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Well, for royal fans—and even if you think this particular soap opera is utter nonsense—the big day is finally here. The only things you need are a TV, endless snacks, and your drinks of choice.
Finally, at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, after all the teasing trailers and a war of accusations of increasing intensity, Meghan Markle speaks to Oprah Winfrey. (Prince Harry is providing some kind of meaningful cameo.) The couple will tell whatever their truth is when it comes to their departure from the royal family and their new life in California, the explosiveness quotient in terms of fresh accusations and allegations as yet unknown.
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The queen, Prince Charles, Prince William, other family members, and royal staff are bracing for impact. Or, as a palace aide tells the U.K. Sunday Times, “Tin hats on.”
One thing is for sure this morning: the palace is doing all it can to preemptively torpedo the interview. A dizzying array of exclusives in the British Sunday papers feature palace sources talking down Meghan’s expected anti-royal claims, and making fresh claims against her and Harry all of their own.
The Sunday Mirror reports that Kate Middleton and Camilla Parker Bowles could be called to give evidence in the palace investigation into Meghan’s alleged bullying of staff, first revealed by The Times of London. Former aides are set to claim Kate witnessed Meghan’s “challenging behavior,” the paper reports, adding several sources saying Kate had stood up for staff after they had been “berated.”
The Sun on Sunday reports that palace aides are concerned Meghan will talk about her rift with Kate Middleton, and the infamous story that they had an argument, pre-Harry and Meghan’s wedding, over the fit of Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress.
A royal source said: “If she has chosen to speak candidly about her time with Kate, then the damage that could be done to the monarchy is vast. She has the power to lay bare just how bad things really were between her, Harry, William, and Kate.”
However, the New York Post reports that CBS insiders say Harry and Meghan have only “kind words” for Kate and William in the interview.
If this is true, it positively corresponds with the Sunday Telegraph reporting that William and Kate privately remain “hopeful of a reconciliation” with Harry and Meghan—whatever they say in the documentary tonight.
A friend of the Cambridges told the paper: “There will always be bumps in the road, but they’re a family and families come through these things.
“They both remain hopeful of a reconciliation with Harry and Meghan. It has been very difficult for both sides and there has been a lot of sadness over what has happened, but ultimately they want things to improve between them in the fullness of time.”
Kate does not believe it too late to “pull them back in,” the paper says—which sounds vaguely terrifying.
Another source said former employees of the couple “felt emotional” seeing Harry messing about with James Corden in his open-top bus TV appearance “because it reminded us of old H, the H that would give you a big hug.”
A friend of Meghan’s told the Sunday Times she would accuse courtiers in the Oprah interview of not noticing she was suffering from poor mental health. Given this—while accepting Meghan was difficult to work for—it was “incredibly dangerous” of the palace to attack Meghan, the friend said.
The Sunday Times also reports that up to a dozen former royal aides are now “queueing up” to complain about Meghan’s alleged behavior, including that she was an “outrageous bully” towards staff before she departed Britain last year.
Meghan “is saddened by this latest attack on her character,” according to a statement sent by a Sussex spokesperson, and her friends—most volubly, Patrick J. Adams, her co-star in Suits—have rushed to her defense. Harry and Meghan deny the bullying allegations—indeed say they are part of a “calculated smear campaign”—and no formal complaints were made.
The Sun on Sunday says that conflict between Meghan and aides on a tour of Australia in 2018 would be part of the bullying investigation. “At one point, Meghan is said to have lost her temper with an assistant and a hot drink was thrown,” the paper reports. (Oprah will also show Meghan clips of her father speaking about her, and be asked for comments about him and the state of their relationship, the paper adds.)
The Sunday Times reports that the queen will not stay up to watch the program, which courtiers have called a “circus.” “I don’t think anyone should expect Her Majesty to stay up and watch the interview. She won’t,” an aide said.
A source tells the paper that individuals at the palace will “come out swinging,” and retaliate if Meghan and Harry go after individuals in the interview. Otherwise, the royal family’s plan is to focus on issues like the vaccine program in the U.K. and the return of British pupils to their schools.
“The mood in the family is: can everyone just shut the hell up, and can we get on with the day job?” one aide said—which would hold more weight if they and other royal aides had not gone en masse to the Sunday papers to brief against Harry and Meghan.
Roya Nikkhah, the Sunday Times royal reporter, tries to chart how things went so off the rails.
Before the couple’s wedding, “half of the staff threatened to quit,” a former aide to one of the most senior members of the royal family claimed. Another Palace source said, “the entire household was on the verge of quitting ... it was drama, drama, drama with those two.”
Meghan reportedly “went mental” at Melissa [Touabti], her former personal assistant, after some blankets she had ordered as personal gifts for guests at a weekend shooting party were decorated in the wrong shade of red. Meghan’s behavior allegedly left Toubati “traumatized.”
A former aide told Nikkhah that Harry “behaved appallingly for months” in the run-up the wedding, and had been “rude, petty, and stressed about so many small things.” Harry later reportedly apologized, but Meghan’s bridge-rebuilding gift of croissants for staff fell flat as they had eaten breakfast hours earlier.
According to the Telegraph, staff began to call Harry “The Hostage” before the wedding, after the infamous, much-written-about clash over the tiara the queen loaned Meghan, which Meghan wanted to wear for a pre-wedding hair appointment. This request was refused as it was made on short notice, leading Harry to allegedly shout, “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.” (At least the royals row over stuff like the availability of tiaras—extremely on brand.)
A senior royal source told The Sunday Times that the Kingdom Choir, who performed Stand By Me at Harry and Meghan’s wedding, “had to send her dozens of arrangements. It was never right.” Meghan also reportedly said that Mishal Husain, the BBC journalist who had conducted their engagement interview, wasn’t “empathetic” enough.
“The family have tried to be welcoming,” a former aide said after the wedding, Nikkhah reports. “All the staff and principals have genuinely tried to be kind, but she is genuinely unkind back, pitting Harry against them.” A lifelong friend of Harry’s said: “She’s changed him. He’s disappeared, he’s a caged lion.”
The palace is trying to play two hands at once before the interview airs—at once deploying a flurry of anti-Harry and Meghan briefings to the U.K press, while also loftily insisting, as another source does to the Mail on Sunday, that the royal family is above this “sideshow,” and focused on bigger issues.
“Most of what is said will be lost in the mists of time. History teaches us that only the interviewer wins from these programs.... We haven’t got a clue what they say in the interview,” said the source. “But there is determination not to play their game. There is a very clear sense right from the top that it’s best not to react.”
Hmm, sure Jan. The Palace is having it both ways—sniffily taking the high road, while also pummeling the couple with low blows.
The nervousness these cover-all-bases briefings betray is clear—coming down to what the couple will spill. Will Meghan and Harry talk about race and racism, and if so, how will they frame it—did it happen within the palace, and if so by who? What detail will they give about conversations or allegations directed at members of the royal family, or their staff?
The tidbits released to the public, thus far, have Meghan claiming that the palace have “perpetuated falsehoods” about the couple, Oprah opining that their situation sounds “almost unsurvivable,” and Prince Harry claiming he did not want “history to repeat itself,” referring to the fate of his mother, Princess Diana.
A senior source told Nikkhah that the royal family “bent over backwards to be inclusive. It is absolutely wrong to say the Palace is institutionally racist. It really isn’t.” Nikkhah says this claim isn’t reflected in palace employment, where diversity is lacking.
Another courtier told Nikkhah that the queen’s then equerry, Lieutenant Colonel Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah, the first Black man appointed to the role, was deployed to help “mentor” Meghan. Critics will say these explanations feel tokenistic at best, and merely emblematic of how antic the royal family is.
Other sources are pushing back on Meghan's claim she was prevented from speaking to Oprah on screen in the past. The Duchess of Sussex “called all the shots” when it came to managing her own media, royal sources tell the Sunday Telegraph. Sources told the paper Meghan “had full control” over her media interviews.
“The Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, and William and Catherine all feel desperately sad about it,” an aide told the Sunday Times of the bad feeling now coursing between Buckingham Palace and Montecito.
That may be true. But also, the palace is playing PR hardball against the couple. Not unreasonably, people are asking why a palace investigation has been called for this, but not for Prince Andrew over the precise nature of his friendship with disgraced dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Meghan and Harry have said the investigation into the bullying was part of a “calculated smear campaign.” We know that Oprah asks them if they were “silent or silenced.”
Sources claim in Nikkhah’s piece that Meghan may have struggled with the “rigidity of the hierarchy” of the royals, and not having a starring role. “Meghan didn’t understand what she was letting herself in for, and why should she?” one source tells Nikkhah.
Of the crowds who greeted her and Harry in Australia, Meghan—according to a source—said: “What are they all doing here? It’s silly.” Aides told her, the source said, “They’re here because they admire and support a monarch and an institution that you’re representing.... She didn’t get it.”
“Why is Meghan the way she is?” a senior, and apparently very vicious, royal source said to Nikkhah. “A very weird childhood is definitely part of it. She raised herself for much of it, living with her father for a long time and looking after him.… She’s really smart, if she could have seen the use of that inside the institution. She wanted to be ‘A’ list—the royal family is beyond ‘A’ list—but she wanted it the Beyoncé way, without restrictions. She was never up for royal life. Right from the start, she courted rejection.”
How telling that this source should use the world’s leading Black female celebrity to make their point.
What do they mean, “the Beyoncé way, without restrictions”? What do they know about Beyoncé, and what she says, does, or how she works? Whatever Meghan says about racism this evening, a comment like that shows how freely, and stupidly, it can be voiced.
So, get those snacks in. As Margo Channing would have said had she been entertaining a bijou crowd this evening, this could be a bumpy night.
Royal experts get pranked
Beware TV producers offering fat fees. Four royal commentators, former royal press officer Dickie Arbiter, his daughter, CNN’s Victoria Arbiter, Majesty magazine’s Ingrid Seward, and commentator Richard Fitzwilliams, have been tricked by YouTubers Josh and Archie into giving reaction to Harry and Meghan’s interview—three days before they had even seen it.
Fitzwilliams attempted to defend himself on Twitter. Of course the participants likely were deceptively told the clips would only be used in context, but it’s noticeable how easily some of them were gulled into attacking Meghan and Harry.
Today in royal history
Can it really only be a year ago—March 9 to be precise—that Meghan and Harry made their final ever appearance as members of the royal family attending the queen’s beloved Commonwealth Day service in London? It can. It was a simpler time, even if the main story of the day was the apparent frostiness between William and Kate, and Harry and Meghan. Still, 90-something monarchs sat in crowded churches without face masks on, and Harry elbow-bumped everyone with a grin.
This year’s Commonwealth Service will be a TV-only special, showing on the BBC before the Harry and Meghan Oprah interview, with pre-recorded clips from speakers. A taster clip of Prince Charles speaking at a lectern in Westminster Abbey couldn’t be more different in tone to the Sussexes’ sit-down with Oprah. Excellent for curing insomnia, however.
Unanswered questions
Where does the interview, and its aftershocks, leave Harry’s future in the U.K.? While we can perhaps safely conclude that Meghan won’t be particularly fussed if she never sets foot in Blighty again, Harry has a minimum of two commitments this year with his family: the unveiling of a statue of Princess Diana alongside his brother William, and his grandfather’s 100th birthday on June 10 (Philip appears to be recovering in hospital from heart surgery). The tabloid body language experts are preparing themselves for a field day.
