A slight dig. Meghan Markle spoke out about the constraints she was under as a senior member of the royal family before she and Prince Harry stepped back.
The former actress, 39, discussed the matter during a Friday, August 14, interview with The 19th’s Emily Ramshaw. “It’s something that I look forward to being a part of,” she said of participating in the Black Lives Matter movement and politics. “And being a part of using my voice in a way that I haven’t been able to of late. So, yeah, it’s good to be home.”
Meghan then elaborated on her perception of the United States after her relocation to Los Angeles from England. “To come back and to just see this state of affairs, I think at the onset, if I’m being honest, it was just devastating. It was so sad to see where our country was in that moment,” she noted. “If there’s any silver lining in that, I would say that in the weeks that were happening after the murder of George Floyd, in the peaceful protests you were seeing, in the voices that were coming out, in the way that people were actually owning their role … it shifted from sadness to a feeling of absolute inspiration because I can see that the tide is turning.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their plans to step away from the royal family in January. They moved to L.A. in March but have since settled in the Montecito community of Santa Barbara, California, with 15-month-old son Archie.
Authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand claim in Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Family that Meghan and Harry, 35, felt patronized by the royal family before their exit. “I gave up my entire life for this family,” she tearfully told a friend in March. “I was willing to do whatever it takes. But here we are. It’s very sad.”
The royal correspondents allege elsewhere in the book that the couple “didn’t want to completely walk away from the monarchy.” Instead, they hoped to “find a happy place within it.”
However, Harry could not get past the perception of their roles within the family. According to the book, which was released earlier this week, he “felt as though he and Meghan had long been sidelined by the institution.”
Prior to the book’s publication, a spokesperson for Meghan and Harry told Us Weekly, “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not interviewed and did not contribute to Finding Freedom. This book is based on the authors’ own experiences as members of the royal press corps and their own independent reporting.”
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