Meghan Markle’s version of ‘the truth’ is out there

Royal couple’s two-hour ‘chat’ with Oprah is designed purely to elevate the status of the couple in the celebrity-obsessed US.

Harry and Meghan interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Picture: Harpo Productions

Popcorn ready? Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s garden-side chat with Oprah Winfrey, televised in Australia on Monday, is designed for one purpose: to elevate the status of the couple in the celebrity-obsessed US.

The collateral damage, and there will be liveried carriages of it, will centre on the royal family and reverberate through the Commonwealth. For if there is one certainty about this two-hour interview of self-absorption it is that Harry and Meghan have no thoughts or concerns about the UK, or their UK-based family, royalty or not.

This will be about Meghan, hand on baby bump, serenely blaming “The Firm’’ and the men in grey suits for her distress during the two years she was involved in the royal family. It will be her version of “the truth’’: one that denigrates British stiff upper lip and the mantra of Keeping Calm, and offering a very different opinion of loyalty and service.

She will be courting sympathy from the American public, because it’s that vast audience she is trying to tap into for her commercial activities: the $50m Spotify deal and the $180m Netflix contract.

Illustration: Johannes Leak

For Meghan’s life has been about the US ever since she and Harry were courting. From the time of her 2018 $70m fairytale wedding, Meghan involved her long-time Hollywood PR team of advisers.

The wedding itself was an expensive promotion of the glamorous Meghan, radiating in catching of one of the world’s most eligible men, while celebrities outnumbered her family in the pews.

Sunshine Sachs, the same PR firm that has handled Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez and Justin Timberlake, and who had promoted Meghan when she was an actor in the US series Suits, was brought in at the beginning of the Sussexes’ married life to boost the couples’ Sussex Royal Foundation. Even the announcement about their son Archie’s birth was obfuscated and delayed many hours – to maximise the timing in the US.

So the Oprah Winfrey tell-all will be the opportunity for the couple to reinforce their victimhood and promote their latest commercial ventures.

In one teaser, Winfrey asks Meghan “How do you feel about the palace hearing you speak your truth today?”

Meghan replies: “I don’t know how they could expect that after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that The Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us. And if that comes with risk of losing things, I mean, I’ve ... there’s a lot that’s been lost already.”

Harry, who was supposed to make a cameo appearance at the end of the program, has apparently been upgraded to a more prominent role after the interview was shot over two days in a neighbour’s backyard near the $20m mansion where the couple lives in the affluent Montecito in California.

Already the backlash in Britain against the couple has been fierce. The timing of the broadcast, which will go to 66 countries, is particularly poor, with Prince Philip seriously ill and the coronavirus pandemic raging, with parts of Britain still under severe lockdown, causing immeasurable grief and up-ending lives.

It rings hollow that Harry and Meghan will preach about living a life of compassion. Calls for the show to be deferred have fallen on deaf ears.

Courtiers say they will not have forewarning of what is in the edit and the royal family – if they care to take an interest – will have to watch it at the same time as everyone else. There is a particular sensitivity about how much Harry refers to Princess Diana, when the situation Meghan faced with the media was very different to that of his mother.

In one of the promos, Harry says: “I’m just really relieved and happy to be sitting here, talking to you with my wife by my side because I can’t begin to imagine what it must’ve been like for her (Diana) going through this process by herself all those years ago because it has been unbelievably tough for the two of us, but at least we had each other.”

Royal observers have already staunchly defended the Queen. One royal biographer, Robert Jobson, has dryly noted that the royal family is not the Corleone family of Windsor and accused the show of being over-the-top melodramatic nonsense with questions such as ‘’were you silent or were you silenced?’’

Last month when Meghan and Harry were stripped of their royal patronages and Harry lost his military titles, the couple couldn’t agree with the Palace on a joint statement and instead rebuked the Queen, saying: “We can all live a life of service, service is universal’’. That statement was put out at the time of recording the Winfrey interview, suggesting sharp antagonism will be captured in the broadcast.

Since news of the tell-all interview, there has been an escalating war of words between The Firm and the Sussexes, with The Times revealing this week that the Palace was investigating accusations Meghan had bullied royal aides, with the first signs surfacing when she learnt royal rules meant she couldn’t accept free designer clothing. Prince Charles brought out the cheque book to appease the courtiers, and keep his daughter-in-law happy enough to be photographed in Chanel, Ralph & Russo and Prada.

Then there is Prince William, whose tight brotherly connection with Harry was destroyed when – according to the recent book Finding Freedom – he pulled him aside before the engagement suggesting that Harry should take a bit more time getting to know Meghan before rushing into marriage.

Reports have now surfaced that Meghan blames two Duchesses, Kate and Camilla, for leaking stories about her throwing a tantrum over a tiara before her wedding.

The postscript to this broadcast is that it will deepen the fissures that have already erupted. For Britons, it will reignite calls for them to be stripped of their Dukedom of Sussex. For Americans it could be the beginning of a love story where they rescue their very own royals.