On Sunday, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will, in a documentary made by their friend, the ITN journalist Tom Bradby, ask the public to relate to their “world of pressure and pain.”
One hopes this enormously wealthy, privileged, and powerful couple will be wise enough not to give their enemies ammunition to accuse them of throwing a pity party, but one can’t be sure.
In a trailer for Harry and Meghan: An African Journey, which will be shown on ITV at 9 p.m. U.K. time Sunday night, Bradby said: “The story of their time in Africa was one of passion for their work, pride and happiness but also a world of pressure and pain behind the brave faces.”
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Last night, one piercing element of that pain was revealed by the U.K. Daily Telegraph: Harry said the flashes of paparazzi bulbs take him “straight back” to the death of his mother, Princess Diana. The trauma of his childhood, Harry said, was a “wound that festers.”
Harry told Bradby, “I think being part of this family, in this role, in this job, every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash it takes me straight back, so in that respect it’s the worst reminder of her life as opposed to the best.”
Harry then referenced his mother's charity work around landmines, which he is continuing.
“Being here now 22 years later trying to finish what she started will be incredibly emotional but everything that I do reminds me of her. But as I said with the role, with the job, and the sort of pressures that come with that I get reminded of the bad stuff, unfortunately.”
Bradby says that later in the program Meghan herself will speak about “the difficulties of living life in the spotlight.”
It is widely expected that the special will cover the most controversial aspect of their African tour, Harry’s decision to release a statement, on the penultimate day of what until then had been a triumphant and transformational expedition, announcing his wife was to sue the Mail on Sunday.
Harry, in an emotional public statement he wrote without input from and against the advice of his press team, decried what he termed the “relentless propaganda” and “lies” of the British press.
A few days later he doubled down, launched another legal action against The Sun and the Mirror, over historic hacking of his voicemails.
However this ends, it seems clear that Harry and Meghan are happy for it to play out in public, and some believe that the stress of that may have affected Harry’s judgment.
On Tuesday night, it was clear that Harry wasn’t completely in control of his emotions. He broke down, fought back tears, and had to stop speaking while he addressed a charity gala for kids with serious health challenges.
The previous week he filmed a rather cringey video in support of mental health awareness with celeb pal Ed Sheeran with a questionable series of jokes about “gingers.”
And the week before that, of course, was dominated by the fallout from his legal actions.
What was particularly bizarre was that while Harry worked himself into a lather of invective and rage, his Instagram feed pinged with inspirational quotes from the likes of Maya Angelou and the Dalai Lama.
This public evangelism might be entirely normal among the L.A. crowd of super-celebs whom Meghan counts as her friends and role models, but it’s a very un-British and untraditional way for a royal to be doing things.
Unsurprisingly, that has rubbed some people up the wrong way.
Harry’s critics (and traditionalists) say that letting it all hang out in these various ways is un-royal, unprofessional, and undisciplined.
His fans say it demonstrates a modern guy in touch with his emotions, busily sloughing off the anachronistic and irrelevant protocol of an earlier age.
However, even many of those who broadly support Harry’s basic claims that he has a right to a private life and his wife has a right not to be abused by the popular press think he might be going a bit far of late.
There is no doubt that Harry has undergone a complete psychological transformation since he started dating Meghan Markle. Although he was always an emotional and sensitive guy, it’s sometimes hard to square the new touchy-feely Harry with the hard-partying, politically incorrect ex-squaddie of a few years ago.
What would his former self—the man who, for example, went to Afghanistan in 2008 wearing a hat on the back of which was written: “We do bad things to bad people”—make of the new Harry?
Talk to old friends of Harry’s and there is no doubt that Meghan is squarely given the blame (and it is usually blame, not credit) for the transformation.
Most of Harry’s old party-hearty crowd have been dumped; sources say Harry is not expected at any of the big country house shooting weekends due to kick off on Nov. 1.
The radical new modus operandi of Harry and Meghan was thrown into particularly sharp relief this week by an ongoing tour by William and Kate to Pakistan.
Dressed in perfectly inoffensive fusion East-West clothing, William and Kate have played the part of a modern king and queen (in waiting) to perfection: dignified and statesmanlike, compassionate but controlled, sympathetic without being syrupy.
They even managed to play nice with the press. After their plane was struck by lightning on the way to Islamabad and forced to turn back to Lahore, William headed to the back of the plane and joked with the press pack, so demonized by Harry, that the turbulence was because he was flying the plane and suggested they could all go out for the night in Lahore.
Such gestures go a long way.
It’s fair to say that the powerful coterie of advisers and courtiers that surround the Queen, Prince Charles, and Prince William would have much preferred it if Harry and Meghan had modeled their royal careers on William’s and Kate’s.
A dusting of celebrity stardust is always welcome, but there are fears that Meghan and Harry’s approach to their royal duties is so far out of sync with the traditional way of doing things that isn’t just rocking the boat but might capsize the whole delicately balanced craft of monarchy.
There is a solid case to be made that the British monarchy has been served well by a policy of incremental change. The fear with Harry and Meghan is that too much is changing too fast.
Add into that the declaration of war on the press and it’s no surprise that it is making some at Buckingham Palace distinctly nervous of what might be in Sunday’s film.
The British writer, publicist, and image consultant Mark Borkowski has watched with interest this latest evolution of the royal story.
“There has always been a problem for minor royals in search of purpose—Anne, Andrew, Edward—that they struggle to find their way. Harry and Meghan, by contrast, see their purpose very clearly and it is to use their position to build up a force for good in the world, to make the world a better place.
“The problem with this global agenda is that it risks forgetting the British taxpayers who do, after all, pay their wages. Not giving out the traditional baby pictures, for example, definitely didn’t endear them to the British public.
“It has not been helped by bringing in a team of Americans [Meghan has employed Hollywood consultants Sunshine Sachs] to run their PR. Not only does everyone know that Americans don’t get royal protocol and tradition, family, they also appear to be advising Meghan and Harry to follow a very American-celebrity press strategy of going after the press in an attempt to bring them to heel.”
Borkowski also thinks that the reach of their Instagram page could in itself, ironically enough, be a problem: “Sussex Royal is more powerful than the official royal social channels. It’s creating a parallel royal brand identity and setting its own agenda, which isn’t helpful to the larger family.”
“Everything has to change and go through realignment. That is what this is. Meghan and Harry know that the next generation will not have the same relationship with the royal family that the boomers had. Every brand has to think about how it views itself going forward, and that’s what is happening here.
“That’s fair enough. But I’m a big believer in harmonizing old and new media. The problem as I see it here is that Harry and Meghan seem to be intent instead on setting up a war between them.”
For all those who disagree with Harry and Meghan’s new PR strategy, consider—from their point of view—the relentless press attacks on them and particularly Meghan. Harry has had enough of his wife being treated in this way. In his and Meghan’s eyes the criticism is egregiously unfair.
Borkowski still recommends Harry and Meghan behave differently.
“Harry and Meghan are disrupting normal rules of how a royal household should work. He seems incredibly frustrated, but he is forgetting that everybody has a right to a critique. He finds that hard to take.
“The defense mechanism should be charm—Diana was a master at charming the media—but instead he is going for attack, attack, attack. It looks petulant. And it’s not helpful to anyone—except Tom Bradby.”
