Harry and Meghan in the Netflix docu-series
(Picture: Netflix)What strikes you within minutes of the first episode of the Netflix Meghan and Harry documentary is how similar those opening moments are to a curated Instagram feed. I can imagine them sitting together, with Meghan agonising over which image to choose. The film’s first 15 minutes is a flow of beautifully shot happiness and romance.
As if on cue, Harry admits that he first spotted Meghan on Instagram, while she adds that her research on the Prince was tapping through his social media feed. There are many more layers to this telling of their split from the Royal family but the Instagram message never left me. Like many of that generation of millennials, they are used to controlling their image, but in a feed that washes out the uglier sides of life. “I just opened my heart to see what was going to happen,” says Harry of his love affair — I don’t doubt how swept up they were, but that sentence felt staged.
It’s a shame Liz Garbus allowed this because there is a heartfelt theme here on press intrusion. This is from a man who lost his mother in a Paris tunnel as she drove away from the paparazzi. Harry never looks comfortable with the long lenses.
There will be many expressing fury at this from inside the media — for the money they got paid, for the damage apparently being done to the royals, though there seemed very little in there to me.
Moments leave you cringing. It all feels led by her because it’s mostly her friends — not Harry’s. We know his family wouldn’t take part but why not more of his friends? I also know a media executive once admitted “We will chase them out of this country”. So there are two sides to this story. We don’t as an industry always get the balance right. Meghan and Harry are a loss to the royals. Next week we find out why they quit. My biggest takeaway: does it matter who is to blame? Ultimately, it’s sad that it ended this way.
