronts at sunrise in London on Monday.
The interview has been relentlessly anticipated in the media in recent days, drawing comparisons to a real account given by Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, in 1995, which shed light on the collapse of her marriage to Charles.
But the revelations in Sunday’s broadcast may have overshadowed even those in magnitude, as Harry and Meghan’s scorched earth confessional represented problem after problem for palace officials and royals.
Perhaps most pertinent was Meghan’s claim that an unidentified family member asked about Archie’s skin color and “what would it mean or look like”. She said that these discussions were passed on to her by Harry.
Harry declined to say the family member’s name, but said he was “a little shocked” by the conversation. Winfrey said on CBS Monday morning that “it was not your grandmother or grandfather who were part of these conversations”. In Britain, the secretary of parallel education, Kate Green, said Buckingham Palace should start an investigation.
Palace officials are also struggling to respond to complaints from the duke and duchess that their requests for help with their mental well-being and security have been ignored by the institution.
Fighting tears at one point, Meghan said that her suicidal thoughts were incredibly difficult to bear and she was reluctant to share them with her husband. “But I knew that if I didn’t say it, I would – and I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” she said.
Harry, whose mother Diana was killed when he was a boy, said he was “terrified” by his wife’s confession. The prince, who is sixth in the line of succession, said that there is a culture of silent suffering in the royal family. But Meghan’s race and the abuse she suffered made the situation all the more difficult for the couple, and their lack of support led, above all other factors, to the dramatic decision to stop working as a royal member in January. 2020.
They described the most difficult moments in emotional detail – Meghan revealing her thoughts to Harry hours before the scheduled date for an event; the prince coming home from work every day to find his wife crying while breastfeeding his newborn – and said that “lack of support and lack of understanding” were the reasons why they chose to walk away.
Harry added that he pushed the issue with the royal family. He told Winfrey that he believed there were many opportunities for the palace to “show some public support” in the face of continued racial abuse in the press, “but no one in my family has ever said anything. It hurts.”
“I’m sorry to have believed them when they said I would be protected,” Meghan told Winfrey.
CNN contacted the royal family for comment.
Harry reveals serious disagreements in the family
If there was the slightest suggestion that Harry and Meghan might one day return to the royal family’s mission, Sunday’s broadcast would probably have extinguished it forever. The interview revealed the depths of the divide between the couple and the rest of the family, an abyss that would have been unimaginable when they were married in Windsor, just three years ago.
They told Winfrey that the family had been welcome to Meghan in the beginning, and that when they got married, they committed to their roles.
But things changed quickly. Harry told Winfrey that his relationship with his father, Charles, reached the point where the heir to the throne stopped receiving his calls, so angry at the duo’s decision to leave royalty in 2020. “There is a lot to work on over there, “said Harry. “I feel very disappointed, because he has been something like that – he knows what the pain is like.”
About his brother, William – with whom Harry grew up, and whose shared childhood was meticulously followed by the media – the Prince hinted that communication is virtually non-existent. “We are on different paths,” he said, adding that “the relationship is space in the moment” and that “time heals all things – I hope.”
Perhaps the only silver lining for the family is that their leader survived the interview relatively unscathed. Harry and Meghan spoke effusively of the Queen, describing her as attentive and kind from the start.
“My grandmother and I have a very good relationship and understanding and I have a deep respect for her,” said Harry. Meghan said he spoke to her frequently last year, including the day Prince Philip was admitted to the hospital last month.
Meghan added that, despite the ordeal, it was important to differentiate the royal family “from the people who run the institution”.
She discussed rumors of a dispute with Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Meghan said reports that she made Kate cry because of the florist’s dresses at her wedding were false, and it was in fact the Duchess of Sussex who wept. But “there was no confrontation,” said Meghan, describing her sister-in-law as a “good person”.
But the evidently tense family dynamics will overshadow the next royal engagements. No statement was issued by any of its communications teams after the interview.
Breathtaking reaction in Britain
As has so often happened with the couple, the coverage varied from moderate to hysterical. The Daily Mail ran a headline saying “Kate Made Me Cry” in its 2 am issue, before opening Meghan’s accusation of racism late in the morning. The tabloid website also included a prominent banner that said, “I WANTED TO KILL ME”.
The Sun introduced a new nickname for Meghan amid her feud with the royal family: “Megxile”, and the Daily Express called the broadcast “a TV chat with Oprah”.
On Monday afternoon, several journalists used Boris Johnson’s press conference at Covid-19 to ask his opinion on Oprah’s interview. The prime minister refused to give his opinion, in addition to saying that he always had “the greatest admiration for the queen and for the unifying role that she plays in our country”.
The media’s treatment of the royal couple constituted a significant part of the interview, with the two pointing to sections of the press.
Harry said the palace is “afraid” of media coverage, which means that they have had little freedom as part of the family.
“To put it simply, it is a case of you, as a family member, being willing to drink wine, have dinner and give these reporters full access, so you will get better media,” said Harry. “There is a level of control out of fear that has existed for generations.”
The interview was due to air in Britain at 9 pm on Tuesday, with the terrestrial broadcaster ITV winning the race to acquire the rights. But its main points of discussion were already being dissected in detail by Britons and in the media long before its exhibition in the United Kingdom.
Charles Anson, the queen’s former press secretary, said on Monday that the couple raised “issues that need to be looked at carefully”, but told the BBC that “there was not a thread of racism” in the royal house.
But Julie Montagu, Viscountess Hinchingbrooke, told the BBC that her revelations were “surprising” and that, as an American woman who married members of the British aristocracy, she could identify with Meghan’s descriptions. “You really don’t know until you’re in it, and I think she made it very well known last night in her interview,” she said.