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Harry and Meghan Oprah interview live: Duchess speaks of disagreement with Kate Meghan and Harry Oprah interview live: Duchess says 'I didn't want to be alive any more'
(32 minutes later)
Highly-anticipated prime time two-hour special with Duke and Duchess of Sussex airs as transatlantic public relations war mountsHighly-anticipated prime time two-hour special with Duke and Duchess of Sussex airs as transatlantic public relations war mounts
We’re back and Harry is here.
“Is it a boy or is it a girl,” Oprah asks.
The couple cutely say “you can say it, no you can say it,” before Harry reveals:
It’s a girl.
There is squealing.
“Two is it?” Oprah asks.
Two is it, they respond.
Rather a lot.
The Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband and Harry’s grandfather) has left the NHS hospital where he had heart surgery and been moved back to the private King Edward VII’s hospital for continuing treatment, Buckingham Palace has said.
Philip, 99, had a successful procedure for an existing heart condition at St Bartholomew’s hospital in the City of London on Wednesday, three months before his 100th birthday.
Prince Andrew is still not taking part in any public duties after being named by Virginia Guiffre alleged that Andrew was among the men she was pressured to have sex with by Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.
The prince, 59, has consistently and categorically denied the allegations, which Buckingham Palace said were “false and without foundation”.
Here is more on that:
Cut to an ad break – but coming up, Oprah will ask Meghan, “Did you blindside the Queen?”
We’re back.
“I wasn’t planning on saying anything shocking,” says Meghan.
Oprah asks how the palace will feel about her “telling her truth today”.
Meghan says she’s “not going to live in fear”, but to answer Oprah’s question: ““I don’t know how they could expect that, after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that the firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us.”
This clip was teased earlier in the week:
Meghan says that what she wants people to take away from this is that “there is another side and that life is worth living”.
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Here is the event Meghan is referring to:
Meghan says she confided in one of Princess Diana’s friends at the time.
“One of the things that still haunts me is this photograph that someone sent me – we had to go to an official event. We had to go to an event at the Royal Albert Hall,” and the friend said that they looked so great in the photo, taken at the event.
But she knew what was behind it. It was taken shortly after Meghan telling Harry that she didn’t want to live any more.
Harry had said, “I don’t think you should go to this event,” and Meghan says she responded that she didn’t think she could be left alone.
In the photo, the pair are holding hands, and Meghan says what stands out for her is how tightly Harry is holding her hand.
We’re back. Meghan called her time as a royal “almost unsurvivable”.
“Almost unsurvivable sounds like a breaking point,” Oprah says.
Meghan says she “just didn’t see a solution”.
Her mom and friends would call her crying, saying, “Meg, they’re not protecting you.”
It was happening “just because I was breathing”.
“I was ashamed to say it at the time.
“I just didn’t want to be alive any more. And that was a very real and clear and frightening and constant thought.”
“And I remember how [Harry] just cradled me.”
Meghan went to a senior person at the institution (the firm) and said she needed help, and that the institution said that she could not get that help.
So she went to human resources and asked for help.
“My heart goes out to you because we see how bad it is. But we can’t help you because you’re not a paid employee of the institution,” Meghan says she was told.
Martin Luther King Jr’s youngest child, Bernice King, on the interview:
“Growing up as a woman of colour, or a little girl of colour, I know how important representation is,” says Meghan.
As she toured the Commonwealth she learned how much it meant to young people of colour, “how much it meant to them” to see that representation.
Oprah asks Meghan why they didn’t want to make Archie a prince.
In the months leading up to Archie’s birth, there were not only conversations about how he would not be given a title, and there would not be security, but also about how dark her baby’s skin might be and “what that would mean or look like,” says Meghan.
The conversation was had between Harry and a member or members of his family. It was relayed to her by Harry. Meghan says she will not name who it was who was saying this because “it would be very damaging to them.”
Meghan says it was more about protection than the title, but she still wonders why Archie wasn’t given the title of “Prince” (according to ITV’s royal editor, it is not a case of Archie automatically getting the title, or it being taken away, but of the Queen needing to intervene specifically to give Archie the title, which she did for William and Kate’s children, Charlotte and Louis).
Oprah says the rumours at the time were that Meghan and Harry didn’t want the title for Archie. Meghan says that is not true.
Meghan explains that she was told that Archie wouldn’t be a prince and therefore wouldn’t be offered security.Meghan explains that she was told that Archie wouldn’t be a prince and therefore wouldn’t be offered security.
Oprah asks how that works and who told her that.Oprah asks how that works and who told her that.
On Archie not being given the title “prince”, ITV News’ royal editor has explained on Twitter, “My understanding of them rules is this: the children and grandchildren of the Sovereign automatically get HRH (unless, like Princess Anne she asks her kids not to have them). Great-grandchildren only get them if the Queen intervenes - as she did for Charlotte and Louis.” On Archie not being given the title “prince”, ITV News’ royal editor has explained on Twitter: “My understanding of them rules is this: the children and grandchildren of the Sovereign automatically get HRH (unless, like Princess Anne she asks her kids not to have them). Great-grandchildren only get them if the Queen intervenes – as she did for Charlotte and Louis.”
He says that when Prince Charles (Harry’s father) becomes King, Archie will be “a grandson of the Monarch - and therefore will automatically get HRH/Prince.” He says that when Prince Charles (Harry’s father) becomes King, Archie will be “a grandson of the Monarch – and therefore will automatically get HRH/Prince”.
Meghan’s response to Oprah’s question is not included in the clip – so we’ll learn that later.Meghan’s response to Oprah’s question is not included in the clip – so we’ll learn that later.
We’re back, and shown the clip of Meghan thanking a journalist for asking if she was ok.
“Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she told Tom Bradby, a friend of Harry’s for 20 years, in an ITV interview when he asked about the impact on her physical and mental health.
Meghan added at the time she had “really tried” to adopt the “British sensibility of stiff upper lip” but thought that “what that does internally is probably damaging”.
To Oprah she says that she had been asking the institution for help for quite a long time. Asking for help how, says Oprah. “They would go on the record and negate the most ridiculous story for anyone,” she says. But when it came to the Kate story, for example, they did not negate it.
“I thought if they’re not going to kill things like that,” what were they going to do.
She says the firm said that Archie wouldn’t receive security.
And we’re back to an ad break.
More on everything being carefully managed:
“It’s nothing like what it looks like,” says Meghan.
She was barely allowed to leave the house, she says, because people were so worried about how things might look.
“I know you’re worried about how it looks,” she told them, “but has anyone thought about how it feels?”
Because she couldn’t have felt lonelier, she says.
Oprah asks whether Kate was supportive.
“I think everyone welcomed me,” says Meghan.
Who was silencing her, Oprah asks. Was it the family or “the firm”.
Meghan begins by speaking about the Queen, who she says has always been wonderful to her. The Queen gifted her pearl earrings and made her feel welcome. They shared a blanket while seated in a carriage together.
We are likely to hear Meghan using the term, “The firm” in today’s interview. Here is a brief history of the term by my colleague Caroline Davies:
Oprah asks how Meghan was silenced.
From the moment the pair started dating, her people were told to respond to all questions with “no comment”.
“They were willing to lie to protect other members of the family but they weren’t prepared to tell the truth to protect me,” she says of “the firm”.
We’re back.
Oprah asks Meghan about having come from a very different background from the other royals.
“Thank God,” Meghan says, that she had life experience. She knew what it was to be independent. Then she was silent.
“Was she silent or silenced,” Oprah asks.
“The latter.”
Cut to an ad break.