The biggest lie in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Netflix show

Over 323 minutes, six episodes and two “volumes”, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle managed to recount a number of mistruths. But one lie is the biggest of all.

COMMENT

We did it, yo. (With apologies to Kamala Harris.)

After 323 minutes, six episodes, two “volumes” and a (restrained to my mind) two martinis, we’ve somehow gotten to the end of the viewing marathon that was Harry & Meghan, through the tears and the dramatic heart-tugging score and the endless iPhone videos of them being cutesy, the whole thing is over.

This second tranche of Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix series delivered in a way that the first spectacularly failed to, offering up a series of direct allegations that should have the Buckingham and Kensington Palace press offices doing some serious fretting.

Most notably, there is Harry’s claim that Prince William briefed the press against him, that messages to his father King Charles were “leaked” by “the institution” and his assertion that he believes that Meghan miscarried due to a legal battle with the Mail on Sunday.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seriously delivered in volume two of their Netflix series. Picture: Netflix

The duke also recounted details about the January 2020 Sandringham Summit, saying: “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and have my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and take it all in.”

There will be plenty more to say about all of this but there is one huge fact that I cannot get over, one that has nothing to do with fraternal attacks worthy of a King Lear reboot.

This was not, at all, in the slightest a documentary, in the gritty truth-baring fashion.

However, this lengthy (oh-so-lengthy) production is to documentaries what 50 Shades of Grey is to literature: A headline-hogging, attention-seeking missile that has about as much cerebral nutritional value as a Mars Bar.

High on agenda, low on objectivity, what is so striking about Harry & Meghan is what is not in it, evasively skipping over or dodging and weaving around many of the criticisms lobbed at them.

Harry & Meghan was not a documentary. Picture: Netflix

The show has two points which it takes nearly six lugubrious hours to make: The British media are a cabal who was intent on taking down the duchess and the royal family was involved in all sorts of skulduggery when it came to briefing against the Sussexes.

We hear from the couple at length themselves. We hear from her mother Doria Ragland, their lawyer Jenny Aifa, a passel of the former Suits star’s friends, her niece Ashleigh Hale, James Hunt, a Palace spokesman between 2017 and 2019 who is now an executive director of the Sussexes’ Archewell Foundation, not to mention writer Afua Hirsch and historian David Olusoga

Meghan’s niece Ashleigh Hale in the Netflix show. Picture: Netflix

However, look beyond the endless home videos of the Sussexes’ idyllic life in Montecito, picking oranges, feeding chickens, all gambolling dogs and playing with soccer with son Archie on a lawn only slightly smaller than a professional pitch, and the credibility of calling this as a documentary starts to wear dangerously thin.

Essentially, Harry & Meghan is the slow motion retelling of a family fracturing in the most painful way possible with nothing so much as a dissenting or even a vaguely demurring voice piping up, no one has been let anywhere near the camera who is not ready and willing to recite, chapter and verse, about the extraordinary bravery of Aitch and Meg.

You have to wait until past the one-hour mark at the end of the final episode to hear something from someone who is not an apostle of the Gospel of the Sussexes and even then it’s only in the form of a statement put on the screen lawyer for the Sussexes and the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridges’ communications secretary Jason Knauf.

The series is a very sympathetic telling of the story of Aitch and Meg. Picture: Netflix

There is no reference at all to the fact the Sussexes went ahead with their explosive Oprah interview despite the fact his grandfather Prince Philip was in hospital at the time and would die a month later. Nor does the couple’s decision to not attend the memorial service for Philip in March 2021 get a look in.

More broadly, this so-called “global event” fails to meaningfully address a number of the biggest controversies which have swirled around them, most glaringly, the bullying allegations.

In March 2021, the Times revealed that the duchess had been the subject of a bullying complaint raised by Knauf in late 2018. “I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X* was totally unacceptable,” Knauf wrote.

One source told the Times: “There were a lot of broken people. Young women were broken by their behaviour” and described one staffer as “completely destroyed”.

A spokesman for the Sussexes hit back, calling the allegation “a calculated smear campaign.”

A week ago, the world had no idea what the Duchess of Sussex thought about being accused of leaving staff “shaking with fear”, and today, we still don’t.

The same Times report also alleged that Meghan wore earrings given to her by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman only weeks after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and then wore them again in November 2018.

This controversy is not mentioned once.

The allegations of alleged bullying by Meghan were glossed over in the series. Picture: Netflix

Then there is the ‘Duchess Difficult’ business. Back in late 2018, reports first started surfacing alleging that the royal family was sending staff emails at 5am and was losing aides at unedifying rate. Like the private jet situation, this has cropped up again and again.

Again, this is pretty much skipped over in the race to beatify themselves.

The list of topics that this show wholly ignores can pretty much be summed up as a good portion of moments in recent royal history where the duke and duchess don’t come out looking 24-carat.

Take the events of summer 2019. In July, Harry put out a statement via on the Sussex Royal Instagram, saying “With nearly 7.7 billion people inhabiting this Earth, every choice, every footprint, every action makes a difference.”

Later that month, Harry flew to Google Camp via private jet and helicopter, according to the Daily Mail, where he, per Page Six, gave a speech about climate change. Then in August, in the span of 11 days, he and Meghan took four more private jet flights, first to Ibiza and then to the South of France for holidays.

Oh the exquisite irony when, in early September Harry pitched up in Amsterdam to launch a sustainable travel initiative called Travelyst.

For someone passionate about climate change Harry has a serious flying habit. Picture: John Wilson

That disconnect between his words and deeds has continued. One example: Harry and Meghan reportedly eschewed commercial flights when they headed to London for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June this year, only for him to address the UN General Assembly the warned about the “havoc” of climate change.

Harry & Meghan would have been the perfect opportunity for the 38-year-old to push back against the ‘Harry the hypocrite’ trope which crops up like clockwork every time they are caught by the paparazzi on the tarmac jetting about the place.

But no, instead we are just more footage of them grinning madly at one another on a beach or a new biting claim about Fleet Street being chucked around.

The show includes a lot of homefootage and photos of the couple but fails to answer a lot of burning questions. Picture: Netflix

We don’t hear a single thing from the couple about why they decided to split offices from William and Kate or about Tiaragate or the which-duchess-made-which-duchess-cry hooha. Nor is Meghan’s guest-editorship of Vogue UK and her decision to not include the Queen referenced.

In Harry & Meghan the orthodoxy of the Sussexes’ narrative is never held up to anything resembling scrutiny, the awkward or uncomfortable moments often skipped over in favour of showing us another oh-so-sweet video of son Archie or daughter Lilibet.

Ultimately, the show is a testament to the degree to which the couple’s belief in them being victims of great injustice has become calcified. There is a certain Trumpian quality to Harry & Meghan, a sense that they believe that if they repeat the same claims over and over again everyone will buy into their truth.

(While there are many points on which I am obviously critical, I do want to say here, it is impossible to watch Meghan recount her mental health battle and not be deeply moved. She has clearly suffered and anyone dealing with depression deserves unalloyed help and support.)

Of the few incontrovertible facts about the couple is that for the last five years they have existed at the epicentre of a transcontinental media storm, a non-stop tempest that draws in some of the most pressing conversations of our time about race, power, the modern media and social media. Nothing resembling any sort of intellectual vigour is brought to bear.

No one from the press is given a chance to defend themselves and Buckingham Palace has pushed back against the claim at the very beginning of the first episode that they declined to take part.

Ultimately this was not a documentary based on smarts and diligent research but a very high-sheen family drama stretched out for far too many hours in service of telling one very particular “fairytale.”

Towards the end, Meghan recounts that in her wedding speech she said, “above all, love wins.” With Harry & Meghan, above all spin wins.

Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as The biggest lie in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Netflix show