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Harry & Meghan, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s much-hyped Netflix documentary series has arrived. The first three episodes dropped last week and the next three will on December 15th.
As expected, the show has caused an uproar in the press and a whole load of social media debates. In the first batch of episodes, the former Suits actress and the prince tell the story of how they met, discuss racism and explain how the British press treated her.
“This is about duty and service and I feel as though being part of this family, it is my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”
“This isn’t just about our story,” Prince Harry says in the candid interview. “This has always been so much bigger than us. No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth. The institution knows the full truth, and the media know the full truth ’cause they’ve been in on it. And I think anybody else in my situation would have done exactly the same thing.”
Meghan Markle revealed on the show that: “I’m not gonna say it’s comfortable, but when you feel like people haven’t gotten any sense of who you are for so long, it’s really nice to just be able to have the opportunity to let people have more of a glimpse into what has happened and also who we are.”
Here are some of the biggest bombshells dropped in the first three hours.
8/8 Prince Harry Slid Into Meghan Markle’s DMs
The first episode of the show dives into the story of how Meghan Markle and Prince Harry met. In July 2016, Harry saw Meghan on Instagram when a mutual friend posted a Snapchat photo (yes, with the dog ear filter) on his Instagram. For Harry, it was love at first sight. Markle, at the time, was single and looking for a summer with her girlfriends.
“And then she sent me an email saying ‘I know you said you’re single, and a friend of mine asked about you and maybe you’d like to meet him,’” Meghan said. “And I said, ‘Who is it?’ And she said, ‘It’s Prince Haz.’ And I said, ‘Who’s that?’ I asked if I could see his feed. So that’s the thing. When people say, ‘Did you Google him?’ ‘No.’ But I…that’s your homework. You’re like, ‘Hmm, let me see what they’re about in their feed, not what someone else says about them but what they are putting out about themselves.’ That to me was the best barometer. So I went through, and it was just like beautiful photography and all these environmental shots and this time he was spending in Africa.”
7/8 Meghan Markle’s Experience Of Racism
“It’s very different to be a minority but not be treated as a minority right off the bat,” Meghan Markle said. “Obviously now, people are very aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the U.K. But, before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ‘Black woman.’”
Her mother, Doria Ragland, also revealed that she warned Markle that their race would become an issue in the media when she started dating King Charles’ youngest son.
“I said to her—I remember this very clearly—that this is about race. And Meg said, ‘Mommy, I don’t wanna hear that.’ I said, ‘Well, you may not wanna hear it, but this is what’s coming down the pike.’”
Meghan adds, “At that time I wasn’t thinking about how race played a part in any of this. I genuinely didn’t think about it.”
6/8 Royals Aren’t Big On Hugging And Have A Special Etiquette
On the docuseries, Meghan Markle told the story of her very first meeting with future sister-in-law Kate Middleton.
“When [Prince William] and Kate came over and I had met her for the first time, they came over for dinner,” Meghan recalled. “I remember I was in ripped jeans and barefoot.”
“Like I was a hugger, always been a hugger,” she added. “I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”
“I guess I’d start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside, carried through on the inside,” she continued about the huge amount of etiquette and rules followed by the royal family. She mistakenly believed that they only observed these rules in public and not in private. “There is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and you relax now. But that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.”
5/8 Royal Family Were Worried About Meghan Markle’s Career
“I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed. Some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves,” Prince Harry revealed when explaining Meghan Markle’s first meeting with the late Queen Elizabeth II. “I think they were surprised. Maybe surprised that a ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman.”
“But the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else at the beginning. ‘Oh she’s an American actress — this won’t last,'” he added.
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Meghan agreed that as their romance became more serious, “the actress thing was the biggest problem, funny enough,” when it came to his family. “There is a big idea of what that looks like, from the U.K. standpoint. Hollywood. It was just very easy for them to typecast that.”
4/8 Why Meghan Markle Only Wore Neutral Color Clothing
In episode three, the Duchess of Sussex spoke about her fashion choices when she was in the UK, making public appearances.
“Most of the time that I was in the U.K., I rarely wore color. There was thought in that,” Meghan Markle revealed.
“To my understanding, you could never wear the same color as Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth] if there’s a group event, but then you also shouldn’t be wearing the same color as one of the other more senior members of the family,” she added. Senior royals refer to Kate Middleton, Princess Anne and Queen Camilla.
“So I was like, ‘Well, what’s a color that they’ll probably never wear?’ Camel, beige, white,” she continued. Markle often wore camel, white, beige and brown shades. “So I wore a lot of muted tones, but it was also so I could just blend in. I’m not trying to stand out here. There was no version of me joining this family and me not doing everything I could to fit in. I don’t want to embarrass the family.”
3/8 Prince Harry Addressed His Costume Scandal From 2005
Prince Harry opened up for the first time about his controversial 2005 Halloween costume, in which he dressed in a Nazi uniform. “All I wanted to do was make it right,” he said of what he called “one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
“I sat down and spoke to the chief rabbi in London, which had a profound impact on me,” he added. “I went to Berlin and spoke to a Holocaust survivor.”
The 38-year-old also addressed the idea of “unconscious bias” in his family, noting that while “it’s actually no one’s fault,” that doesn’t absolve one of responsibility.
“Once it’s been pointed out or identified within yourself you then need to make it right,” he said. “It’s education, it’s awareness and it’s a constant work in progress for everyone ― including me.”
2/8 Prince Harry Blames Himself For Meghan Markle’s Estrangement From Her Father
Thomas Markle has certainly made an impact in the British press with his stories, statements and photoshoots with the paparazzi.
In the third episode, the Duke of Sussex said “it’s incredibly sad” how his wife and father-in-law, Thomas Markle, are estranged.
“She had a father before this, and now she doesn’t have a father,” he said. “And I shouldered that because if Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad.” Meghan also admits that she called her father more than 20 times as reports of the staged photos appeared just days before their wedding. But she said he never returned any of her calls or texts. She also says that she learned about his heart attack via the tabloids.
Meghan’s mother revealed that she was “absolutely stunned” that her ex-husband “would become part of this circus.” Doria was married to Thomas until 1987.
“And sad that the media would run with this. That he would capitalize,” she said. “Certainly as a parent, that’s not what you do. That’s not parenting.”
1/8 Does Prince Harry Remember Princess Diana?
Prince Harry shares fond memories about his mother, the late Princess Diana. He remembers her “cheeky laugh” but also revealed. “I don’t really have any early memories of my mum. It’s almost like, internally I blocked them out.” He was just 12 when she passed away in a car crash in Paris.
“Rarely would we have a holiday without someone with a camera jumping out of a bush,” he said, before clips play of some of his paparazzi-filled family vacations. “Within the family, the system, the advice is always ‘don’t react, don’t feed into it.’ “
He added there was always public pressure “with its fair share of drama, stress, and also tears and witnessing those tears. I always see it on my mom’s face. And I guess those are the moments when I thought, okay, hang on. Maybe what am I? Who am I? What am I part of?”
“I didn’t want history to repeat itself,” Harry said in regard to protecting his wife from the British press and tabloid attention. Prince Harry also compares Meghan Markle’s “compassion” and “warmth” to his late mother.
“So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mom,” Harry said in the first episode of the highly anticipated docuseries. “She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.”
