A week after the first three episodes of Netflix’s Harry & Meghan released, three more episodes came out on Thursday.
The key themes? Misinformation, mental health and strained family ties.
In the fourth episode, viewers get an inside look of Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding, which saw Meghan walked down the aisle by King Charles. “Harry’s dad is very charming,” Meghan said. “I said to him like, ‘I’ve lost my dad in this.’ So him as my father-in-law was really important to me.”
Following the wedding, the episode also focuses on Meghan’s relationship with the late queen, her pregnancy “le bump” and her mental health challenges which earned her the title of “Duchess difficult,” according to the British press.
Meghan recalls the time when the British tabloids had published stories on how she was self-centred, bullied her staff, and broke royal protocols to get her way.
The episode also shows how the headlines took a different angle when she did the same things as her sister-in-law, and Prince William’s wife, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Wales.
The episode notes Meghan’s role in The Hub Community Kitchen, which was put together by her and the Grenfell fire survivors. She said, after the launch, the press had turned the story around stating “kitchen backed by Meghan Markle’s cookbook is in mosque ‘linked to 19 terror suspects’.”
To add to all the layers of alleged false narratives around the biracial American princess, the cherry on top of it all was when a personal letter – which Meghan ensured was discreetly sent – ended up reaching the wrong hands, and printed across all the UK newspapers.
Prince Harry even goes on to say that their lives were claimed by the press as their funding came from the public.
Meghan discusses the impact of reading such headlines, her lawsuit against the Daily Mail, which after following up for weeks with the royal office led to a dead end.
Meghan also revealed her suicidal thoughts, which surfaced shortly after her wedding to the Prince, following her into her pregnancy with Archie.
“All of this will stop if I’m not here, and that was the scariest thing about it — it was such clear thinking,” Meghan recalled, after the British press penalised her for a ‘diva’ mentality, such as uproar over shoes she wore on a trip to South Africa.
Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, also appears for a few minutes of the episode, recalling the emotional conversation with her daughter when she contemplated suicide.
“That’s not an easy one for a mom to hear,” Ragland said, wiping away tears. “And I can’t protect her. H can’t protect her.”
“Institutional Harry” versus “Husband Harry”
Prince Harry too recalled Meghan’s depression, feeling ashamed of how he dealt with what his wife was going through, saying he was “institutional Harry” and not “husband Harry”.
“I had been trained to worry more about what are people going to think,” Harry said. “And looking back at it now, I hate myself for it. What she needed from me was so much more than I was able to give,” the prince said.
The prince also went on to explain how he and his brother, Prince William had a pact between each other to not turn against one another, only to find himself “heartbroken” after his brother’s office had turned against Harry and Meghan to protect other members of the royal family.
“I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves,” Meghan said.
Enter, the royal family
In the fifth episode of the six-episode series, Harry and Meghan recalled a family meeting to discuss their decision to reduce their roles as working royals.
Harry said that he was given several options, but quickly understood that no agreement would come into effect.
“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” Harry said, describing it as a meeting that ended without a solid plan of action.
“The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother so that he’s now on the institution side,” Harry added.
In addition, every time Harry sent a letter proposing a solution to what he and his wife were facing, it always ended up being leaked to the press, eventually coming to the conclusion that the couple would withdraw from their royal duties.
When the announcement was made in 2020, the headlines – unsurprisingly – blamed Meghan to be the cause of it all.
“How predictable that the woman is to be blamed for the decision of a couple,” Harry said. “In fact it was my decision.”
However, the prince added that the late queen was supportive of the couple’s decision to step back.
“Blocked” from seeing the queen
Harry recalled a time when both he and Meghan were blocked from seeing the queen, despite personally making plans with the late monarch.
“So, we’re flying back from Vancouver straight to Heathrow, and right as we’re getting on the plane, this urgent message comes through to H, saying, ‘You are not allowed to go and see Her Majesty’,” Meghan said.
The message added: “’Make sure that your principal is aware he cannot go and see her. She’s busy. She has plans all week.’”
Harry said that was the “opposite” of what the queen had told him, adding that when he called the queen when he was back in UK, she said “Yes. I didn’t know that I was busy. I’ve now been told I’m busy all week. I’ve actually been told I’m busy all week.”
“Wow,” said Prince Harry.
“I remember looking at H and going, my gosh, this is when a family and family business are in direct conflict because they’re blocking you from seeing the queen, but really what they’re doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother,” Meghan added.
Meghan’s miscarriage was “because of what The Mail did”
In episode six, the couple discusses the loss of their child, amid an on-going battle with The Daily Mail.
“I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what The Mail did,” Harry said adding that he “watched the whole thing.”
The prince said: “Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was created, caused by that? Course we don’t,”
He also added that the legal battle led took a toll on the couple, especially Meghan due to stress and loss of sleep. “I can say, from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her,” he said.
Nevertheless, despite the turmoil the couple continued to face during that time, Meghan’s friend and American actor Tyler Perry turned out to reportedly be her saving grace, empathising with her struggles as a royal wife, a mother and a biracial human being.
Appearing in the final episode, Perry says, “This was before the wedding and I sent her a note,” Perry said. “Just praying for her. Just to be able to move through it and hold on and let her know that everything in her life had prepared her for this moment, or so I thought.”
Meghan also said she was a “wreck” when she reached out to Perry in 2020, after the couple had moved back to Canada.
“Sometimes it’s easier to just open up to someone who knows nothing at all and that was that moment with me and Tyler,” Meghan said. Perry also explained that he could hear the fear in Meghan’s voice, drawing similarities to that of late princess Diana’s struggles with the British press.
Perry also played a key role in helping the couple move in to his Beverly Hills home in 2019, away from the paparazzi until they found the couple, six weeks later.
Happily ever after?
In the last few minutes of the final episode, the prince said that he does miss several aspects about his former life, adding that he has lost friends in the process of transitioning to the US and that he has felt angry. Harry also receives a text from William, which is not revealed to the viewers.
“There’s times when I’ve been angry, but I can’t be that angry because I genuinely feel that I, and we, are exactly where we’re supposed to be.”
The prince will soon release a book, titled Spare, in January.
As for the documentary, a lot of unanswered questions remain – what was Prince William “screaming” about? Will the Sussexs be stripped of their titles? What was Prince William’s text message to Prince Harry?
Final words
Harry and Meghan’s turbulent lives as royals have been well-captured in the series, with very little room for happier times.
The series has caught the sympathies of many across the world, however, all of us are yet to hear a different version of story from the other side.
And until that is revealed, Harry and Meghan with their children Archie and Lilibet and their family dogs Pula, Mia and Guy, must be given their privacy.
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