Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview: How royal dream turned to nightmare

Trapped in a life she could no longer endure, this was the moment Meghan Markle realised her fairytale had become a nightmare.

MEGHAN Markle was five months pregnant and glowing in blue sequins when she and Prince Harry arrived at the Royal Albert Hall for a Cirque du Soleil performance in January 2019.

The young royals were capping off a busy week of public appearances days after revealing when their baby was due.

The Duchess of Sussex cradled her bump and smiled broadly as she worked the VIP crowd in an ankle-length Roland Mouret gown, holding hands with her dashing prince and wearing a bracelet that belonged to his late mother, Diana.

Meghan Markle with Prince Harry at the Royal Albert Hall. Picture: Getty Images

It’s almost impossible to imagine that just hours earlier, a sobbing Meghan sat on the stairs of their home in Frogmore Cottage and confessed to her husband that she was having suicidal thoughts.

Trapped in a life she felt she could no longer endure and begging for help that the Royal “institution” refused to grant, Meghan finally admitted to Harry the truth she had been trying to protect him from.

This was the moment Meghan realised her fairytale had become a nightmare.

Hours earlier, Meghan had confessed to her husband that she was having suicidal thoughts. Picture: Getty Images

“I thought it would have solved everything for everyone,” she said of her dark thoughts.

“I was really ashamed to say it at the time and admit to Harry, especially. I’ve seen how much loss he’s suffered.

“I knew that if I didn’t say it, that I would do it. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.

“And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember – I remember how he just cradled me. I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that ‘I’ve never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere’. And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”

Meghan said a photograph of the night “still haunts me”.

The pair put on a brave front for the cameras. Picture: Getty Images

“That picture, if you zoom in, what I see is how tightly his knuckles are gripped around mine,” she said through tears.

“You can see the whites around our knuckles because we are smiling and doing our job but we’re both just trying to hold on.

“And every time that those lights went down in that royal box … I was just weeping.

“And he was gripping my hand, and it was ‘OK intermission is coming, the lights are coming back on. Everyone’s looking at us again you have to just be on again’.”

Earlier, Harry had been so worried for Meghan that he told her she should skip the function.

“We had to go to this event and I remember him saying ‘I don’t think you can go’,” Meghan said.

“And I said ‘I can’t be left alone’.”

Meghan Markle admits she was naive when she married into royal life.

Meghan admitted that she had “naively” entered royal life, so much so that she needed a crash-course in curtsying from Sarah Ferguson before meeting Queen Elizabeth for the first time.

As an American actress who had worked since she was 13, she said she had not given much thought to protocol and would sometimes Google at night the answers to her many questions about what was expected of her.

“That was when the penny dropped,” she said of her Sunday morning curtsy lesson from Fergie.

“We just practised and then walked in. We went in and I met her and apparently I did a very deep curtsy, I don’t remember it.

“Then we just sat there and chatted. I grew up in LA, I see celebrities all the time. It’s not the same. This is a completely different ball game.”

Meghan said she had gone into the relationship without preparing and researching. She hadn’t even ever looked up Harry online.

“I didn’t fully understand what the job was, right, what does it mean to be a working royal,” she said.

“I think there was no way to understand what the day to day was going to be like.

“I think as Americans especially, what do you know about the Royals? It’s what you read about in fairy tales.

“It’s easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality.”

Meghan saya she turned over her keys and passport once she got married.

The reality of Meghan’s new life was startling for an independent woman.

Meghan said she felt “lonely” and isolated in the Royal family after their wedding, comparing her time living in London to the experience of being locked down by coronavirus.

She said her existence had been far different to what the public perceived it to be, describing one conversation where she had been advised to “lay low … because you are everywhere”.

“And I said: ‘I have left the house twice in four months. I am everywhere but I am nowhere’,” she said.

And when she was desperate for some mental health support and the palace refused to help, she said she was physically unable to seek it out for herself.

“You couldn’t, you know, call an Uber to the palace,” she said.

“When I joined that family, that was the last time until we came here that I saw my passport, my drivers license, my keys.

“All that gets turned over, I didn’t see any of that anymore.”

The couple said they chose to speak out because they wanted to make clear that Meghan had not been “protected” during their time in the UK and that “the firm” was planting stories that hurt her in the press.

“Everyone in my world was given a very clear directive from the moment the world knew Harry and I were dating to always say ‘No comment.’ That’s my friends, my mum and dad,” she said.

“I did anything they told me to do. Of course I did, because it was also through the lens of ‘And we’ll protect you.’ So, even as things started to roll out in the media that I didn’t see but my friends would call me and say, ‘Meg, this is really bad,’ because I didn’t see it, I’d go, ‘Don’t worry. I’m being protected.’

“And everything started to really worsen that I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren’t willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.”

The couple said they had found peace in the past year.

“We’re actually on the other side, we’ve actually not just ... survived but are thriving,” Meghan said.

“I think that all of those things that I was hoping for have happened,” she said.

“This is in some ways this is just the beginning for us.”

When asked: “So, your story with the prince does have a happy ending?”, she said “Yes it does”.

“It’s greater than any fairytale you’ve ever read.”

Originally published as Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview: How royal dream turned to nightmare