Oprah Winfrey shares more of her groundbreaking interview with Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, after the two-hour program aired on CBS Sunday night.
In the clips that weren’t used before, the couple discuss why they think the race makes a difference in the way Meghan was treated by Buckingham Palace and the British tabloids. They also open a visit to see Queen Elizabeth who was suddenly called off after the couple’s decision to retire from royal duties in early 2020.
Sunday’s special saw the Duchess of Sussex break with previous media narratives, telling Winfrey that Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, had made him cry days before her wedding. According to previous reports, Meghan made Kate cry over the ceremony arrangements.
The Duchess of Sussex also revealed hers second child, to beat this summer, would be a girl. They also claimed there were concerns expressed at Buckingham Palace before he denied his first son, Archie, about the dark color his skin color could have. Winfrey, who joined “CBS This Morning” the day after the interview aired, said Prince Harry wanted to make it clear that the statements were not made by Queen Elizabeth or Prince Phillip.
“CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King said Winfrey called it the “best interview” of his career.
“Did you leave the country because of racism?” Winfrey asked the couple in the first clip which was not used before.
Prince Harry said “it was a big part”, recalling a particular event.
“I remember the Sentebale fundraiser,” he said. “And one of the people at that dinner said to me,‘ Please don’t do this with the media. They will destroy your life. “This person is friends with many publishers and so on.”
Harry continued, “I said,‘ I’m sorry, explain what you mean by that? “I said,‘ Understand that the UK is very fanatical. ’And I stopped and said,‘ The UK is not a fanatic. The UK press is fanatical, specifically the tabloids. Is that what you mean? ”
“He says, ‘No, the UK is a fanatic.’ And I said, ‘I don’t completely agree.’ rest of society “.
In the second clip, the Duke of Sussex talked to Winfrey about how a trip to see Queen Elizabeth II was suddenly called off after a letter to Buckingham Palace in early 2020 telling the royal family that they retreated from their formal functions. .
“That announcement we posted on January 8, 2020, that is, the contents of it was put in a letter to the institution, to my father, which was shared in late December while we were in Canada,” Said Prince Harry. “And to go back to day 6 after my grandmother had said ‘The moment you land, go up.'”
Meghan said she and Harry had asked if they could go see the monarch.
According to Harry, the queen said, “Yes, come to Sandringham. I love to have a talk. Come and have some tea. Why don’t you stay for dinner? It will be a long journey and you will be exhausted.”
“He wanted us to spend the night,” Meghan added.
The prince said he would have “loved” them until he received a message from his private secretary “at the time we landed in the UK”
“The private secretary is a kind of general manager of the institution,” Meghan said.
Harry said his then-private secretary Fiona “basically cut and pasted a message from the queen’s private secretary.”
“Please convey to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that she cannot come to Norfolk. The Queen is busy. She is busy all week,” the letter said.
He continued, “She had only invited me. The queen is busy. She is busy all week. Don’t come here.”
Harry said he called his grandmother from Frogmore Cottage that night, where the couple had lived before Archie was born. She asked if she could come anyway, but she knew she was busy.
“And she said, ‘Yeah, I have something in the diary that I didn’t know I had.’ And I said, ‘Well, what about the rest of the week?’
He said he didn’t want to push, “because he knew what was going on.”
“Doesn’t the queen get to do what the queen wants to do?” Winfrey asked.
Harry said no.
“When you’re the head of the company, there are people around you who give you advice,” he said. “And what also made me very sad is that some of these tips have been really bad.”
In the two-hour special interview, Meghan and Harry discussed the feeling of moving away from the rest of the royal family and Harry classified their relationship with older brother William, Duke of Cambridge, as needing “space”.
The third clip showing Winfrey on “CBS This Morning” features the couple describing the environment in which Harry was raised and how the royal family compared Meghan’s tabloid coverage to that of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.
“You’ve had these conversations with your family members. They know why you left,” Winfrey said. “Then someone said,‘ I’m sorry you had to make this move ’or‘ I’m sorry you felt you had to do this because you thought we didn’t support you? “
Harry said no one had any.
“The feeling is that this was our decision, so we have the consequences. And despite three years of asking for help and seeing, or visualizing how this could end, I don’t know, I’ve been very tough. Because I’m trying. I’m part of the system with them. I’ve always been with them. “
The prince said he was aware that his older brother, second in line to the throne, could not leave the system as he had.
Asked if Prince William wanted to leave the system, Harry said, “I don’t know. I can’t speak for him.”
“But with that relationship, that control and the fear of the UK tabloids, it’s really a toxic environment. But I’ll always be there for him. I’ll always be there for my family. And like I said, I’ve tried to help them see what has happened, “said Prince Harry.
Winfrey asked him if his family (his father Charles, for example) agreed that the environment was toxic.
“No, I think he’s had to make peace with that,” Harry said.
Meghan said she could not make peace with herself because the situation was different.
“I think it will be them, and that’s why I would say, and I can’t speak for them either. If they’re not able to see that this was different, then what happened to Kate when she was, you know.” Meghan said.
Winfrey asked if the race was the difference.
“And social media,” Meghan replied. “That didn’t exist. And so it was like a wild wild west. It spread like wildfire. Besides being American, it translated differently across the lake. So you had a very different noise level. But they don’t see that it’s different. “
“So you’ve felt harassed internationally?” Winfrey asked.
Meghan said: “I think the volume of what was coming in and the interest was bigger because of social media, because I wasn’t just British and that unfortunately if your family members say,‘ Well , ‘this is what has happened to us all’, if you can compare the experience I had was similar to what has been shared with us. “
He used a nickname given to his sister-in-law before marrying William as an example.
“Kate was called ‘Waity Katie,’ expecting to marry William, though I imagine it was very hard, and I know. I can’t imagine how she felt. That’s not the same thing,” he said. Meghan.
She continued, “And if a member of her family will comfortably say that we have all had to deal with things that are rude, rude and racist they are not the same.”
The Duchess of Sussex claimed that the press team that would defend the royal family “when they know something is wrong” did not come to her defense.
Winfrey asked Prince Harry if he hoped his family would ever recognize that the differences in treatment were excessive.
“It would make a big difference,” he said. “Like I said, a lot of people have seen it for what it was … like it’s being talked about all over the world.”
Harry stated that people who don’t want to see him, “decide not to see him.”