The cute Prince Harry and Meghan Markle interview that turned into the scene of an almighty row – becoming known as an ‘orchestrated reality show’

One of the only occasions when senior royals are almost guaranteed to do a sit-down televised interview about their personal life is at their engagement.

It gives the excited newly formed couple a chance to answer soft-ball questions about their relationship and talk happily about their plans for the future.

And although Harry and Meghan’s engagement chat with the BBC‘s Mishal Husain in 2017 was initially considered adorable by the public, it is now remembered as the scene of an almighty row.

Eyebrows were first raised in the 2022 Netflix ‘docuseries’, Harry & Meghan, when the Duchess dismissively suggested that the interview with Husain had been an ‘orchestrated reality show’.

Husain, the calm and usually drama-free Radio 4 Today presenter, was clearly astonished at what she heard, but waited until this summer before she hit back and rubbished the claims.

Now the interview is seen by some as another example of Meghan trying to rewrite history for her advantage.

Here, MailOnline looks back at Harry and Meghan’s now controversy-mired royal interview seven years after it first aired…

When Kensington Palace announced Harry and Meghan’s engagement, his grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, expressed their delight at the news.

Other congratulations came in from various political leaders, including the then prime minister Theresa May and leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn. 

When the exclusive engagement interview was announced, it fell to Radio 4’s Today presenter and consummate professional Ms Husain.

She had been at the BBC for almost 20 years and was viewed by all as a safe pair of hands to handle such a high-profile chat with the nation’s then much-loved prince and his dazzling American soon-to-be bride.

After the photo call at the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, the couple went inside for the official interview.

Looking back, observers have noted that Meghan seemed much more confident than other women marrying into the Royal Family.

Lady Diana Spencer, who was 19 at the time, for example, was painfully shy when interviewed standing alongside Prince Charles in 1981.

Kate Middleton, then 28, looked nervous when ITV‘s Tom Bradby put questions to her and William at Kensington Palace in 2010. She let Prince William take the lead. 

But in comparison, Meghan, then 36, seemed more confident than Harry in their interview. She was, after all, an experienced actress.

Her body language, which saw her lean across her fiancé at times, made her seem the dominant half of the partnership.

In the interview they revealed details about the early stages of their romance and how the proposal had happened during a quiet night at home over a chicken dinner earlier that month.

‘It was just so sweet and natural and very romantic,’ Meghan recalled. ‘He got on one knee. As a matter of fact, I could barely let [him] finish proposing. I was like, ‘Can I say yes now?” 

Harry revealed how he proposed to Meghan with a ring with a centre diamond ethically sourced from Botswana, where they had fallen in love, with two outer diamonds from his late mother Princess Diana’s collection. 

Following the interview, the public seemed to be smitten by the couple, who were clearly in love.

But after the publication of the Netflix documentary, which provided a deep dive into the journey that led to them setting up a new life in California after quitting royal duties in 2020, the narrative started to change.

In one scene, the Duchess called it an ‘orchestrated reality show’ and ‘rehearsed’.

She said: ‘So we did the thing out with the Press, then we went right inside, took the coat off and did the interview, so it was all in that same moment.’ 

After being asked if they were told the questions beforehand, she said: ‘Yeah. But then also like, ‘and then there’ll be a moment when they’ll ask to see the ring’. My point is we weren’t allowed to tell our story because they didn’t want…’

‘Well, we’ve never been allowed to tell our story,’ said Harry, backing up his wife’s comments. ‘That’s the consistency.’

The couple’s new version of how the interview went was allowed to circulate without pushback for almost two years, until Ms Husain made the decision to respond publicly to their claims in July this year.

She hit back in Saga magazine, writing: ‘When the Duchess of Sussex said that my engagement interview with her and Harry was an ‘orchestrated reality show’, I didn’t know what to make of it.

‘They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular.’

Ms Husain added that there was no hint of the trouble to come later – when the couple chose to quit royal duties.

‘There was nothing that pointed to what would happen,’ she wrote. ‘It was two people who were full of joy in each other and life.’

After the Netflix series was broadcast, Ms Husain was asked about Meghan’s comments by a colleague on the Today programme.

Borrowing a phrase from Queen Elizabeth’s response to the Duchess’s allegations of racism within the Royal Family, she said wryly: ‘Recollections may vary.’

Ms Husain is known for her cool, calm manner, even when grilling the most bumptious politicians on the BBC. 

So her decision to respond publicly to the Duchess of Sussex’s criticism made waves. 

The then director general of the BBC, Lord Hall, issued a statement defending Ms Husain’s journalism. It said that Meghan’s allegation that the interview was ‘an orchestrated reality show’ was ‘simply untrue’.

‘Mishal is not easily riled, to put it mildly, so this is a notable intervention,’ one BBC source said following the row. ‘She clearly felt strongly about it.’ 

Following the incident, the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden spoke to sources who worked for the royal household at the time of Ms Husain’s interview in 2017, and they said the Duchess’s ‘performance’ should have raised more concerns than it did.  

‘At the time, there was so much excitement about the engagement that no one really questioned some of Meghan’s comments,’ one source said. ‘But, if you watch it again now, some of her responses seem insincere and her body language is telling.’ 

And with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard not to hear some of her answers differently now. 

For example, Meghan told Ms Husain that she had met Harry on a ‘blind date’, with the Prince adding: ‘It was a blind date, for sure.’

However, in the Netflix series, the Duke says he got to know his future wife via a photo-sharing app.

‘Meghan and I met over Instagram,’ he explained.

In 2017, Meghan told Husain that, when a mutual friend helped organise the ‘blind date’, she had known little about Harry.

‘Because I’m from the States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the Royal Family,’ she mused.

‘I didn’t know much about him and so the only thing that I had asked her when she said she wanted to set us up was — I had one question. I said, ‘Well, is he nice?”’

However, it subsequently emerged that Meghan had taken a close interest in the Royal Family since childhood. 

Indeed, she had been pictured posing outside Buckingham Palace as a 15-year-old tourist with her then friend Ninaki Priddy, who remarked of her marriage to Harry: ‘I’m not shocked at all. It’s like she has been planning this all her life. 

‘[Meghan] gets exactly what she wants and Harry has fallen for her play. She was always fascinated by the Royal Family.

‘She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0. She will play her role ably, but my advice to him is to tread cautiously.’

As an adult, Meghan was so fascinated by royal news that she would comment on it through her now-defunct blog, The Tig. 

But perhaps the interview was doomed from the beginning, as according to a senior royal source, Meghan had complained that Ms Husain ‘wasn’t empathetic enough, wasn’t warm enough’ to conduct the interview.

Royals are meant to be different from other celebrities, to maintain the mystique, and rarely give interviews of any kind. During the late Queen Elizabeth’s record-breaking reign of 70 years, she never gave a single Press interview. 

Although Harry and Meghan would go on to do a number of high-profile interviews, where they would air all manner of dirty laundry, looking back, the engagement interview is seen by some as the first which raised warning signs. 

And despite the public having initially been swept up in a plethora of love-story joy when the engagement happened, it seems the shine has now worn off. 

In February, a book telling the story of Prince Harry and Meghan’s engagement was on sale for just 10p at Windsor Waterstones – after being reduced from £7.99. 

The title, Harry & Meghan: A Royal Engagement by Halima Sadat, was on the shelves of the royal section at a Waterstones store less than 200 yards from Windsor Castle.

On the front cover of the book is Harry and Meghan, immediately before they sat down for the interview which is now remembered for all the wrong reasons.