A documentary about the royal family and the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan: What did they do when they were dating, and how they used it to their advantage?
The royal family should have taken the couple’s safety into account when they were dating, they say in the documentary. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to their advantage. They did the same thing again and again.
The first three episodes of the project, titled “Harry & Meghan,” were released on Thursday after months of speculation that the couple would star in a tell-all series.
At various points in the documentary series, Harry describes ways in which Meghan reminds him of his mother, a woman known for being open, caring and empathic. He seems to suggest that in casting his lot with Diana and Meghan, he understands that he has sealed his fate as an outsider to his royal kin.
Buckingham and Kensington Palaces will likely be braced for the fallout from the series, after sustained tensions between Harry and his father, King Charles, and brother, Prince William.
It’s hard to remember what happened now, what on earth did I do? Like how did we end up here?,” Harry said in a video diary shown in the first episode, recorded shortly after the pair finished their final royal duties in March 2020.
The King’s Dilemma on Meghan and the First Major Public Relations Test of the Royal Family Under King Charles III (Villarry)
He said he became “genuinely concerned for the safety of my family,” attacking the intrusion of the media, which he has frequently lamented in recent years.
The monarchy has a longstanding tradition of blaming the media at the same time. He is saying that history won’t repeat itself. I will protect my wife, my children and my own emotional and mental wellbeing – even if it means breaking with the only family I have ever known.
They describe how their position within the royal family became unsustainable, due to constant hounding from Britain’s media and disregard for the couple’s wellbeing inside palace walls.
It marks a first major public relations test for the monarchy under King Charles III, who himself has been tacitly criticized by Harry since their split from the family, and whose relationship with his son has frayed.
Buckingham Palace isn’t going to respond to the allegations raised in the docuseries, with the royal household again telling CNN Thursday that it won’t be commenting. The royals continued with their engagements and business as usual. The King and Queen were in London visiting a community kitchen with members of the family before they went to the abbey for the second year in a row.
The constraints placed on the couple as members of the royal family re-emerged in the documentary.
Meghan described her engagement announcement in 2017 as an “orchestrated reality show.” Harry recalled how other members of the royal family struggled to share his concern after the media’s initial fascination with the prince’s girlfriend.
“As far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well. So it was almost like a rite of passage,” Harry said. My wife went through that, why shouldn’t your partner go through it? Why are you getting special treatment? Why should she be protected?,” he said, paraphrasing their arguments.
The difference is the race element, Harry said. The pair have frequently railed against racist undertones in tabloid coverage of Meghan, who is biracial.
These are the skeletons in the closet that can sometimes be a problem in the family, because they are part of the problem and there is a lot of unconscious bias.
“The thing with unconscious bias – it is actually no one’s fault. But once it has been pointed out, or identified within yourself, you then need to make it right,” he said.
Harry, Meghan, and the Ancestry of their Weddings: A Commentary on Their Journeys Through America and Their Coming to a Rest in Peace
Elsewhere in the first batch of episodes, Harry commented on some previous marriages among his relatives and ancestors. “I think for so many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mold as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with,” he said.
“They were surprised … the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgement more than anything else at the beginning,” he added. The actress thing was funnily enough.
Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, stepped back from royal duties and moved to California, alleging racist attacks by Britain’s tabloid media. Harry’s criticism of the media was tinged with anger over the way the press treated his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car accident in 1997 while being followed by photographers. The couple’s new life in America has been funded by lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.
“I remember thinking, how can I ever find someone who is willing and capable to be able to withstand all the baggage that comes with being with me?” He said that he did.
It illustrated the breakdown of her father’s relationship with her over the controversy about how he staged a series of photographs for their wedding.
She had a father before this, but now she doesn’t have a father. If Meg wasn’t with me, her dad would still be her dad, according to Harry.
“Harry and Beyond”: What the royals are up to in public, and how much do they care about?” Harry, Meghan, and the Queen, in an interview with CNN
The first three episodes were released on Thursday, with three more scheduled for next week. Interviews were completed in August, the month before the Queen’s death, according to the series.
CNN brings you the inside track on the royals, what they are up to in public and what’s going on behind palace walls on a weekly basis.
On Thursday, the first three episodes of “Harry and Beyond” will be released on the web, promising to tell the full story about Prince Harry’s estrangement from the royal family.
Prince William, the heir to the throne and Harry’s older brother, defended the royal family after the interview, telling reporters, “We’re very much not a racist family.”
The Buckingham Palace was accused of racism last week, when a Black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse said she was questioned about her origins by a senior member of the royal household. Coverage of the issue filled British media, overshadowing William and his wife Kate’s much-anticipated visit to Boston, which the palace had hoped would highlight their environmental credentials.
The program will be closely watched by the U.K., where there were complaints that the images offered to back up the narration were not accurate.
In one section of the footage, clips of paparazzi are spliced together with old footage of Princess Diana being followed by the media as Harry says in a voiceover: “The pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution, this feeding frenzy. … I was terrified, I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”
Sky News reported that one of the clips used to illustrate his words shows reporters and photographers waiting for TV starkatie Price to arrive at the court.
“There’s a hierarchy of the family, and there is one on the balcony at Buckingham Palace,” Harry says. There’s leaking and also planting of stories.
That is followed by a picture of a photographer perched on another balcony as Harry and Meghan walk with their young son Archie down below. While the scene suggests the photographer was covertly snapping pictures of a private moment, the photo actually shows an accredited press photographer who was covering the couple’s meeting with Desmond Tutu in 2019.
In short, Harry and Meghan are not villains, nor are they trying to tear down the royal family. In the language of today, they are speaking their truth, as unpleasant as it might be, judging from the reaction of some critics.
William and Kate traveled to Boston to meet with anti-violence groups and attend a basketball game, which was covered by the Daily Telegraph.
The reviews for Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Prince of Harry, were in the British press and they were withering. This is not surprising, given that the couple spends much of the first three episodes attacking Britain’s notorious tabloid media for invading their privacy and some coverage that traded in racist tropes.
The first three episodes of the docuseries, directed by Liz Garbus and produced in conjunction with the production company of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, were quickly skewered by a bipartisan group of critics, from The Sun to The Guardian. Some of the commentary could be captured throughkewered, although it may not actually capture the full extent of it.
Piers Morgan, who has been vociferously critical of the couple in the past, wastes no time laying into the series in his scathing review in The Sun, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch:
The World’s Biggest Victims are Meghan Markle and Prince Harry: A Critique of the ‘One-sided PR effort’
Who are the world’s biggest victims right now? The poor people of Ukraine are bombed and shot, and raped by the barbarians of Putin. There are people who have been ruined by the Covid outbreak and still have long-term health problems. Millions of people are struggling in a cost-of-living crisis that has swept the globe.
But no. The world’s biggest victims are in fact Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, a pair of incredibly rich, stupendously privileged, horribly entitled narcissists.
Morgan warns viewers that they might need a sick bucket during his review. He was not the only one to evoke gastrointestinal distress. Lucy Mangan wrote a review for the Guardian that said the first 3 episodes of her show were so sickening I almost brought up my breakfast.
“I’ve always been ‘Team Harry and Meghan,’ ” said Ateh Jewell, who writes about the beauty industry, speaking on Britain’s ITV on Thursday. She has been painted as a scheming, prince-hunting woman. The first episode shows they have a good friendship, a deep love and a connection.
People feel upset when someone who is marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is stealing the spotlight or doing the job better than the person who is born to do this. Prince Harry said that it shifted the balance. Going further, he described how the various palace press offices “end up working against each other.”
The criticism, however, did not just come from the political right. Britain’s Guardian, which is liberal and more likely to be sympathetic to the couple’s politics, called the series “a one-sided PR effort.”
Prince Harry and the Royal Family: What they’ve done to the royal family and why they’re going to make ’em all’
The Irish Times said that the first three hours were “often unwatchable” and “No fan of the British monarchy.”
The taxpayer in the U.K. pays for the royal family and in return for that payments, they expect the Royal family to be available to the media.
Opinion on Prince Harry in his homeland is divided. A few years ago, he was one of the most popular royals and his ratings rivalled that of his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth. Today his popularity sits at just 38%, according to research firm YouGov.
“I am glad they’ve made it, because I don’t like what they’ve done to the Royal family,” said Veale, while strolling around London’s Covent Garden on Thursday looking at the Christmas lights. ” I think this will make people hate them even more and I’m glad of that.”
Bringing It Up: Celebrating Meghan and Harry: A Family Picture of a Lossy Grandparent or a Problem with a Family Business
Editor’s Note: Dr. Peggy Drexler is a research psychologist, documentary film producer and author, including two books about gender and family and the forthcoming “Mean,” a book about women behaving badly, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2024. She is the director of “King Coal,” which was going to be a film at the Sundance Film Festival. The opinions are of hers, not of this commentary. There is more opinion on CNN.
Who knows if people have gotten a glimpse of who they are. What makes their version, a heavily-produced, edited and controlled version more honest than any other version of their life that has come before? The series can be seen as their version of real life. When she first got to know Harry, she wanted to review hisInstagram feed to learn more about him, and social media posts are a big part of their narrative together.
The content of the series is pretty much the same we have already seen or heard. There are some new aspects — friends who’ve never commented, photos we’ve never seen — but otherwise there’s little payoff and little to change people’s minds about them. It is self-promotional, self-aggrandizing and a little boring. They don’t come off as more likeable and that may be because of that. This is the first time that many of the dislike is directed toward Harry.
When he is suffering from a form of’repetition compulsion’ the public may see him as a hapless victim of a cunning attentionseeker or suffer from a form of’repetition compulsion’ as princess Diana’s son would have seen him. It is clear that he is willfully choosing to see what he wants.
It was terrifying to have my brother scream at me, and my dad say things that were not true, and my grandmother sit there and listen.
The Queen told Harry that she had been busy all week. “I was like, wow,” Harry said. “This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict … really what they’re doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother,” added Meghan.
“But you have to understand that from the family’s perspectives, especially from hers, there are ways of doing things. Harry said that her ultimate mission and goal was the institution and she would follow the advice she was given.
A montage of previously unseen blissful moments – Harry cutting their wedding cake with a sword, emotional toasts and Elton John serenading guests – soon took a more serious turn. Harry andMeghan accused the rest of the royal family of being jealous of their success before claims that damaging stories about them were planted by the institution to distract from negative coverage of other members.
The Queen is Coming. She’s Going Through a Hard Times. What Happens When I’m Not Here, And Why I Cannot Sleep During Its First Year
That upsets people. It upsets the balance. Because you have been led to believe that the only way that your charities can succeed and your mission can grow is if you are on the front pages of those newspapers.”
The series talked about how the mental and physical health of Meghan deteriorated in the summer of 2020. I was pregnant. I was not sleeping. The first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried,” Meghan said.
She told the filmmakers she believed that if she wasn’t here, all of this would stop. And that was the scariest thing about it, it was such clear thinking.”
“I just did everything I could to make them proud, and to really be a part of the family,” Meghan said in the fifth episode, speaking of her relationship with the other royals. The bubble burst.
She knew we were difficult to find. Harry said he spoke to her many times about it. But as the meeting approached, Meghan said they received a message from an aide telling them they were not allowed to see the monarch.
The couple were critical of the Queen’s aides but again were again complimentary of the late monarch herself, who died aged 96 in September, shortly after filming concluded for the series.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/entertainment/harry-meghan-netflix-documentary-second-part-intl/index.html
The Prince’s Secret Life Revisited: Towards Clarifying Suicidal Thoughts About Meghan and Harry’s Family
If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline or visit the website for a trained counselor. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.
The episodes got back on track after Prince Harry andMeghan married at Windsor. The pair recalled fond memories, such as when then-Prince Charles – whom Meghan described as “very charming” – stepped in to escort her down the aisle after helping with musical arrangements ahead of the big day.
The episodes were more powerful with little revelations in last week’s release. The picture Harry painted of the royal household was not very flattering. He showed a environment where household staff are distrustful and unwelcoming of their experiences.
The subsequent press attacks, the lack of action from the palace to prevent them and the couple’s increasing suspicions that the royal household was actually feeding the media pushed Meghan to a dark place.
I won’t stop this if I’m not here. And that was the scariest thing about it, it was such clear thinking,” she recalled, elaborating on the suicidal ideations she first raised while speaking to Oprah last year. Harry blamed the media intrusion for the loss of his wife’s unborn baby in 2020.
Unlike last week, this batch of episodes saw Harry and Meghan target specific members of the family, with the duke recalling his brother losing his temper during a crucial crunch summit at Sandringham as they discussed the couple’s long-term future.
The Sussexes and the Palace: A Case Study for a Prince Whose Prefers What He Had to Tell Us, or What He Could Have Learned
He said that part of his responsibility was the survivability and continuation of the institution and it was already ingrained in him.
Harry said that he felt this was a fight worth fighting for even if it was at the cost of his relationship with his father and brother.
“I’ve had to make peace with the fact that we’re probably never going to get genuine accountability or a genuine apology,” he said toward the end of the final episode. We are concentrating on what is going to come next, I and my wife are moving on.
The couple blame the media for their challenges and pressures when they were royals. They believe that the palace could have done a better job of protecting family members from the media, challenging the media, and giving priority to family before the institution.
The family has clearly chosen not to give oxygen to the docuseries. That might be their best chance of ending the public row in the short term. The national memory will be made up of the Sussexes’ version of events.
It is not just a tabloid. It’s not just some story. You are making me scared…. That’s real. Are my babies safe? And you made it for something? Because you are bored or because it sells your papers?… and that’s the piece I don’t think people fully understand.”
Sophia A. Nelson is an author of a new book called “Be the One You Need:21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me in the Presence of Disappearance
One of the media organizations governing the United Kingdom conceded last year that there was a lot of work to be done when covering race issues. The statement was issued because journalists of color were upset about the unflattering coverage they received following their sit down with Oprah Winfrey. The current firestorm over their new Netflix docuseries suggests to me that the media’s work in confronting this bias remains unfinished.
The main point of the project was to show how she and Harry lost their minds, just as they did in one part of the series.
I get Harry and the woman who is marrying him. I’ve experienced some of the very same lessons in my own sometimes tumultuous, dysfunctional family, which is why I wrote my latest book, “Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.” What I find fascinating is how clueless many people seem to be about family estrangement and break-ups, rife as they are in these modern times.
It’s a valuable lesson in how to look after yourself when the people around you don’t seem to care if you survive, but they also seem to be making sure you don’t thrive. It gives an in depth glimpse into surviving conflict, navigating outsize personality and cavernous gulfs dividing close relatives. It can be hard to maintain your sense of integrity while trapped in a system that doesn’t give much of either.
At least, that’s the plot line that resonates most for me, because I have lived aspects of their story, although on a much more modest scale. I think that many of the millions of people who have watched the series can relate. We have learned that when you want to heal a relationship, it is important that you know when to walk away and how to take care of yourself.
The Sussexes both experienced unhappiness in childhood because of divorce. Meghan describes a lonely childhood shuttling between her mother’s home in California and her dad’s.
The tragic story of Harry’s birth to Diana and her death in a car crash is not just sad, it’s a testament to how well he grew up in the royal family. A child has a lot to ask.
I am surprised that some people seem to be unaware that as members of a generation that is known for sharing and sharing sometimes they did not hold back when it came to discussing their differing views on the state of the monarchy.
Theirs is a generation that does not want to be hamstrung by the strictures of tradition, even if it comes adorned with a tiara and conveyed in a golden carriage. They spill the tea in videos and on social media.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/17/opinions/harry-meghan-netflix-documentary-series-britain-royals-ctrp-nelson/index.html
Meghan, the Prince and the Queen: Remarks on Meghan and The Duchess of the Kingdom of England and Their Successes During the First Princesses
She was remarking on an interview a few years back in which a reporter had simply asked her, “Are you OK?” She replied that she was ok because not many people asked if she was okay.
These comments gave us insight into the toll being a new duke had on us. They were also eerily reminiscent of remarks made by a young Princess Diana, who in a now infamous BBC interview described how she too had been hung out to dry in a family that does not always warmly welcome outsiders who marry into their ranks.
As if to substantiate the Sussexes allegations, the British broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson unleashed an incoherent, rage-filled rant about Meghan in a column for The Sun. He said, among other things, that he hates her on a “cellular level,” and was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” The Queen Consort and others had a Christmas lunch before the vile words of the man who was there. And thus far, the royal family has said nothing about Clarkson’s words. They are unwilling to protect her.
The British monarchy is an aging institution that is defined by tradition. However popular royal gossip may be, the monarchy’s power, influence, and relevance are waning. When Harry metMeghan, theroyal family had a unique opportunity to change and modernize their institution. They could have made it relevant in a diverse and complicated world. While the Commonwealth comprises 56 countries, King Charles reigns as monarch over the United Kingdom and 14 Commonwealth realms, lingering vestiges of British imperialism. The documentary notes that the people of the Commonwealth are mostly people of color. The royals had a biracial woman join their ranks. Many black Britons felt that the power and reach of the monarchy could be extended to them.
Meghan might have been the very addition to the family who could have helped build a bridge to the next generation of Britons – and to the overwhelmingly Black and brown inhabitants of Britain’s Commonwealth nations. It is an opportunity that has been wasted.
The series showed the footage and the images don’t lie. William and Kate received a chilly reception in majority-Black Jamaica this year as the island contemplated exiting the Commonwealth. As that Caribbean island ended its membership in the body, William’s father, King Charles III, sat stony-faced.
Harry has been looking for freedom, and found it in his American wife and two children. The independence claimed by the Sussexes was the most unroyal way imaginable.
The problem with that type of control is that it can work against your own interests. The first episode of the series talks about being biracial and how people don’t discuss what it’s like to be mixed race. I was so confused that I went back to watch the caption and be sure I heard her correctly. There is a robust and longstanding discourse about being biracial or multiracial. How could she not know that? How could no one protect her from such a wildly inaccurate statement?
Given that there aren’t many grand revelations in “Harry & Megan,” it seems clear that the Sussexes made this project, in large part, because they needed the money. A prince is accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Security details are costly. The person owes a mortgage. The Sussexes know that their story is their most valuable asset, even though they have been exiled from the royal family. When you’ve been misunderstood and maligned, you want nothing more than for people to know the truth as you’ve experienced it. Because you want to be seen, you assume people will empathise with you if they know every last detail. Alas.