Prince Harry and Meghan interview as it happened: Couple confirm they are having a baby girl; Archie’s skin colour sparked concerns before he was born, Duchess of Sussex reveals

Thank you for joining us as we covered the interview that will rock the “firm” and perhaps sever any remaining ties Harry and Meghan had with the royal family, and dash their hopes of a reconciliation.

The interview is airing, in full tonight, on Channel 10 at 7.30pm AEDT.

And Oprah will be on US morning TV in about six hours’ time with the additional behind the scenes clips from the interview.

Here is a short summary of what we learnt during the tell-all interview:

• Meghan and Harry announced that their next child will be a girl. This will be their last child, they said.
• They pinpointed their 2018 tour of Australia as a turning point in their now toxic relationship with the royal family.
• In the biggest bombshell, Meghan claimed there were concerns within the royal family about how dark the skin would be of their first child, Archie. In the months leading up to Archie’s birth, Meghan said there were not only conversations about how he would not be given a title, or security, but a member of the royal family raised concerns with Harry about how dark the baby’s skin might be and “what that would mean or look like”. Neither Meghan nor Harry would reveal who that conversation was with.
• The duchess also spoke about the depths of her mental despair before she and her husband split from the royal family. Meghan said she reached a point where she “just didn’t want to be alive anymore, and that was a very real and clear and frightening and constant thought”.
• Harry said his mother, the late Princess Diana would be “angry and sad” at how things worked out, “but I think all she would ever want would be for us to be happy”.
• Harry revealed the royal family had cut him off financially but they were being supported by money he was left by Princess Diana.
• The couple also revealed they were married in secret three days prior to their wedding on May 19, 2018. “Nobody knows this,” Meghan said.
• Prince Charles at one point stopped taking Harry’s calls, but the pair are now speaking again. Harry also hopes to reconcile with his brother William, but described their current relationship as having “space”.
• Meghan said she never made Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge cry, but that it was her sister-in-law who had made Meghan cry in the lead up to her wedding over something to do with flower girl dresses. But Meghan said Catherine apologised at the time and brought flowers.
• The couple still talks to the Queen and have enormous respect for her.
• And let’s not forget the chickens. Part of the interview was taped at the couple’s sprawling home, in their chicken coop, with Meghan revealing their hens are rescue hens. Subsequently, “where to find rescue chickens” was trending on Google.
• The interview ended with Meghan praising her husband for saving her life. “I think he saved all of us, he ultimately called it,” she said. “He certainly made a decision that saved my life, and saved all of us.”

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We were expecting fireworks from their tell-all interview but Harry and Meghan instead lit a raging bonfire which threatens to engulf the royal family.

Not even Princess Diana went this nuclear during her own infamous confessional with the BBC’s Panorama program in 1995. That interview has long been regarded as the most-jaw dropping in royal history but after today ranks second.

Against the backdrop of the terrible suffering of the British people during the coronavirus pandemic, complaints about being denied taxpayer-funded security, debates about whether their son Archie should be called a prince, and revelations about a tiff between Meghan and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge over a flower girl’s dress are at best tone-deaf and at worst insensitive.

But three key revelations blow away those more trivial moments.

The first - that a senior member of the monarchy fretted to Harry about how dark his baby’s skin would be will - was a genuine bombshell and must have been sickening to hear at the time.

This direct charge of racism at the heart of the royal family will be highly damaging in multicultural Britain. About 15 million of the United Kingdom’s 66 million residents weren’t born there. And the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth has a highly diverse membership. In refusing to name the offending person, Harry and Meghan have cast a big cloud over the whole monarchy.

Read more by clicking on the link included in this post above.

The highly anticipated interview played to a script that could have come straight from Disney: the sinister villains of “the Firm”, the grey-suited faceless army of administrators and even an imprisoned princess, writes my colleague Michael Idato.

Here is part of his take on the interview:

It came with breaking news headlines: the pregnant duchess’s second child will be a girl. And institution-shaking admissions: the duchess had contemplated suicide, that Harry’s father Prince Charles stopping talking to him for a time, that his relationship with his brother Prince William remains distant and that an unnamed member of the family remarked on the possible “colour” of the couple’s mixed-race children.

But it was noteworthy also for the topics it conveniently skipped past. Meghan’s family, in particular her father Thomas and half-sister Samantha, who have sold stories to British, US and Australian publications, got a free pass from Winfrey’s questioning. So did recently re-aired allegations of the duchess’s bullying of palace staff which have prompted an internal investigation at Buckingham Palace.

The couple also got a free pass on some topics such as their use of private jets, and how it runs contrary to their environmental campaigning, or indeed how a sit-down interview with Winfrey on American network television, and sold to broadcasters around the world, works in the context of their desire to live their new lives in “privacy” ...

Ranked against historic interviews, such as Princess Diana’s sit down with Martin Bashir, in which she famously spoke of “three people” in her marriage to Prince Charles, and Sarah Ferguson’s visit to Winfrey’s confessional to talk about her own royal misfortunes, it may end up out-ranking both.

But measured as damage wrought against a family at war with itself, it may end up being substantially more costly. Those relationships - characterised in the interview as Harry’s estrangement from both his father and brother - are now surely irrecoverably broken.

In an early sign of what may come from elements of the UK press as Britain wakes up on Monday morning (local time), TV host Piers Morgan has already launched an attack on the couple via Twitter.

Morgan, who is a host on Good Morning Britain, has been one of Meghan’s strongest critics in recent years.

“This interview is an absolutely disgraceful betrayal of the Queen and the royal family,” he wrote in one tweet.

“I expect all this vile destructive self-serving nonsense from Meghan Markle - but for Harry to let her take down his family and the monarchy like this is shameful.”

He goes onto claim that Prince Harry “wants America and the rest of the world to hate his own family, hate the monarchy and hate his country”.

Morgan also takes more direct jabs at Meghan.

“Is it too late for Oscar nominations?” he wrote, followed by, “I wouldn’t believe Meghan Markle if she gave me a weather report.”

American tennis champion and pioneer equal rights campaigner, Billie Jean King, has expressed her support for Meghan, saying “her honesty will hopefully lead to more acceptance and more help for those who need it”.

As we’ve mentioned previously in this blog, the sit-down interview was filmed in the grounds of the lavish California mansion owned by CBS journalist and Winfrey’s close friend, Gayle King.

But some short sequences were recorded at the couple’s sprawling property in Montecito, California, where Harry, Meghan and Oprah were filmed in a chicken coop collecting eggs.

In a visual representation of their new domestic life, the Sussex’s coop bears the sign: “Archie’s Chick Inn, Established 2021”.

The hens were rescued from a factory farm. Subsequently, “where to find rescue chickens” was trending on Google.

It’s where Meghan reveals that the couple was in fact married three days before their very public wedding.

Later in the show, the three are seen again standing in the coop as Meghan likened herself to the Disney character The Little Mermaid.

“I was sitting in Nottingham cottage and The Little Mermaid came on,” Meghan said.

“And who as an adult really watches The Little Mermaid, but it came on and I was like, ‘Well I’m here all the time I might as well watch this.’

“And I went, ‘Oh my God she falls in love with the prince and because of that she loses her voice.’

“But in the end she gets her voice back.”

Oprah said: “And this is what happened here. You feel like you got your voice back”, to which Meghan replied: “Yeah.”

Meghan’s close friend, tennis superstar Serena Williams, has joined the chorus of people supporting the duchess in the wake of the interview.

Williams, who attended the couple’s 2018 wedding (which we now know was not their ‘real’ wedding), has released the following statement on Twitter:

“Meghan Markle, my selfless friend, live her life - and leads by example – with empathy and compassion. She teaches me every day what it means to be truly noble. Her words illustrate the pain and cruelty she’s experienced,” Williams wrote.

“I know first hand the sexism and racism institutions and the media use to vilify women and people of colour to minimise us, to break us down and demonise us.”

Serena Williams and her husband Alexis Ohanian arrive at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle for the wedding.Credit: PA Wire

Meghan’s makeup artist Daniel Martin shared a picture of the pair on Instagram, alongside a poem from Maya Angelou, which reads: “You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

During the interview, Meghan also said she had asked the royal family’s HR department for help. She claims she was told she was not an employee and therefore they could do little for her.

The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which represents film and TV actors in the US, responded to that revelation with these words via Twitter:

In case you missed it, here again is where Meghan revealed that Harry was asked by a member of his family about “how dark [Archie’s] skin might be when he was born”:

And here are some key quotes from Prince Harry:

On being asked by someone in the royal family ‘what will the kids look like?’:

“At the time it was awkward. I was a bit shocked.”

On what his mother Princess Diana would think:

“I think she would feel very angry about how it’s turned out, but at the same time she would want us to be happy.”

Prince Harry in conversation with Oprah Winfrey. Credit: Harpo

On his family’s failure to support Meghan publicly:

“Over 70 female members of Parliament called out the colonial undertones of articles written about Meghan, but nobody in my family said anything over the course of three years.”

On his life in the royal family:

“I was trapped and I didn’t know I was trapped. My father and my brother, they are trapped.”

On the Australia tour:

“Look, I just wish that we would all learn from the past. But to see how effortless it was for Megan to come into the family so quickly, in Australia, and across New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga, and just be able to connect with people in such a [way].”

On Meghan:

“I’m so proud of my wife. She safely delivered Archie during a period that was so cruel and so mean.”