What did we learn from the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan?
The much-touted first chapter of the Netflix Harry & Meghan documentary was lacking in any new blockbuster revelations over the three hours, and broadly steered clear of overt criticism of the royal family, with much more of a focus on Harry’s distrustful relationship with the media, and Meghan’s surprise at the strength of interest in her and reaction to her.
Very much a one-sided PR effort, with no critical or dissenting voices about the couples behaviour or any tough questioning, Prince Harry said that the royal family was full of unconscious bias over race issues, and was “sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution” over racism.
Episode one featured many of Harry’s negative experiences of the media growing up, recounting his experiences with his mother of press intrusion, and the aftermath of her death when instead of being able to grieve, he was put on public display as part of the royal family.
Meghan discussed the breakdown of her relationship with her father as her wedding to Harry approached, and the two discussed how they had to develop their relationship in secret to avoid the glare of the media.
She revealed that she had thought Harry was joking when he checked she knew how to curtsy before meeting the late Queen Elizabeth II for the first time. “How do you explain to someone you bow to your grandmother?” he said.
On several occasions Meghan discussed how scared she felt with the attention, which was intrusive while she was still living in Toronto and working on Suits. Meghan said “I would to say to the police if any other woman in Toronto right now said to you ‘I have six grown men who are sleeping in their cars around my house and following me everywhere that I go and I feel scared’ wouldn’t you say that it was stalking?”
Caroline Davies has a report on the documentary here – and I guess I will see you same time, same place next week for the next three episodes, which will presumably cover in more depth the post-wedding falling out with the family and the couple’s decision to step back from royal life.
That’s it from us for today. Join us again on Thursday 15 December for the next three episodes. Thanks for following along.
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“Of course it’s incredibly sad what happened,” says Harry. “She had a father before this, and now she doesn’t have a father. And I shouldered that, because if Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad.”
The episode is concluding with some old camcorder footage of young Meghan with her dad, as the narrative is that they are 24 hours away from the wedding.
She says she eventually got a text back but she didn’t believe it came directly from him, not least because “he called me Meghan for the first time in my life”. Everybody had always called her Meg, she says.
The documentary is showing us British newspaper headlines saying that Thomas Markle is ill, alone and afraid, unable to attend the wedding, and not receiving any assistance from his daughter or the palace. Meghan’s voiceover though is all about how she’s calling and calling and calling him, and getting nothing back.
“I’m finding out that you’re not coming to our wedding,” Meghan says of her father, “through a tabloid.”
Meghan is now talking about the breakdown of her relationship with her father ahead of the wedding. She says that they believed he was taking money from the press for stories, which he denied to her on the phone. She claims they then offered to have him leave a day earlier to avoid further press intrusion on him, which he declined. She tells the documentary that she then said to harry “this doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why but I don’t believe him.”
Doria Ragland says “I was absolutely stunned that Tom would become part of this circus”. There is then footage of Doria herself being door-stepped by the media asking her questions about her ex-husband. “That’s not what you do. That’s not parenting,” she said.
Meghan says “The unravelling happened when he wouldn’t pick up my call, and instead you are talking to TMZ.”
There’s been some questions about how Netflix is regulated, following the scrutiny of stock images of photographers from unrelated events that was used in the Harry and Meghan documentary.
British television viewers have the ability to raise complaints to media regulator Ofcom if they feel a programme on a traditional broadcaster such as BBC or ITV is substantially misleading. But streaming services operating in the UK such as Netflix are not currently covered by the same tough rules.
Instead, as Ofcom has clarified today following a number of complaints. Netflix is overseen by the Dutch media regulator. Until the British government changes the law, there’s not much Ofcom can do about Netflix’s output.
In any case it’s highly unlikely that the use of stock images or footage for illustrative purposes would be considered “materially misreading” under Ofcom’s rules. There is a relatively high bar for non-news programmes and it needs to be proven that a programme “materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm or offence”. Using images of photographers to illustrate someone talking about a different group of photographers would be unlikely to be worthy of a sanction.
The documentary is now focusing on Harry and Meghan attending a memorial for Stephen Lawrence, 25 years after he was murdered. Prince Harry is seen speaking at the event. Afua Hirsch describes it as significant as “a direct attempt to speak to the pain that many people still feel as a result of the murder.”
There is a potted recap of the history of his death and its aftermath to put the event into context.
Kelvin MacKenzie has obviously been enjoying his morning watching the documentary. “Making money out of people who can’t reply” is an eye-catching accusation for the former editor of the Sun to be throwing around.
Meghan claims she found the formality of the Royals "surprising". Why? When, ahead of meeting The Queen, Harry asked if she could curtsey. Meghan says;" I thought it was a joke." The only joke is a self-involved, clapped out actress making money out of people who can't reply.
— Kelvin MacKenzie (@kelvmackenzie) December 8, 2022
Here is a picture from the skiing trip royal photo call from 1995 that Prince Harry recalled earlier with such distress in the documentary.
Meghan’s niece is now saying that as the wedding approached she heard less and less from Meghan, like her relationships and communications were being controlled.
Meghan herself says she was getting very scared as the wedding approached about the potential for terrorism, after she was sent a white powder through the post which sparked an anthrax scare.
Meghan is now talking about how she was guided that she couldn’t invite her niece to the wedding if her biological mother, Meghan’s half-sister, wasn’t being invited. Ashleigh has clearly been quite hurt by this.
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Meghan said when she was in the UK she wore a lot of muted tones, so she wouldn’t stand out. |You can’t wear the same colour as the Queen,” she said. And she didn’t want to wear the same colour of other senior royals. She says she did everything to try and fit in.
As their wedding approached Meghan described the press pulling people out of the woodwork to make the most salacious stories they could. She likened it to playing whack-a-mole.
There is a section in episode three now where the couple are talking about their activism, but Meghan is explaining that she hadn’t realised that the royal family tended to steer away from any causes that might be construed to be controversial. There are clips of William, Harry and their partners at an event together in 2018 – an increasingly rare sight in recent times.
Meghan is explaining that there was nobody to really teach her how to follow the “protocol” of being royal, and that she had to Google the British national anthem. Harry says there is an additional layer of “protocol” that is imposed by the press.
Our resident royal expert Caroline Davies has also been watching this morning, and here is part of her report on the documentary:
In the opening scenes of the series, Harry is shown at Heathrow airport in footage he filmed himself in March 2020 as he prepared to leave the UK for the last time as a senior royal. Explaining why the couple made the documentary, he said: “This is about duty and service, and I feel as though, being part of this family, it is my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”
Meanwhile, Meghan is seen separately, filming herself in Vancouver wearing a towel on her head and saying: “Unfortunately, in us standing for something, they are destroying us.”
The series opened with a written statement saying all interviews were finished in August 2022, which is the month before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It added: “Members of the royal family declined to comment on the content within this series.”
Images of newspaper headlines flashed up on the screen included: “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton”. Meghan said: “Firstly, I’m not from Compton, I’ve never lived in Compton, so it’s factually incorrect. But why do you have to make a dig at Compton?”
Other headlines shown in the documentary are “One’s gone GangstER”, and another saying Meghan’s ancestors were a “tailor, a teacher and a cleaner in racially divided Jim Crow South”.
Harry said: “Eight days after the relationship became public I put out a statement calling out the racist undertones of articles and headlines that were written by the British press, as well as outright racism from those articles across social media.”
Speaking about the press coverage, Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, said paparazzi would take pictures of deprived neighbourhoods in Los Angeles. “They would take pictures of different parts of, say, Skid Row, and say that is where I lived and that is where she was from,” she told the documentary.
“It was horrible,” Meghan said. “But I continued to hold the line. Say nothing.”
Read more here: Prince Harry – royals didn’t understand risk to Meghan of racial attacks
Here’s that clip of Harry comparing his wife’s qualities with those of his mother.
“Working and living with normal people certainly has an effect on you,” Harry says at one point, really not managing to sound like a normal person at all. He is talking about how his time in the army gave him a second family, and that at one point William wrote to him to say that he thought his mum would be very proud of him.
Harry says royal family 'sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution' over racism
In episode three of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, the Duke of Sussex says that “In this family, you are sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution” over racism in Britain. “And there is a huge level of unconscious bias.”
In a segment that highlighted the occasion when Princess Michael of Kent wore jewellry widely considered racist to a Christmas lunch which Harry and Meghan were attending, Harry says “The thing with unconscious bias is its actually noone’s fault. But once it has been pointed out or identified within yourself, you then need to make it right. It’s education. It’s awareness.”
In an earlier section of the documentary, Harry accused the royal family of failing to protect Meghan from the racist element in abuse she was receiving from the public and in media coverage. He said:
The direction from the Palace was don’t say anything. But what people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well. So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like ‘my wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?’ I said: ‘The difference here is the race element’.
Harry also directly addressed having dressed in a Nazi uniform in 2005, saying “It was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right.”
He described how he then sought out a spoke to the chief rabbi in London and then went to Berlin to meet a Holocaust survivor.
We are now hitting what is likely to be a difficult part of the third episode for the palace and the royal family. They are retelling the story, and reaction, to when Princess Michael of Kent wore a blackamoor brooch widely considered racist to the Queen’s Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace, which was attended by Harry and Meghan.
Afua Hirsch says in the Netflix documentary she was not hugely surprised it happened, saying “one of the realities of life in Britain is that if you go into a palace or a stately home or anywhere that represents tradition, you are likely to be faced with racist imagery. There are murals on the wall or carvings on the ceiling that depict enslaved people in a way that glorifies the institution of slavery.”
“It’s just like a big family like I’ve always wanted,” Meghan said of her first Christmas at Sandringham. She says she was sat next to Prince Philip and it went really well, although Harry later pointed out to her that she’d been sat next to his bad ear so he probably hadn’t heard a word she’d said properly. Meghan described the Christmas as being very lively and full of energy.
We’ve been introduced to Ashleigh, who is Meghan’s niece. Their relationship is being portrayed as best friends and like sisters, but Ashleigh is the biological daughter of the half-sister Meghan has just been criticising, and Ashleigh has followed suit in criticising her.
While I have been watching the documentary, our media editor Jim Waterson has been watching the coverage elsewhere:
Many of the outlets that have been critical of the royal couple for making a Netflix documentary about themselves are also having a field day with wall-to-wall coverage of the same documentary.
Within two hours of the documentary’s release the top 12 stories on MailOnline were all about the couple, complete with pictures, GIFs, and screengrabs creating a 360-degree Meghan-and-Harry-experience. The Sun Online only managed to get seven stories about the couple online within the first two hours.
Articles about the couple drive large numbers of clicks, making them a top target for sites that rely on online advertising to take money. This results in intense competition to be the outlet with the top Google search result for terms such as “Meghan Markle”.
The documentary was released at midnight in California – where both Netflix and the couple are based – but this means it came out at 8am in the UK, perfect time for British news outlets to enjoy a full day of coverage.
Piers Morgan, who lost his job on ITV’s Good Morning Britain after refusing to apologise for comments about Meghan, has never let his fixation on her drop. Despite being outraged at their decision to make the documentary, his team have already press released that he will dedicate the entire hour of his talkTV programme to the show.
His team pledged that in the past “his fiery opinions led to him dramatically walking off air” so “there’s bound to be fireworks as Britain’s most outspoken broadcaster gives his uncensored thoughts on the royal pair and their fly-on-the wall series”.
As we wrote ahead of the documentary’s launch, the British newspaper is a very active participant in the events that it’s covering:
It may not help coverage of the Sussexes that they are suing the majority of British newspaper proprietors on various grounds, having long ago dropped any pretence that they wish to abide by the traditional rules of royal media engagement. Harry is bringing phone-hacking cases against both News UK (which owns the Sun and the Times) and Reach (which owns the Mirror, Express, and Daily Star). He is also one of a number of prominent individuals who are making serious allegations against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and MailOnline.
Meghan has already won a separate legal case against the Mail on Sunday after it published a private letter she sent to her father. Only the parent companies of the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times are not publicly known to be involved in legal battles with the couple.
Meghan is now complaining about “my half-sister who I hadn’t seen for over a decade, and that was only for a day-and-a half, suddenly it felt like she was everywhere.”
“I don’t know your middle name, I don’t know your birthday, you’re telling these people that you raised me and you’ve coined me ‘Princess Pushy?’”
James Holt, former palace spokesperson, says that one member of the media said to him “Harry doesn’t perform any more”, and that Holt now regrets advising Harry to play along with “the game”.
Imagine those people who have written horrible things about your mother, he says, and you have to perform for them.
Now Meghan’s friends are talking about the press intrusion into their lives and the media approaching their families. Meghan’s mum, Doria Ragland, said people were following her and she felt unsafe.
Harry is explaining what the job title “royal correspondent” means in a conversation with Meghan and one of her friends who is complaining about how people can just declare themselves “royal experts” on social media.
I don’t claim to be a “royal expert” myself, although it turns out I have ended up doing more than my fair share of coverage of births, death, marriages and now documentaries over the years.
“This family is ours to exploit. Their trauma is our story and our narrative to control” says Harry of the tabloid press.
There is archive footage of the then-Prince Charles saying “you would go mad” if you don’t find a system to try and deal with the intrusion.
It is quite instructive being reminded in these clips of how popular Meghan was with the public in the beginning of their public relationship.
She has just revealed that their child Archie loves Bennie And The Jets by Elton John. Kids are weird.
There’s just been an incredible archive vox pop with an old man carrying an owl waiting to see the couple on a royal engagement to Nottingham. He declares “Harry has bought his bird to town, so I’ve bought mine.”
After the opening credits of episode three, historian David Olusoga and journalist and author Afua Hirsch are giving a potted history of the colonialism of Great Britain. Hirsh compares the Caribbean to the “deep south”, and Olusoga talks about the British involvement in slavery. Hirsch links the slave trade directly to the British royal family, saying that Queen Elizabeth I personally financed the first commercial slave voyage conducted by Britain.
This feels like a segment aimed particularly at an American or international audience rather than a British one, however Olusoga goes on to make the point that when he was at a school “the only aspect of the whole story of British slavery that I was ever taught was the abolition of slavery.”
Olusoga reminds us that the compensation for the abolishment of slavery was paid to the “owners” for being deprived of their “property”, rather than as compensation for the enslaved people.
Hirsh is talking about the Windrush generation, and Olusoga says that London began for the first time to look like a city that was at the head of an empire of people who mostly weren’t white. He posits that the engagement of Harry and Meghan was the royal family catching up.
Meghan is talking about how they were coached before doing the engagement interview. It reminds us that Harry said he thought his mother and Meghan would have been “thick as thieves” and “best friends” with Meghan.
There are clips of the royal family – Charles, Camilla, Kate – saying they are thrilled, and at that point in public Harry said “the family have been so welcoming.”
As an aside, they keep using clips of Tony Appleton, the town crier, “announcing things” as if it is an official part of the royal rituals in this country. It is a total personal bugbear of mine that he’s not anything official at all to do with the monarchy, he just likes dressing up and shouting out the news. There’s nothing wrong with that as a hobby per se, but I do wish foreign media and documentary makers would stop treating it like its a proper thing. Glad I got that off my chest at last.
I am on to episode three. It has opened with a clip of the couple being interviewed about their engagement, and the director of the documentary starts asking them about it, to which Meghan immediately interjects “orchestrated reality show.”
I note that the Mail Online already has generated twelve separate articles out of their documentary coverage so far.
We are now seeing the couple announce their engagement as episode two heads to its conclusion. Meghan said at that time she was “believing what I had been told. It will pass. It will get better. It’s just what they [the press] do at the beginning.”
James Holt, former palace spokesperson, described the events around the referendum as “a perfect storm that gave credence to jingoism and nationalism and gave people with really horrible views of the world a little bit more strength and confidence to say what they wanted to say.”
“It was an inauspicious moment for Britain to be trying to live out this fairytale story of this fairytale princess and this diverse modernising country” David Olusoga adds.
Nigerian-born British activist Misan Harriman says that the union of Harry and Meghan made black people in the UK “feel seen”.
Historian David Olusoga says “he wanted it to work”, and then puts it in the context of the Brexit referendum happening at the same time. “Immigration” was at the centre of those debates, he says, “and immigration is often a cipher for racism.”
There is a montage of anti-immigration demonstrators scuffling with police, vox pops of people talking about illegal immigration and saying “send them back home”, Nigel Farage, and covert footage of racist incidents on public transport.
A Guardian headline pops up of Homa Khaleeli’s 2016 piece: ‘A frenzy of hatred’: how to understand Brexit racism
I must confess I did not have Brexit being mentioned on my Harry & Meghan bingo card.
We are now getting the story of how they got engaged. There are still photos of the moment. One of their friends is saying they had a secret engagement party afterwards with everyone dressed in animal onesies – with the couple wearing pengiun outfits. The soundtrack is Nina Simone’s Exactly Like You.
Harry says “I fell head over heels in love with her, she’s going to be the one I spend the rest of my life with.”
He then says “and my head started realising she was perfect for the role.”
We are getting a recap of Meghan’s career now, and how as well as being an actor in Suits she was doing cause-driven work and writing op-eds about self-worth. She says “I wasn’t trying to find the great indie film that’s going to get me an Oscar, I just wanted to volunteer.”
Late Queen was first royal family member Meghan met, says Harry
Harry says that the late Queen was the first member of the family that she met. “It was surreal,” says Meghan.
“You know how to curtsy, right?” Harry said as they approached meeting her. “How do you explain that to someone, that you bow to your grandmother?” Harry says. “I thought he was joking” Meghan says.
In a moment that is likely to irk the anti-Meghan brigade, she recreates the awkward moment she spoke to the Queen and giggles about it.
Harry in a self-disparaging kind of way says some of his family were surprised “a ginger could land such a beautiful and clever woman.”
He says the family were dismissive the relationship would last because “she was an American actor” and “it is easy to stereotype that.”
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Harry says that “dating became a combination of car chases, anti-surveillance driving, and disguises, which isn’t a particularly healthy way to start a relationship.”
He says they tried to approach it with as much humour as possible, to try to have as normal a life as possible.
“Even when Will and Kate came over,” Meghan said, “I was in ripped jeans.”
She says in that section she has always been “a hugger” and that Brits find that really awkward, and also she was surprised that the formality of the royal family continues when the door is closed and they are in private too. This is the first real dig at the royal family itself and feels the first bit aimed at saying William and Kate did not welcome Meghan into the fold in the way she anticipated.
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Meghan's security officer says attention was 'scary' and people 'constantly' tried to get into her house
Steve Davies, who worked on security for Meghan, said taking on this job was off the scale with the media. They had a special driver trained in evasive driving to get her to and from work. “It was scary. There were people constantly at her door or trying to get into her house” says one interviewee.
Meghan said her friends and people who care about her were asking her “Is he worth this?”
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Silver Tree is now saying that it began to “feel a little bit dangerous” on the set of Suits with the press intrusion. She alleges that people were breaking into the trailer area of the shoot, and that they had to cage it all off. Photographers with long lenses were camped out trying to get shots of her going in and out of the trailer while she worked.
Meghan goes on to say “I would to say to the police if any other woman in Toronto right now said to you ‘I have six grown men who are sleeping in their cars around my house and following me everywhere that I go and I feel scared’ wouldn’t you say that it was stalking?”
Meghan alleges the police told her there was “nothing they could do because of who you are dating.”
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“I was a daddy’s girl my whole life” Meghan says as we see some old camcorder footage of her with her family. “I recall feeling lonely as a kid” she says, and “wanting to have more people around.”
Her actor friend Silver Tree, who worked with Meghan on Suits, is back, saying that Meghan had a whole life before meeting Harry, and is “very open-hearted”.
Prince Harry has just spoken of being proud that his children are mixed race, after we’ve seen a clip of the couple at an awards ceremony talking about their activism and Meghan spoke about the death of George Floyd.
Harry says he thinks anybody who brings a child into the world should be working to make the world a better place.
The couple are now talking about both being the products of families that experienced divorce. Harry describes it as “Being pulled from one place to another, or maybe your parents are competitive, or you spend more time in one place when you’d rather be at another.”
Meghan recounts a poem about growing up longing for a single nuclear family – saying “life would be easier if there were two of me” rather than having two houses.
British historian David Olusoga appears in episode two, and he is making the point that the vast majority of the popular press in the UK is staffed with white people, and that it is them who are making the judgement calls in newsrooms on whether coverage has been racist or not. He also says that the tabloid press holds great sway in the country.
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Harry suggests members of royal family felt media intrusion was an initiation rite for Meghan
Harry is making a strong statement here about “the race element” in the media coverage when their relationship became public. He alleges that members of the royal family felt that their wives had gone through the media machine like it was an initiation rite, so why should Meghan be any more specially treated or protected. Harry recounts putting out a statement complaining about the racial element of the abuse and coverage.
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“I would say that Meg is an old soul,” her mother says, as she explained that Meghan sailed through school with straight A’s and “I couldn’t help her with her homework”.
Meghan is now recounting a time when a stranger hurled racial abuse at her mum after a traffic incident. “I’d never in my life heard someone say the N-word” Meghan says. “Obviously now everyone is aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK,” she says. “Before then,” she said “I wasn’t really treated like a black woman.”
There is a section now where Meghan is recounting her childhood, and her mother, Doria Ragland, is talking about her as a child. Meghan is filmed revisiting her old school and meeting up with her former principal there. She’s been shown a card she gave to the teacher which promises “when I am rich and famous” she will tell everyone about her. Meghan has just described herself as a bit of a “nerd”, and is recounting how she complained about a sexist advert and got a commercial changed. “I was the little activist” she says. The music is Deee-Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart which is quite a contrast to the sad piano we got for Harry’s childhood in episode one.
“I felt like the whole of the UK media descended on Toronto,” Meghan says. “Just men sitting in cars all day waiting for me to do something.”
She alleges that neighbours were paid to put cameras into their houses to overlook her back yard. Harry says he was hearing all about this from a distance, and it was really concerning him.
He says “there were things that were written that I then had to ask her about”.
PA have posted some images to the newswires of people settling in to watch the documentary this morning. I thought I’d share this one with you because of the expression on Sully the dog’s face.
Doria, Meghan’s mum has made her first appearance. “I’m ready to have my voice heard, thats for sure” she says, having said that the last five years have been “challenging”.
She talks about how when Meghan first told her she was going out with Prince Harry they instictively had to whisper about it, with Meghan saying “Mom, you can’t tell anyone".”
She says they looked really happy together and that “he was the one”. She says that when it first became public, it felt like a “novelty”.
Episode two opens up with Harry talking about how while the paparazzi still chase him, a lot of the intrusion and abuse has migrated to social media in modern life. He says he was concerned to see another woman in his life beginning to go through what his mother had endured – and describes the situation as “the hunter versus the prey”.
We are getting towards the end of the first episode and they are talking about what happened when the news of their relationship became public. The final sting is a montage of aggressive social media aimed at Meghan and voiceover clips from news shows including one in which someone says “Meghan seems to be a version of the antichrist” and an image from social media of Prince Harry with a gun held to his head and the slogan “See ya later race traitor”. It is quite an abrupt change of tone in the documentary which until now has been, to be honest, a fairly genteel retelling of how their relationship began interspersed with Harry’s resentful childhood memories of the behaviour of the press around him and his mother. That’s the end of part one.
Actor Abigail Spencer is being interviewed now, and showing a photo of her and her friend Meghan together in 2016 after Meghan had told her about the relationship. Spencer says she could tell “they would go to the ends of the earth” together.
Harry explains that Meghan set a “two week rule” – that they had to see one another at least once every two weeks. Harry said at that point it made more sense for her to be surreptitiously visiting him, “without someone taking a photo so it becomes news.”
If I had to sum up one thing that has come across so far in this first episode it is a very deep-seated and angry distrust of the media from Harry.
Prince Harry says Meghan reminds him of his mother in Netflix documentary
In one key section of the documentary so far, Prince Harry has said that Meghan reminds him very much of his mother Princess Diana in the way she handles herself, saying that she is full of caring and compassion. In another clip, one of the couple’s young children is shown being introduced to a photo of Princess Diana.
Harry said he had been looking for someone who was “willing and capable” of taking on all the baggage of being involved in a relationship with a member of the royal family, and they had to keep their relationship secret from the media at first because he felt like every relationship he had, within weeks media intrusion would “turn upside down” the life of his new partner and their family.
The first episode of the Harry & Meghan documentary, which launched at 8am GMT today, has focused on how the couple met through a mutual friend on Instagram, and how Harry has grown up through a life of what he considers to be press intrusion, including archive footage of his mother confronting photographers on a royal skiing holiday in the 1990s.
It is hardly breaking news, but I can confirm that Dan Wootton still doesn’t understand the difference between choosing to reveal something about yourself on your own terms, and having people chase you around to take pictures of you without consent.
For a couple who claim they care about their privacy, in less than half an hour Harry and Meghan have already shared with the world 'private' text message exchanges, 'private' photos from their dates, 'private' video diaries and 'private' clips of their son#HarryandMeghanNetflix
— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) December 8, 2022
We are in a section now of Harry’s teenage years, scuffles with press photographers, and the press coverage of his wilder drinking days.
“When my mum died we had two hats to wear. One was two grieving sons” trying to process that grief, Harry says, and the other was the royal hat: “show no emotion, get out there and meet the people and shake their hands.”
There is archive footage and news reports of Diana’s funeral.
“I accept there will be people around the world who thoroughly disagree with what I’ve done and how I’ve done it” says Harry. This may be the understatement of the documentary so far.
'The presence of having his wife around is just very toxic...it's a very negative energy around him.'
— GB News (@GBNEWS) December 8, 2022
Lady Victoria Hervey says since Prince Harry has been with Meghan Markle 'people don't care about him anymore' following the release of their Netflix documentary series. pic.twitter.com/rWtELYx2xy
Harry says of his mother “she may have been one of the most powerful women in the world, but she was completely exposed” after she had split up with Charles and left the confines of the royal family.
He says “How can I ever find someone who was willing and capable of being able to withstand all of the baggage that comes with being with me.”
He says everyone he ever dated, their lives were turned upside down by the media intrusion within weeks.
Netflix have just issued another promotional picture for the documentary.
There’s a section now with archive footage of the royal family on a skiing holiday in the 1990s, with William and Harry being accompanied by some of the other royal children like Beatrice and Eugenie. Harry is clearly deeply affected by these memories, recounting being put up to perform in front of the cameras.
There is archive footage of Diana confronting a cameraman at the ski resort, and now we are on to the 1995 Panorama interview. Harry says we now know she was deceived into doing it, but, he says “she told her truth.”
Writer Afua Hirsch and royal author Robert Hazell author have popped up to tell us how important the monarchy is in daily British life – I’m not entirely sure I buy the narration line that we all feel as if they are part of our extended family – and there is a section dedicated to the longevity of Queen Elizabeth II and the popularity ratings of the royal family. “These are rankings that politicians would die for” says Hazell.
There’s a section now where Prince Harry is talking about becoming aware of press intrusion when he was a child and the family were holidaying. “You could always see it on my mum’s face” he said.
You can drop me a line by the way if you have questions or comments – martin.belam@theguardian.com – but maybe not to tell me you aren’t interested, eh?
Here’s an idea… if you are one of those people telling everyone you “don’t care about Harry and Meghan then don’t post about them and don’t watch them on Netflix #HarryandMeghanNetflix
— Dan Walker (@mrdanwalker) December 8, 2022
Harry has mentioned his mother for the first time, and said that Diana made most of her decisions “from her heart” and that “I am my mother’s son”. There is now some archive footage of Prince Harry’s birth being announced. They are using US news footage and there are some very entertaining vox pops of British people being overjoyed about it all on the streets. There is some archive footage of William and Harry with their mum and dad, and the sad piano music is back as Harry says “I don’t have many early memories of my mum.”
I am about twelve minutes into the first episode now and the couple are now talking about how they met one another via a mutual friend on Instagram, and that Meghan was introduced to “Prince Haz” that way. They have revealed that Harry was late for their first date. Meghan describes him as “refreshing fun” and that they were “just childlike” together. The date was obviously a success as they met again the next day – this time it was Meghan who was late. Given this level of punctuality it feels a miracle the documentary arrived on time.
Here is how Netflix announced the series arriving.
Who was late for their first date? Harry & Meghan. Volume I: Now Streaming. pic.twitter.com/SEv8AqGZhR
— Netflix (@netflix) December 8, 2022
We’ve just seen a clip of Meghan Markle being interviewed before he had met the prince in a jokey quiz segment where one of the questions she was asked was “Prince William or Prince Harry” and fortunately for the narrative of the documentary she said “Harry”. It was from 2015.
We’ve also heard the voices and seen glimpses of their children, a rarity in itself.
Asked why they’ve made the documentary, Meghan says she has been misrepresented for so long. There are now clips of the couple making video diaries. Meghan says there have been books “written about our story by people I don’t know”, and doesn’t it make more sense to tell it yourself?
“I just really want to get to the other side of all of this” Meghan says during the opening montage of the documentary, which includes a voiceover by Harry, and starts at the point where the couple have performed their last royal engagements having announced they were stepping back from royal duties. “I think anyone else in my situation would have done exactly the same thing” Harry says. There is clearly a lucrative role in playing sad piano music for Netflix documentaries out there.
I’ve no idea how many people will be tuning in as soon as the documentary arrives – 8am does seem an odd time to launch a prestige series – but I, and presumably a load of other journalists, have just pressed play.
It opens with the caption “This is a first-hand account of Harry and Meghan’s story”, specifies that all the interviews were completed by August 2022 – before the death of Queen Elizabeth II – and then has a disclaimer that the royal family declined to be involved.
“No one knows the full truth … We know the full truth”. That is the premise of the documentary, which is just a few minutes away from arriving on Netflix. Here is the full trailer to get in the mood.
Unsurprisingly the launch of the documentary is making a splash across the UK media this morning. The Mail Online leads with “Royals brace for more Sussex ‘truth bombs’”, saying:
Buckingham Palace will be braced for the worst after two trailers revealed the couple will claim they had no protection from royal officials and that aides actively leaked and ‘planted stories’ against them as part of a ‘dirty game’. King Charles and Prince William are poised to issue a ‘swift and robust’ response to any unjust claims in Harry and Meghan’s upcoming Netflix series – but William and his wife Kate are not likely to watch it themselves, sources said.
The Mirror, yet to see more than the trailer, just like you and me, is leading with “‘Utterly explosive’ Netflix documentary just MINUTES away”, and draws attention to the size of the deals that the couple have signed, writing:
The Sussexes signed lucrative deals thought to be worth more than £100 million with Netflix and Spotify after quitting the monarchy amid the Megxit crisis as they struggled with royal life.
They plunged the monarchy into crisis with their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, while the Duke of Edinburgh was in hospital.
The duke and duchess accused an unnamed member of the family of racism towards their son Archie before he was born, and the institution of failing to help the suicidal duchess.
The couple quit as senior working royals in 2020 in favour of more freedom and the ability to earn their own money in the US.
Sky News has a timeline of their relationship, and a reminder of some of the allegation that have previously been made:
This isn’t the first time the royal couple have spoken out about their experience in the UK. Last year, Harry and Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey made a series of revelations.
The two-hour special included claims that King Charles had at one point stopped taking Prince Harry’s calls, and that a member of the family had raised “concerns” about their child Archie’s skin colour.
Meghan revealed she had suicidal thoughts and said: “I just didn’t want to be alive any more”, and denied reports she made Kate cry ahead of her wedding – claiming “the reverse happened”.
My colleague Caroline Davies reported yesterday that the Sussexes faced a barrage of hostile questioning ahead of the documentary when appearing in public in New York on Tuesday:
“So many questions,” replied the Duke of Sussex, as representatives of the media shouted “Are you harming your family, Harry?” and “Are you putting money before family?” while he and the Duchess of Sussex attended a New York charity gala hosted by Alec Baldwin on Tuesday.
Harry’s reference in the documentary’s trailer to “The pain and suffering of women marrying into this family, this feeding frenzy” – and how, as he prepared to wed Meghan, he felt “terrified” and “didn’t want history to repeat itself” – is bound to provoke comparisons with the experience of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
And then there is his ominous-sounding statement: “No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth.”
None of it appears to bode well for the Royals of Buckingham Palace, who, by remarkable coincidence, were out in glittering force, freighted with tiaras, at a white-tie diplomatic reception at the palace, just as the Sussexes were being feted at the black tie Ripple of Hope New York gala for their activism on racial justice and mental health.
The King, the Queen Consort and the Prince and Princess of Wales may have been all smiles in public, but it seems unlikely they are not braced for further provocative and damaging claims arising from the docuseries.
Read more here: Prince Harry asked ‘Are you harming your family?’ on eve of Netflix series
I must confess that personally I found it quite hard to get myself worked up at the idea that the documentary trailer was using stock footage of paparazzi rather than clips of events that the Sussexes are at. It is a well-worn documentary technique, and let us be honest, all news outlets also use stock images at times to illustrate stories.
But I do think the fuss about it is instructive of how the documentary is about to be received by sections of the media. It will be held up to a higher standard than any comparable docuseries on Netflix, and the couple will end up being criticised for anything stylistic that has been introduced in the video editing suite, and also criticised for any genuine footage. There is already a whole sub-culture of tweets aimed at a segment that appears to show Meghan crying, with people asking “why would you film that?”
There is also something curiously odd for British people watching the royal family getting the standard Netflix documentary, that perhaps doesn’t apply to people around the rest of the world. We’ve all grown up with most of the media instinctively adopting a protective reverential tone about the royal family if they feel the institution is being attacked. Even an Emily Maitlis grilling of Prince Andrew may have been a PR disaster for him, but she hardly went full Jeremy Paxman. To hear Prince Harry adopting the well-worn rhythms of documentary narration is deeply unusual.
Here is a reminder of the official teaser trailer for the documentary, which was released a week ago. Is anybody interested in watching the documentary? Well, it has garnered 7.5m views on YouTube so far. Which is not to say they will all convert to viewers. Judging by the comments a lot of people watched the teaser just to have a moan about it.
Elements of the British media have not been slow to criticise the Harry & Meghan documentary before it has even appeared on our screens, as the Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson reported on Tuesday, writing:
“There’s a leaking but there’s also planting of stories … It’s a dirty game,” says Prince Harry in the trailer, as flashbulbs break over a variety of archive and stock images.
The Sun – one of the publications singled out in the trailer – ran the story on its front page under the headline “Sussex, lies and videotape”. While some of the manipulations are small – a photo of Harry surrounded by paparazzi was cropped from an old picture with his ex Chelsy Davy, rather than with Meghan – some are more unusual. Two pieces of footage showing a scrum of cameras are taken from very different stories. One is from outside a magistrates court in Sussex where cameras were waiting to catch the glamour model Katie Price, another is footage of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen leaving his New York apartment.
Robert Jobson, the Evening Standard’s royal editor, criticised another dramatic shot of a photographer’s lens peering down on the couple with their newborn child Archie. Jobson insisted it was taken with their approval by an accredited press photographer at Archbishop Tutu’s residence in Cape Town.
Read more here: ‘Sussex, lies and videotape’: papers on the attack over Harry and Meghan documentary
The Duke and Duchess haven’t had the quietest of weeks so far. On Tuesday a US human rights charity awarded Harry and Meghan its Ripple of Hope award for their activism on racial justice and mental health.
The Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organisation (RFKHR) hands out the annual accolade to leaders in government, business, activism and entertainment. During the ceremony, the couple announced they would be collaborating with the RFKHR on a new award recognising gender equity in student film, which they said they hoped would “inspire a new generation of leadership in the arts, where diverse up and coming talent have a platform to have their voices heard and their stories told”.
Introduction
We are around half an hour away from the launch of the first three episodes of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, which the streaming platform has promised “is a vulnerable look into the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s high-profile relationship.”
It promises to be a fascinating morning of reaction as the public get their first glimpse of Harry and Meghan’s side of the story. You don’t have to be pro-monarchy to be fascinated by how this relationship and the rifts it has caused have become one of the main themes of the royal family over the last few years. You could probably make a documentary out of the media coverage of the documentary itself.
Anyway here is the official blurb for the programme, which should arrive on our screens at 8am GMT. I will be watching it, so maybe you don’t have to, and bringing you the key revelations and the best of the commentary around the event.
Harry & Meghan is an unprecedented six-part documentary series that explores the span of their relationship, from the early days of the couple’s courtship to the challenges and controversies that prompted them to step back from the royal family. The series includes interviews with family and friends who’ve never spoken publicly about the couple’s relationship before, as well as historians and journalists who dissect how media influenced Harry and Meghan’s relationship with the royal family and the Commonwealth at large.
