Posted on 03/08/2021 7:56:39 AM PST by Kaslin
The interview was loaded with apparent revelations. But there's absolutely no way around the he-said-she-said dynamic that characterizes this conflict.
Regardless of how many sit-down interviews they grant or how real their reality show gets, we’re destined to observe the royal family from afar. Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which aired Sunday night, ostensibly peeled back the curtain on their troubled relationship with the House of Windsor.
Of course, we don’t actually know that it did anything of the sort. The newly minted Californians coordinated the primetime special to tell their side of the story. That’s how this goes. According to Harry and Meghan, who left their roles as senior members of the royal family, they did “everything [they] could to make it work.” The queen may have a different take. (Although we likely won’t hear it in a splashy TV interview.)
Markle told Oprah she’d experienced “suicidal thoughts,” explaining, “I went to the institution and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help…and I was told that I couldn’t.”
“I went to one of the most senior people to get help. I was told I couldn’t because it wouldn’t be good for the institution,” said Markle.
Harry on his father Prince Charles:
There is a lot to work though there. I feel really let do. He’s been through something similar.
He knows what pain feels like.
And Archie is his grandson.
I will always love him but there is a lot of hurt that has happened#OprahMeghanHarry— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) March 8, 2021
Harry on Prince William: The relationship is one of "space at the moment" and time heals all things hopefully.
Meghan: I regret believing them (the Palace) when they said I would be protected.#OprahMeghanHarry— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) March 8, 2021
“I’m comfortable knowing we did everything we did to make it work.”
Both Harry and Meghan tell Oprah they did everything they could to make their roles work, but ultimately the institution and family let them down.#OprahMeghanHarry
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) March 8, 2021
Prince Harry says the Royal Family cut him off financially at the start of 2020 (after announcing plans to step back from royal roles) but says he was able to afford security for his family because of the money his mother, Princess Diana, left behind.#OprahMeghanHarry
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) March 8, 2021
Harry: If it were not for Meghan, I wouldn’t not have been able to leave. I felt trapped as well.
I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped.#OprahMeghanHarry— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) March 8, 2021
Harry says the royal family has an issue with race “For this union and the specifics around race there were opportunities for my family to show some public support. No one from my family ever said anything. That hurts.” #HarryandMeghanonOprah #MeghanAndHarry
— Roya Nikkhah (@RoyaNikkhah) March 8, 2021
Meghan: They took away Harry's security. I wrote letters to his family – I accept that I couldn't;t have it. But I said "please keep keep my husband safe. Please don’t pull his security. And they said it’s not just possible".#OprahMeghanHarry
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) March 8, 2021
The couple said they felt “trapped” as royals. Meghan said she begged unsuccessfully for Harry’s security to remain. Harry said his family “literally” cut him off, and he’s living on money left by his mother.
In reference to rumors swirling around her wedding, Markle claimed it was actually Kate Middleton who made her cry, despite reports to the contrary. Harry said his relationship with Prince William involves “space at the moment.”
They were married in a private ceremony three days before their public wedding. They’re now expecting a baby girl in the summer, but want only two children. Floating a huge allegation, Markle said before the birth of her son there were internal “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
The interview was loaded with apparent revelations. But there’s absolutely no way around the he-said-she-said dynamic that characterizes this conflict.
The crown wants to protect itself. Harry and Meghan want to protect themselves as well. Given the necessarily public nature of their spat, both sides must now manipulate the media in their favor to succeed. Whether you love Markle or hate her, what you’re seeing is a curated media character striving to achieve an illusion of authenticity.
I confess to being viscerally irritated by Americans’ palace intrigue over the royal family. Women project onto royals because their privilege makes it seem okay, so controversial royals are incredible gossip fodder, like homecoming queens and trust-fund princesses. British tabloids are a different beast, but it seems inevitable that Markle’s admitted struggles with fame-induced mental health problems will spark comparisons with Britney Spears.
For the public, it seems like a trade-off. Markle and Spears get fame and money, so we get to joke when they gain ten pounds or have an off day. We get to speculate about their family drama and they get to jet set. Is it fair? Tabloid culture is certainly a response to demand. Demand is not always or even often broadly moral.
Markle is notoriously sanctimonious. She lectures the world from her position of immense power and privilege. She has the vapid politics of a Zinn-chugging liberal arts graduate. Depending on which rumors you believe, she’s not very nice either. But who knows what’s real in a battle for the narrative? It’s not possible, so you might as well just stop investing in the fight.
At play here are deep international dynamics, the trading of literal royalty for America’s decadent version of it in Hollywood. Emotive millennials pointedly bucking their conservative family’s tradition of stoicism, swapping dignified roles and their inevitable constraints for self-indulgence.
We’re all projecting a lot onto this couple. The comment that struck me most was Harry’s claim his family is “scared” of British tabloids and acts accordingly. Powerful people being scared of the free press? What an incredible concept.
Here in the states, where Harry and Meghan have chosen to make their home, reality star Bethenny Frankel deleted a critical tweet that read, “Cry me a river…the plight of being a game show host, fairly unknown actress, to suffering in a palace, w tiaras & 7 figure weddings for TWO WHOLE YEARS to being a household name w @Oprah on speed dial, fetching 7 m for interviews, hundreds of millions in media deals.” For a couple with the world at their fingertips, it’s true that Harry and Meghan do a lot of whining.
After blowback from users and outlets like TMZ, Frankel deleted the tweet and added, “I watched M & H sit down. Emotional distress & racism must feel suffocating & powerless. I’m a polarizing, unfiltered(often to a fault)flawed person w a voice. When I heard of the interview, during a pandemic, it felt like a surprising choice. I’m sorry if it hurt or offended you.”
American tabloids defend rich and powerful celebrities as long as they cloak themselves in vague wokeness. That makes California a much warmer home for Harry and Meghan for reasons beyond the weather. Here, they can have their cake and eat it too.
For all our personal and cultural projections onto the couple, “Harry and Meghan” is always just our interpretation of the family’s media tug-of-war. We have little access to the reality at hand, which is carefully clouded by the resources of enormously powerful people. Why bother squinting?
Don Draper said it best. Love her or hate her, the best approach to Meghan Markle is simply not to think about her at all.
Don’t they know what happens when you sell your soul to the devil?
Didn’t Diana’s main lover have red hair, too?
I binge-watched all four seasons of “The Crown” over all those long winter evenings.
Ratings are ratings in the revenue sense. However, I’d wager the vast majority tuned in with negative feelings for all three of them. From the headlines and the comments under the articles, even more people around the world despise them. This stompy feet whine fest was the worst thing they could have done. Not a face save for them. People enjoy a train wreck and this was massive taking down the train and the bridge as well.
I doubt very much you or I could have wandered into St. George's Chapel on the day of the supposed real ceremony to object to this farce.
Less than half. Her mama appears to have some white in her.
Never have watched Oprah and probably never will.
#skinnyjewishgirlsmart
wish Frankel had kept it up...
It also attracts attention here
I have fully enjoyed the “crown”
But I’m an Anglophile and former Londoner....briefly
They effed a lot
Good post
I was done with “The Crown” after they falsified the facts of the Palace intruder, to turn it into a Thatcher-bashing fest.
Yes the Thatcher stuff aggravated plus how hamfisted Anderson played her
Reality is the Queen grew to admire Thatcher and gave her a barony
No small gesture
That’s a little creepy
1. Meghan claimed that her passport and license were taken away from her after she got married. How did she then goes to New York for a very expensive baby shower when she was pregnant as well as flying again to New York to watch Serena play tennis a few weeks after she delivered. She claims that she was not allowed to go out to have lunch with her friends but she was allowed to go to these event oversea without anyone preventing her from doing so
2. She claims that when she was going through depression that the palace did not help her. There was her obstetrician who is a medical doctor and doctors are trained to refer her to appropriate services if there was prenatal and post natal depression. She could also have made an appointments to see doctors on her own and there are palace doctors that she can arrange to see. I don’t see how anybody would have prevented her from seeing these doctors.
3. There was an insinuation that Archie was not given the title prince and HRH due to possibility of his skin colour. That is a total BS. The thing is Archie not given the royal title due to George V protocol and it is nothing to do with his skin colour. George V protocol states that only grandchildren of the Reigning Monarch is allowed to have HRH and prince title. Archie as great grandchildren is not eligible for title. only 3 of the 9 great grandkids of the Queen have a title.
4. There was also insinuation that Archie was not given protection due to his skin colour. Again, Meghan twisting things to suit her own agenda. Andrew’s 2 daughters do not get royal protection, neither do Princess Anne’s and Prince Edward’s children. It is not surprising that Harry’s children will not get royal protection either as he is not direct line to the throne.
5. I have difficulty believing Meghan because she has track record for lying repeatedly. A few examples include her lying in engagement interview that she does not know who Harry was and again in this interview that she never looked up the royal family. Firstly, she studied international studies at university for one of her majors and therefore, either that she was not a good student and cheated during the exam or she is lying about not knowing anything about the royal family and protocols. Secondly, she had Diana book in her library according to her childhood friend, blogged about Williams and Kate’s wedding on her now defunct Tig blog, was pictured with Kate’s magazine cover in her hand prior to meeting Harry and pictured in front of Buckingham palace as a teenager. She also lied about not collaborating with authors of finding Freedom book and paying for uni tuition herself when her father paid for them
EXACTLY — I know tons of Italians, Greeks, Spaniards etc. who are far darker than her. Heck, I know brits of Spanish etc. heritage who are darker than her.
Newsflash: most people are boring.
And whiny.
Useful idiots are rarely interesting.
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