Key events
“No one knows the full truth … We know the full truth”. That is the premise of the documentary, which is just a few minutes away from arriving on Netflix. Here is the full trailer to get in the mood.
Unsurprisingly the launch of the documentary is making a splash across the UK media this morning. The Mail Online leads with “Royals brace for more Sussex ‘truth bombs’”, saying:
Buckingham Palace will be braced for the worst after two trailers revealed the couple will claim they had no protection from royal officials and that aides actively leaked and ‘planted stories’ against them as part of a ‘dirty game’. King Charles and Prince William are poised to issue a ‘swift and robust’ response to any unjust claims in Harry and Meghan’s upcoming Netflix series – but William and his wife Kate are not likely to watch it themselves, sources said.
The Mirror, yet to see more than the trailer, just like you and me, is leading with “‘Utterly explosive’ Netflix documentary just MINUTES away”, and draws attention to the size of the deals that the couple have signed, writing:
The Sussexes signed lucrative deals thought to be worth more than £100 million with Netflix and Spotify after quitting the monarchy amid the Megxit crisis as they struggled with royal life.
They plunged the monarchy into crisis with their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, while the Duke of Edinburgh was in hospital.
The duke and duchess accused an unnamed member of the family of racism towards their son Archie before he was born, and the institution of failing to help the suicidal duchess.
The couple quit as senior working royals in 2020 in favour of more freedom and the ability to earn their own money in the US.
Sky News has a timeline of their relationship, and a reminder of some of the allegation that have previously been made:
This isn’t the first time the royal couple have spoken out about their experience in the UK. Last year, Harry and Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey made a series of revelations.
The two-hour special included claims that King Charles had at one point stopped taking Prince Harry’s calls, and that a member of the family had raised “concerns” about their child Archie’s skin colour.
Meghan revealed she had suicidal thoughts and said: “I just didn’t want to be alive any more”, and denied reports she made Kate cry ahead of her wedding – claiming “the reverse happened”.
My colleague Caroline Davies reported yesterday that the Sussexes faced a barrage of hostile questioning ahead of the documentary when appearing in public in New York on Tuesday:
“So many questions,” replied the Duke of Sussex, as representatives of the media shouted “Are you harming your family, Harry?” and “Are you putting money before family?” while he and the Duchess of Sussex attended a New York charity gala hosted by Alec Baldwin on Tuesday.
Harry’s reference in the documentary’s trailer to “The pain and suffering of women marrying into this family, this feeding frenzy” – and how, as he prepared to wed Meghan, he felt “terrified” and “didn’t want history to repeat itself” – is bound to provoke comparisons with the experience of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
And then there is his ominous-sounding statement: “No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth.”
None of it appears to bode well for the Royals of Buckingham Palace, who, by remarkable coincidence, were out in glittering force, freighted with tiaras, at a white-tie diplomatic reception at the palace, just as the Sussexes were being feted at the black tie Ripple of Hope New York gala for their activism on racial justice and mental health.
The King, the Queen Consort and the Prince and Princess of Wales may have been all smiles in public, but it seems unlikely they are not braced for further provocative and damaging claims arising from the docuseries.
Read more here: Prince Harry asked ‘Are you harming your family?’ on eve of Netflix series
I must confess that personally I found it quite hard to get myself worked up at the idea that the documentary trailer was using stock footage of paparazzi rather than clips of events that the Sussexes are at. It is a well-worn documentary technique, and let us be honest, all news outlets also use stock images at times to illustrate stories.
But I do think the fuss about it is instructive of how the documentary is about to be received by sections of the media. It will be held up to a higher standard than any comparable docuseries on Netflix, and the couple will end up being criticised for anything stylistic that has been introduced in the video editing suite, and also criticised for any genuine footage. There is already a whole sub-culture of tweets aimed at a segment that appears to show Meghan crying, with people asking “why would you film that?”
There is also something curiously odd for British people watching the royal family getting the standard Netflix documentary, that perhaps doesn’t apply to people around the rest of the world. We’ve all grown up with most of the media instinctively adopting a protective reverential tone about the royal family if they feel the institution is being attacked. Even an Emily Maitlis grilling of Prince Andrew may have been a PR disaster for him, but she hardly went full Jeremy Paxman. To hear Prince Harry adopting the well-worn rhythms of documentary narration is deeply unusual.
Here is a reminder of the official teaser trailer for the documentary, which was released a week ago. Is anybody interested in watching the documentary? Well, it has garnered 7.5m views on YouTube so far. Which is not to say they will all convert to viewers. Judging by the comments a lot of people watched the teaser just to have a moan about it.
Elements of the British media have not been slow to criticise the Harry & Meghan documentary before it has even appeared on our screens, as the Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson reported on Tuesday, writing:
“There’s a leaking but there’s also planting of stories … It’s a dirty game,” says Prince Harry in the trailer, as flashbulbs break over a variety of archive and stock images.
The Sun – one of the publications singled out in the trailer – ran the story on its front page under the headline “Sussex, lies and videotape”. While some of the manipulations are small – a photo of Harry surrounded by paparazzi was cropped from an old picture with his ex Chelsy Davy, rather than with Meghan – some are more unusual. Two pieces of footage showing a scrum of cameras are taken from very different stories. One is from outside a magistrates court in Sussex where cameras were waiting to catch the glamour model Katie Price, another is footage of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen leaving his New York apartment.
Robert Jobson, the Evening Standard’s royal editor, criticised another dramatic shot of a photographer’s lens peering down on the couple with their newborn child Archie. Jobson insisted it was taken with their approval by an accredited press photographer at Archbishop Tutu’s residence in Cape Town.
Read more here: ‘Sussex, lies and videotape’: papers on the attack over Harry and Meghan documentary
The Duke and Duchess haven’t had the quietest of weeks so far. On Tuesday a US human rights charity awarded Harry and Meghan its Ripple of Hope award for their activism on racial justice and mental health.
The Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organisation (RFKHR) hands out the annual accolade to leaders in government, business, activism and entertainment. During the ceremony, the couple announced they would be collaborating with the RFKHR on a new award recognising gender equity in student film, which they said they hoped would “inspire a new generation of leadership in the arts, where diverse up and coming talent have a platform to have their voices heard and their stories told”.
Introduction
We are around half an hour away from the launch of the first three episodes of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, which the streaming platform has promised “is a vulnerable look into the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s high-profile relationship.”
It promises to be a fascinating morning of reaction as the public get their first glimpse of Harry and Meghan’s side of the story. You don’t have to be pro-monarchy to be fascinated by how this relationship and the rifts it has caused have become one of the main themes of the royal family over the last few years. You could probably make a documentary out of the media coverage of the documentary itself.
Anyway here is the official blurb for the programme, which should arrive on our screens at 8am GMT. I will be watching it, so maybe you don’t have to, and bringing you the key revelations and the best of the commentary around the event.
Harry & Meghan is an unprecedented six-part documentary series that explores the span of their relationship, from the early days of the couple’s courtship to the challenges and controversies that prompted them to step back from the royal family. The series includes interviews with family and friends who’ve never spoken publicly about the couple’s relationship before, as well as historians and journalists who dissect how media influenced Harry and Meghan’s relationship with the royal family and the Commonwealth at large.