BBC star Mishal Husain slams Duchess of Sussex’s bold engagement interview claim

A TV star has come out swinging over one of the Duchess of Sussex’s major gripes about her royal life.

Of all the mysteries that have swirled around the royal family – who killed the princes in the Tower? Did Elizabeth I ever get up to any hanky-panky? Was Queen Victoria playing ‘hide the sausage’ with a servant? – we have to add a roast chicken recipe.

Not just any roast chicken recipe, but one that would precipitate a cascading series of events such that it would ultimately rock the monarchy to its very foundations.

We all remember, surely, that in November 2017, when loved-up Prince Harry sat down with freshly-minted fiancee Meghan Markle for their first interview together, there was one detail that captured the public imagination: that le grand romantic moment had also featured the bald posterior of an organic bird.

“We were just roasting chicken,” Meghan said, with Harry chiming, “Roasting a chicken, trying to roast a chicken”.

But today the chicken is back, or more accurately, that chicken-y engagement interview is back in the news, after the journalist who conducted it, BBC star Mishal Husain, publicly hit out at the duchess.

Prince Harry and his then-fiancee Meghan Markle pose for a photograph on November 27, 2017, following the announcement of their engagement. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shared their love story with the BBC. Picture: Supplied

The timeline here goes like this: November 2017, the couple (now obviously the Duke and Duchess of Sussex) perch on a Kensington Palace couch for their first interview together, their adorableness such that it could have cracked a Geiger counter and turned even the stoniest of cynic’s hearts to mush.

In December 2022, the Sussexes’ series, Harry & Meghan, lands in which they recount their trials, tribulations and the duchess’ futile quest for a royal hug. In the third episode, when discussing the Husain interview, Meghan was asked if they had been prepped, with her then labelling it an “orchestrated reality show” and that it had been “rehearsed”.

“My point is we weren’t allowed to tell our story …” Meghan told the Netflix cameras.

This week, a new interview with Husain landed – and she doesn’t exactly seem willing to take the duchess’ framing of events lying down.

“When the Duchess of Sussex said that my engagement interview with her and Harry was an ‘orchestrated reality show’ I didn’t know what to make of it,” Husain told Saga magazine.

“They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular.”

But let’s stay with that chicken and that 2017 interview.

Meghan described the interview as an ‘orchestrated reality show’. Picture: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP

The BBC’s Mishal Husain. Picture: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images for #Grazia10

One thing that seems glaringly obvious from this distance is how inadequately the Suits star was prepared for what lay ahead of her.

Watching the 20 minute sit-down today makes for discomfiting viewing, given that we know that that joyful, bubbly duo is going to soon crash into one of the most traumatic chapters of their adult lives. Less than two years later, the duchess would be suffering suicidal ideation and, as she later told Oprah Winfrey, “didn’t want to be alive any more”.

In 2017, Harry enthused to Husain that Meghan would be “really unbelievably good at the job part” and that “she’ll be able to deal with everything else that comes with it”.

However, he also said: “I still, you know, I still have to have some pretty frank conversations with her to say you know what you’re letting yourself in for … it’s a big deal and it’s you know it’s … not easy for anybody”.

That admission has a certain haunting ring to it. Did Meghan – or could anyone really – truly know what they were ‘letting themselves in for’?

Working royal life might feature the occasional gold carriage and enough diamonds to stock a Graff outpost, but much of it looks a bit crap. Endless handshaking, charming, smiling, posing, small talk making, more charming, more smiling, and more discussing the weather with sweating regional Lord-Lieutenants. Sure, there is plenty of adulation, but that is interspersed with what looks like a very particular form of highly-scrutinised, polite drudgery.

While the exact date that Meghan officially moved from Toronto to London in 2017 isn’t known, when they got engaged, she couldn’t have been living there for more than a couple of months. How could eight weeks or thereabouts on British soil give her a true and full appreciation of the immense and awesome task, job and life that she was taking on?

The royals, pictured in 2018 in happier times. Picture: Paul Grover/Pool/AFP

There is more to this Husain news too.

The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden, writing about the BBC star’s new Meghan comments, has popped up to claim that the Duchess of Sussex had other ideas about who should have done the 2017 interview with them.

Eden writes: “To add insult to injury, Meghan complained that the distinguished Radio 4 presenter [Husain] ‘wasn’t empathetic enough, wasn’t warm enough’ to conduct the interview, according to a senior royal source. It was said that Meghan would have preferred her fellow American Oprah Winfrey to have been selected for the job”.

If there is any sort of truth to Eden’s assertion, the idea that Buckingham and Kensington Palaces would even entertain for a heartbeat tapping the queen of American TV to do the interview over the UK’s national broadcaster hardly speaks to having a full understanding about the royal gig.

When Meghan said ‘yes’ on the Night of the Bird, she wasn’t just getting herself a wonderful husband but also a new country, profession, religion and in-laws while simultaneously jettisoning the life, identity and career she had spent 36 years building for herself. Theirs was and is a love story, but one that came with a hell of a lot of baggage.

Meghan reportedly wanted Oprah to get the gig. Picture: CBS

Watching that 2017 video now feels a bit like watching a naive co-ed wander into an abandoned mansion as the entire audience, in unison, yells “Run!”

But watching the video is also a reminder of how spectacularly Crown Inc buggered up in not doing anything and everything to make sure that Meghan’s transition to full-time working royal was anything but seamless. That they did not seem to have fully appreciated that a professional woman of colour might run into some different and stronger headwinds than other royal brides speaks of an ignorance and lack of foresight that continues to have huge repercussions for the monarchy.

Meghan could and should have been the best thing to happen to the royal family since Prince Albert introduced indoor plumbing.

Sigh. This was clearly not meant to be.

This week, there Meghan was in the sunshine of Montecito, lunching with 90s star Kimberly Williams-Paisley, an entire world away from having to open a new biscuit factory in Hull, the pap shots a reminder of how badly the palace mishandled the Sussexes.

There is one thing to get excited about though, and I’m putting this out there now – the prospect that Meghan’s forthcoming Netflix entertainment show could feature the roast chicken recipe that started it all. When life gives you lemons, you just have to squeeze them on camera.

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