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Meghan and Harry Oprah interview live: Duchess says 'I didn't want to be alive any more' Meghan and Harry Oprah interview live: Harry claims Prince Charles stopped taking his calls
(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.
Harry says that the deals with Spotify and Netflix deals were never part of the plan, but that his family cut him off financially in the first half of 2020 and he had to find a way to afford security.
He has what his mother, Princess Diana, left him, but other than that has been cut off financially.
Helen Sullivan here, bringing you the latest from this incredible interview. A reminder that you can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Oprah asks what Harry thinks Diana would say about the couple stepping back.
“I think she would feel very angry and sad at how this all panned out. But I think all she would ever want would be for us to be happy.”
We cut to an ad break – but coming up, Oprah will ask Harry about his allegedly being asked by family about how dark Archie’s skin might be before he was born.
Oprah asks Meghan about her role in “Megxit” and whether it was “all intentional to build your brand”.
Nobody prepared her for her role or how to be a royal. They didn’t even think of preparing her to sing the British national anthem, she says.
Oprah asks Harry whether he would have stepped back were it not for Meghan.
“No,” says Harry, he would not. “I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped.”
Oprah asks how exactly he was trapped.
“Trapped within the system, like the rest of my family are. My father, my brother they are trapped,” he says.
Harry says he never thought that as a prince born into the family, he never imagined he would have his security removed.
Meghan says she appealed to the family to at least maintain Harry’s security, even if they would not provide security for her and Archie.
Harry calls Meghan “one of the greatest assets to the Commonwealth that the family could have ever asked for.”
Harry says there were many opportunities for his family to show their support for Meghan.
“I’m acutely aware of where my family stand and how acutely scared they are of the tabloids turning on them.”
There is an “invisible contract” between the royal family and the tabloids, says Harry. If you as the family are willing to wine and dine the press, you will get better coverage, he says.
There is a level of “control by fear”: the tabloids controlling the family, he says. “The institution survives based on” their relationship with the press, Harry says.
Meghan says the coverage in the press, because it had racial overtones, changed the level of threat to the couple. “It changed the death threats,” she adds.
Back in the interview setting.
Oprah asks whether Harry asked his family for help for Meghan when she needed help. Meghan said earlier in the interview that at one point she “didn’t want to be alive any more”.
Harry says he was ashamed of admitting to his family that Meghan needed help.
We’re back, and back at the couple’s new home. Oprah is holding a box of eggs, presumably from the new chickens.
Meghan is talking about the Little Mermaid, and how Ariel loses her voice, but at the end, gets her voice back.
One person who is not watching tonight’s broadcast – UK prime minister Boris Johnson.
The prime minister has said he will “probably miss” the upcoming Oprah Winfrey interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, broadcast at 1am UK time on Monday morning. Boris Johnson said he would be focusing on the coronavirus vaccine rollout instead:
Harry says of the unconscious bias against Meghan in the UK press:
“I wasn’t aware of it to begin with, but my God it doesn’t take you very long to become aware of it.”
It was only once he was able to walk in Meghan’s shoes that he understood it.
“I asked for calm from the British tabloids: once as a boyfriend, once as a husband and once as a father.”
Oprah asks what the reason was that they left, in the simplest terms.
“Because we didn’t get enough support,” says Harry.
Did they blindside the Queen, Oprah asks.
“No, I have too much respect for her,” says Harry. He suspects the story came from within the institution.
When the couple were in Canada he had conversations with the Queen and with his father, Prince Charles, “before he stopped taking my calls”.
The conversation now turns to whether Meghan “blindsided” the family when they decided they would leave.
Harry says that first, he went to everyone he thought might be able to help them, but he was not given the help they needed.
And they didn’t actually leave, says Meghan.
They asked to “just take a step back. We can do it in a Commonwealth country, we had suggested New Zealand, South Africa, Canada”.
But the firm wasn’t open to it.
Following their announcement that they would be stepping back, the Queen said in a statement, “Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the royal family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.”
Days later, Prince Harry would express his sadness over the couple’s decision to step down from royal duties, saying he had taken a “leap of faith”. He said he had not taken the decision lightly, but there was “no other option”.
Oprah is talking to the couple about being told their UK security would be removed.
The firm’s justification for removing security was “a change in status” – that they would no longer be “official working members of the royal family”.
Harry asked whether there had been a change in the level of threat, and were told no.
We’re back and Harry is here.We’re back and Harry is here.
“Is it a boy or is it a girl,” Oprah asks.“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:The couple cutely say “you can say it, no you can say it,” before Harry reveals:
It’s a girl.It’s a girl.
There is squealing.There is squealing.
“Two is it?” Oprah asks.“Two is it?” Oprah asks.
Two is it, they respond.Two is it, they respond.
Rather a lot.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.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.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.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”.The prince, 59, has consistently and categorically denied the allegations, which Buckingham Palace said were “false and without foundation”.
Here is more on that:Here is more on that:
Cut to an ad break – but coming up, Oprah will ask Meghan, “Did you blindside the Queen?”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”.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or emailjo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie.
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found atwww.befrienders.org.
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.
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.”
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.