LONDON – Prince Harry’s greatest fear before leaving the royal family was “history repeating itself” about the intense scrutiny faced by his late mother, Princess Diana, according to a clip released before a long-awaited interview with Oprah Winfrey .
The interview, scheduled to air on Sunday, will be the couple’s first long interview since leaving the royal family and moving to the United States last year.
In a separate interview released last week, Harry told his British colleague and TV host James Corden that Britain’s “toxic” media led him and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to leave the royal family.
One of the two clips released before Winfrey’s interview showed a photo of the young prince with his mother as he discussed the pressures she faced. Diana died in a car accident in Paris in 1997, while being chased by paparazzi.
“For me, I’m really relieved and happy to be sitting here talking to you with my wife by my side, because I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for her to go through this process alone,” said the Duke of Sussex, holding out his hand of the wife.
“It has been incredibly difficult for both of us, but at least we had each other,” he added.
Throughout their marriage, Diana’s relationship with Prince Charles – and their separation and divorce – were constant sources of media speculation and often appeared on the front pages of the notoriously harsh British tabloids. In the past, Harry criticized the photographers who harassed his mother on the night of his death.
Actual interviews are historically rare. Diana herself had a very publicized press conference with the BBC, where she said “there were three of us at this wedding, so it was a little crowded”, referring to Charles’s relationship with his now second wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.
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The clips from Winfrey’s interview show the couple in a lush garden. It is Harry who speaks, with Meghan saying nothing in the footage released so far.
“Were you silent or were you silenced?” Winfrey asked Meghan, who was wearing a long black dress, embroidered on the shoulder.
“You said some very shocking things here,” said Winfrey in another instance, with no indication of what she was referring to.
No subject was off-limits in the interview, according to Winfrey, who was a guest at the couple’s wedding in 2018 in Windsor.
Harry and Meghan, a former actress in the “Suits” series, finalized their separation from the British royal family last month, when Buckingham Palace confirmed that they would not return as working members of the royal family.
In the 17-minute segment with Corden that aired on Thursday night, Harry said that despite their decision to leave and move to California, his “life will always be about public service. Meghan signed up for it and we both like to do it. “
“He was never leaving, he was taking a step back instead of going down,” said Harry, who is the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and the sixth in line to the throne.
The couple opposed media coverage of their lives and, last month, Meghan won a privacy lawsuit against the British newspaper Mail on Sunday, which published parts of a letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle. In court documents, she said the intrusion caused her “very real sadness” and damaged relationships.
In the UK, Harry and Meghan divided public opinion. Harry, who was once one of the most popular royalty, is now the eight most popular, according to YouGov polls.
When asked whether it was appropriate or inappropriate to give an interview to Oprah, 46% of respondents to a YouGov poll released on February 16 said it was inappropriate, compared with 29% who said it was.
The couple’s interview with Winfrey comes weeks after Harry and Meghan announced on Valentine’s Day that they are expecting their second child.