In a wide-ranging interview aired Sunday, Harry and Meghan described painful palace discussions about the color of their son’s skin, losing royal protection and the intense pressures that led the Duchess of Sussex to contemplate suicide.
Here’re 8 surprising things we learned from the Oprah special:
1. Mental health crisis
The Duchess of Sussex says she had suicidal thoughts during her time as a working royal. “I just didn’t want to be alive any more. And I remember how he [Harry] just cradled me.” She claimed she asked the palace for help and was denied it.
2. Racism allegations
The Duchess claimed that while she was pregnant with Archie concerns were raised with Prince Harry about the skin colour of their baby. “In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have in tandem the conversation of, ‘You won’t be given security, not gonna be given a title’ and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
3. Feud with Duchess of Cambridge
Duchess denied a newspaper story that she had made the Duchess of Cambridge cry before Meghan and Harry’s wedding, and said it was a turning point in her relations with the media. Asked if she made Kate cry, Meghan replied: “The reverse happened.” Meghan said Kate was a “good person” but added: “A few days before the wedding she [Kate] was upset about something, pertaining to – yes the issue was correct – about the flower girl dresses, and it made me cry. And it really hurt my feelings.” She said Kate apologised at the time and brought her flowers.
4. Secret wedding
Meghan revealed they married in private, three days before their public wedding ceremony on 19 May 2018. Meghan said they exchanged vows “just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury”.
5. It’s a girl
The couple revealed the gender of their second child. Harry said the baby, due in the northern hemisphere summer, is a girl. He said he felt “amazing, just grateful”. “To have a boy and then a girl what more can you ask for, we have our family.” The couple said this would be their last child. “Two is it,” they said.
6. Meghan rarely able to leave home
Meghan said she was barely allowed to leave the house, because people at “the Firm” – a term for the royal household – 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 said.
7. Harry felt ‘trapped’
Oprah asked Harry whether he would have stepped back from royal duties were it not for Meghan. “No,” Harry said, he would not have. He said he was trapped, but that he didn’t know he was trapped. Oprah asked exactly how he was trapped. “Trapped within the system, like the rest of my family are. My father, my brother, they are trapped,” he said.
8. The Queen is “wonderful”
It was not all bad all the time. Meghan said the Queen was always “wonderful” and remembered a train journey they took together when the Queen gave her some pearl earrings and a necklace, and shared a blanket with her. Prince Harry said he had a really good relationship with his grandmother. “She’s my commander in chief.”
