The interview that rocked the royals: How Harry and Meghan aired their grievances with The Firm in a tell-all chat with Oprah three years ago today

In January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan fled the Royal Family and the UK to begin their new life in America, ostensibly to be far from press intrusion and media attention.

But it didn’t take them long to return to the public eye – in one of the most incendiary ways imaginable.

Some 50-million people around the world watched as, on March 7, 2021, the duo took part in an 85-minute tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey

The bombshell revelations are still reverberating three years on.

Chatting in the sun-kissed garden of a Californian mansion – which  turned out to  owned by a friend of Oprah’ – a heavily-pregnant Meghan described her time in the Royal Family as a nightmare that she’d barely survived.

A heavily pregnant Meghan sits down in a sun-dapped garden to speak to Oprah Winfrey

A tearful Meghan tells ‘her truth’ in an interview watched by 50 million people 

Interviewer Oprah Winfrey was a guest at the 2018 wedding of Meghan and Prince Harry

She related how she had to turn over her passport, driver’s licence, keys and other personal belongings when she moved into the cramped confines of Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace.

‘I left the house twice in four months,’ she told Oprah, adding, ‘I couldn’t feel lonelier.’

She recalled watching the Little Mermaid cartoon and relating to Ariel, the mermaid who exchanges her voice for legs in order to marry her prince.

‘She falls in love with a prince and because of that she loses her voice.’

Oprah asked the now famous question, ‘Were you silent or silenced?’

‘The latter,’ Meghan replied.

She claimed the situation had deteriorated to the point that she’d even contemplated suicide. 

‘I didn’t want to be alive any more,’ she told Oprah. ‘It was a clear and real and frightening constant thought.’

Yet Meghan alleged that Palace staff didn’t offer her help when she went to them begging for support even though she was then six months pregnant with Archie.

‘I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution,’ she said.

Prince Harry came to joined his wife for the concluding part of the interview

Oprah was placed at some distance from her interviewees as Covid restrictions were in place

She described an exchange with an unnamed, but senior member of Palace staff.

‘I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because they said, “My heart goes out to you because I see how bad it is, but there’s nothing we can do to protect you because you’re not a paid employee of the institution,”’ Meghan recalled.

The other bombshell was the Sussexes’ suggestion that the Royal Family was collectively racist, pointing the finger at one – unnamed – member who, they alleged, had speculated about the colour of their son Archie’s skin when Meghan was pregnant in a racist way.

‘When I was pregnant,’ Markle recalled that family members had, ‘concerns and conversations about how dark his skin would be when he was born. People were concerned with how dark Archie’s skin would be.’

A tense-looking Harry confirmed this, saying he was the one who’d heard these comments and had told his wife.

Harry and Meghan said they would not reveal who made the statement, with Meghan saying, ‘I think that would be very damaging to them [to reveal].’

Yet later on – in particular when Harry published his memoir, Spare – this particular controversy appeared to have been forgotten

The Duke and Duchess also raised eyebrows by claiming to have been officially married by the Archbishop of Canterbury three days before their actual wedding day in May 2018.

Whatever did take place before the official ceremony at St George’s Chapel, the Archbishop of Canterbury denied it was a wedding,  telling an Italian newspaper: 

‘The legal wedding was on the Saturday. I signed the wedding certificate, which is a legal document, and I would have committed a serious criminal offence if I signed it knowing it was false.

‘So you can make what you like about it. But the legal wedding was on the Saturday. But I won’t say what happened at any other meetings.’

Meghan used the interview to quash reports that she had made her sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge cry in the run-up to her wedding over Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid’s outfit.

In fact, said the Duchess of Sussex, the opposite was true, the Duchess of Cambridge was the one who made her cry.

‘It was a really hard week of the wedding, and she was upset about something,’ Meghan explained to Oprah.

‘But she owned it, and she apologised, and she brought me flowers and a note apologising. She did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, to just take accountability for it.’

Harry didn’t pull his punches where the Royal Family was concerned either.

He accused members of The Firm of jealousy towards Meghan for the ‘effortless’ manner in which Meghan had captivated the public during their tour of the Commonwealth and ‘how good she was at the job’.

And for the first time he made it clear that he and Prince William were at odds saying that, ‘he loved him to bits’, but that, ‘we’re on different paths’.

He also described the then Prince Charles and William as ‘trapped’. ‘They don’t get to leave and I have compassion for that,’ he said.

What the members of the Royal Family feel about the interview isn’t known as most of them have remained silent in response, but Prince William’s own response to a reporter was simply the passing comment: ‘We are very much not a racist family.’

Buckingham Palace issued a brief statement on behalf of the Queen saying she was ‘saddened’ to hear of the couple’s struggles and they were particularly concerned by allegations of racism

The front pages of British newspapers following the Oprah interview…

And the Queen only released a statement hinting that the Sussexes account might not be the same as hers.

‘The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.

‘The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.

‘Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members.’