What did we learn from the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan?
The much-touted first chapter of the Netflix Harry & Meghan documentary was lacking in any new blockbuster revelations over the three hours, and broadly steered clear of overt criticism of the royal family, with much more of a focus on Harry’s distrustful relationship with the media, and Meghan’s surprise at the strength of interest in her and reaction to her.
Very much a one-sided PR effort, with no critical or dissenting voices about the couples behaviour or any tough questioning, Prince Harry said that the royal family was full of unconscious bias over race issues, and was “sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution” over racism.
Episode one featured many of Harry’s negative experiences of the media growing up, recounting his experiences with his mother of press intrusion, and the aftermath of her death when instead of being able to grieve, he was put on public display as part of the royal family.
Meghan discussed the breakdown of her relationship with her father as her wedding to Harry approached, and the two discussed how they had to develop their relationship in secret to avoid the glare of the media.
She revealed that she had thought Harry was joking when he checked she knew how to curtsy before meeting the late Queen Elizabeth II for the first time. “How do you explain to someone you bow to your grandmother?” he said.
On several occasions Meghan discussed how scared she felt with the attention, which was intrusive while she was still living in Toronto and working on Suits. Meghan said “I would to say to the police if any other woman in Toronto right now said to you ‘I have six grown men who are sleeping in their cars around my house and following me everywhere that I go and I feel scared’ wouldn’t you say that it was stalking?”
Caroline Davies has a report on the documentary here – and I guess I will see you same time, same place next week for the next three episodes, which will presumably cover in more depth the post-wedding falling out with the family and the couple’s decision to step back from royal life.
“Of course it’s incredibly sad what happened,” says Harry. “She had a father before this, and now she doesn’t have a father. And I shouldered that, because if Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad.”
The episode is concluding with some old camcorder footage of young Meghan with her dad, as the narrative is that they are 24 hours away from the wedding.
She says she eventually got a text back but she didn’t believe it came directly from him, not least because “he called me Meghan for the first time in my life”. Everybody had always called her Meg, she says.
The documentary is showing us British newspaper headlines saying that Thomas Markle is ill, alone and afraid, unable to attend the wedding, and not receiving any assistance from his daughter or the palace. Meghan’s voiceover though is all about how she’s calling and calling and calling him, and getting nothing back.
Meghan is now talking about the breakdown of her relationship with her father ahead of the wedding. She says that they believed he was taking money from the press for stories, which he denied to her on the phone. She claims they then offered to have him leave a day earlier to avoid further press intrusion on him, which he declined. She tells the documentary that she then said to harry “this doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why but I don’t believe him.”
Doria Ragland says “I was absolutely stunned that Tom would become part of this circus”. There is then footage of Doria herself being door-stepped by the media asking her questions about her ex-husband. “That’s not what you do. That’s not parenting,” she said.
Meghan says “The unravelling happened when he wouldn’t pick up my call, and instead you are talking to TMZ.”
There’s been some questions about how Netflix is regulated, following the scrutiny of stock images of photographers from unrelated events that was used in the Harry and Meghan documentary.
British television viewers have the ability to raise complaints to media regulator Ofcom if they feel a programme on a traditional broadcaster such as BBC or ITV is substantially misleading. But streaming services operating in the UK such as Netflix are not currently covered by the same tough rules.
Instead, as Ofcom has clarified today following a number of complaints. Netflix is overseen by the Dutch media regulator. Until the British government changes the law, there’s not much Ofcom can do about Netflix’s output.
In any case it’s highly unlikely that the use of stock images or footage for illustrative purposes would be considered “materially misreading” under Ofcom’s rules. There is a relatively high bar for non-news programmes and it needs to be proven that a programme “materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm or offence”. Using images of photographers to illustrate someone talking about a different group of photographers would be unlikely to be worthy of a sanction.
The documentary is now focusing on Harry and Meghan attending a memorial for Stephen Lawrence, 25 years after he was murdered. Prince Harry is seen speaking at the event. Afua Hirsch describes it as significant as “a direct attempt to speak to the pain that many people still feel as a result of the murder.”
There is a potted recap of the history of his death and its aftermath to put the event into context.
Britain's Prince Harry and his then-fiancee Meghan Markle attend a Memorial Service to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in London. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
Kelvin MacKenzie has obviously been enjoying his morning watching the documentary. “Making money out of people who can’t reply” is an eye-catching accusation for the former editor of the Sun to be throwing around.
Meghan claims she found the formality of the Royals "surprising". Why? When, ahead of meeting The Queen, Harry asked if she could curtsey. Meghan says;" I thought it was a joke." The only joke is a self-involved, clapped out actress making money out of people who can't reply.
Here is a picture from the skiing trip royal photo call from 1995 that Prince Harry recalled earlier with such distress in the documentary.
Prince William (now the Prince of Wales), Prince Harry (now the Duke of Sussex) with their cousins, Princess Eugenie (second left) and Beatrice at a photocall outside the hotel where they were staying in the Swiss resort of Klosters. Photograph: Martin Keene/PA
Meghan’s niece is now saying that as the wedding approached she heard less and less from Meghan, like her relationships and communications were being controlled.
Meghan herself says she was getting very scared as the wedding approached about the potential for terrorism, after she was sent a white powder through the post which sparked an anthrax scare.
Meghan is now talking about how she was guided that she couldn’t invite her niece to the wedding if her biological mother, Meghan’s half-sister, wasn’t being invited. Ashleigh has clearly been quite hurt by this.
Meghan said when she was in the UK she wore a lot of muted tones, so she wouldn’t stand out. |You can’t wear the same colour as the Queen,” she said. And she didn’t want to wear the same colour of other senior royals. She says she did everything to try and fit in.
As their wedding approached Meghan described the press pulling people out of the woodwork to make the most salacious stories they could. She likened it to playing whack-a-mole.
There is a section in episode three now where the couple are talking about their activism, but Meghan is explaining that she hadn’t realised that the royal family tended to steer away from any causes that might be construed to be controversial. There are clips of William, Harry and their partners at an event together in 2018 – an increasingly rare sight in recent times.
Britain's Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, with Prince Harry, left, and his fiancee, Meghan, Markle Photograph: Chris Jackson/AP
Meghan is explaining that there was nobody to really teach her how to follow the “protocol” of being royal, and that she had to Google the British national anthem. Harry says there is an additional layer of “protocol” that is imposed by the press.
Our resident royal expert Caroline Davies has also been watching this morning, and here is part of her report on the documentary:
In the opening scenes of the series, Harry is shown at Heathrow airport in footage he filmed himself in March 2020 as he prepared to leave the UK for the last time as a senior royal. Explaining why the couple made the documentary, he said: “This is about duty and service, and I feel as though, being part of this family, it is my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”
Meanwhile, Meghan is seen separately, filming herself in Vancouver wearing a towel on her head and saying: “Unfortunately, in us standing for something, they are destroying us.”
The series opened with a written statement saying all interviews were finished in August 2022, which is the month before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It added: “Members of the royal family declined to comment on the content within this series.”
Images of newspaper headlines flashed up on the screen included: “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton”. Meghan said: “Firstly, I’m not from Compton, I’ve never lived in Compton, so it’s factually incorrect. But why do you have to make a dig at Compton?”
Other headlines shown in the documentary are “One’s gone GangstER”, and another saying Meghan’s ancestors were a “tailor, a teacher and a cleaner in racially divided Jim Crow South”.
Harry said: “Eight days after the relationship became public I put out a statement calling out the racist undertones of articles and headlines that were written by the British press, as well as outright racism from those articles across social media.”
Speaking about the press coverage, Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, said paparazzi would take pictures of deprived neighbourhoods in Los Angeles. “They would take pictures of different parts of, say, Skid Row, and say that is where I lived and that is where she was from,” she told the documentary.
“It was horrible,” Meghan said. “But I continued to hold the line. Say nothing.”
