Prince Harry denied it was the Queen or Prince Philip who expressed concern about the skin colour of his unborn son, narrowing down the identity of the royal family member who made the alleged comment.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex claimed they fled Britain because of racism and accused the Queen of snubbing them when they first returned from Canada in newly broadcast sections of an explosive interview.
Meghan told Oprah Winfrey there had been “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born” while she was pregnant with Archie.
Today Winfrey told CBS, which broadcast the interview, that off-camera Harry had stressed that “neither his grandmother or grandfather were part of that conversation”.
Zac Goldsmith, an environment minister and a close friend of Boris Johnson, accused Prince Harry of attempting to “blow up” the royal family. He said on Twitter: “Harry is blowing up his family. ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets’.”
Johnson refused to be drawn on the row. Asked about allegations that a member of the royal family had been racist, he said: “I really think that when it comes to matters to do with the royal family, the right thing for prime ministers to say is nothing, and nothing is the thing that I propose to say today about that particular matter.”
In the interview, which aired last night in the US, Harry detailed how a toxic collision of mental health fears, racism and the tragic shadow of his mother’s fate convinced him to ultimately break away from the royal family. Meghan, 39, described how life as a working royal had taken her to the brink of suicide.
Harry spoke warmly about Prince William, saying “he will always be there”, but repeatedly criticised their father, particularly for cutting off financial support.
In a previously unbroadcast section of the interview Harry was asked if he had left the UK because of racism. He replied: “It was a large part of it.”
He fuelled his war with the British media saying: “The UK is not bigoted, the UK press is bigoted, specifically the tabloids. But unfortunately if the source of info is inherently corrupt or racist or biased then that filters out to the rest of society.”
The duke said he had written to Prince Charles in December 2019 about the plans to step back from their royal duties and had been invited to visit the Queen at Sandringham, her Norfolk estate.
When they arrived back from Canada to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor he was told the invitation had been withdrawn and when he spoke to Queen she explained she “was busy all week”.
https://www.thetimes.com/topic/boris-johnson Harry said: “When you are head of ‘the Firm’ there are people around you who give you advice and what has also made me really sad is some of that advice is really bad.”
The couple also confided that they married three days earlier than the world realised and revealed that the baby they are expecting will be a girl.
Harry, 36, also told Winfrey that while he remained close to the Queen and had spoken to her more in the past year than he had for a long time, his relationships with his father and brother had been badly damaged by recent experiences.
“I love William to bits. He is my brother. We’ve been through hell together. We have a shared experience but we were on different paths,” he said. Later he clarified that: “The relationship is spaced at the moment. Time heals all things. Hopefully.”
Asked about his relationship with the Prince of Wales, he paused for a long time.
“There’s a lot to work through there. I feel really let down because he’s been through something similar [with the Princess of Wales],” Harry said.
“He knows what pain feels like and Archie’s his grandson . . . I will always love him but there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened.”
Harry said that at one point, as the couple prepared from Canada to step back from their roles as frontline royals, he and his father were not on speaking terms.
The first big moment of the interview came when the duchess revealed that when she was first pregnant members of the royal family talked to Harry about the skin colour their child would have.
The conversations happened over a period of time, Meghan said, adding that they came even as she and her husband were told that she and her son would not be given a title or afforded the protections that came with it.
Asked who had raised the subject of her future child’s skin, she said: “I think that would be very damaging to them. That was relayed to me from Harry. That was a conversation that family had with him and I think that it was really hard to see that as compartmentalised from everything else.”
Winfrey asked Meghan if “they were worried that if he was too brown that would be a problem?”
“If that’s the assumption you are making I think that feels like a pretty safe one,” she replied.
Harry said: “At the time it was awkward, I was a bit shocked. That was right at the beginning. What will the kids look like?”
He also said that before he and Meghan married, members of the family had suggested that she should continue acting and that she could make a lot of money that way.
He thought his mother “would feel very angry about how this has panned out and also very sad. I can’t imagine how it was for her all those years ago”.
The duke later said that he had “felt her presence” throughout “this whole process” and added that they were only able to afford their new life in California because of her.
“My family literally cut me off financially. I’ve got what my mum left me. Without that we would never have been able to do this . . . I think she saw it coming.”
Meghan accused Buckingham Palace of silencing her and failing to protect her while lying to protect others in the royal family.
She distinguished between members of the royal family and “the people running it”, adding that: “The Queen for example, has always been wonderful to me. I just really loved being in her company.”
The couple also told Winfrey that they held a private marriage service with the Archbishop of Canterbury three days before hundreds of millions around the world watched their wedding live on television.
The duchess revealed that she and her husband regarded the vows that they took with only the archbishop in attendance as their true nuptials.
Meghan told Winfrey that she had entered her marriage “naively”. She said: “I didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family. It wasn’t something that was part of conversation at home.”
Asked if she was thinking of self-harm and having suicidal thoughts at some stage, the duchess replied: “Yes. This was very, very clear. Very clear and very scary. I didn’t know who to turn to in that.”
Meghan said her experiences of dealing with the press were different from those of the Duchess of Cambridge, stressing that “rude and racist are not the same”.
She said: “Kate was called ‘Waity Katie’ waiting to marry William. While I imagine that was really hard — and I do, I can’t picture what that felt like — this is not the same.
“And if a member of his family would comfortably say ‘we’ve all had to deal with things that are rude’, rude and racist are not the same. And equally you’ve also had a press team that goes on the record to defend you, especially when they know something’s not true, and that didn’t happen for us.”
She accused “the Firm” — as the royal family is sometimes known — of “perpetuating falsehoods” and described how she now felt liberated to make her own choices after moving to Los Angeles.
The duchess talked about her experience of race issues in Britain and the impact on her mental health of dealing with the pressures of royal life. She said it was “really liberating” to now “feel able to speak for yourself”.
Much of the reaction to the interview on both sides of the Atlantic focused on the racism allegations.
Vicky Ford, the children’s minister, said she had not seen the interview, but commented: “There’s no place for racism in our society and we all need to work together to stop it.”
Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East, tweeted: “When Meghan Markle was accused of bullying, Buckingham Palace immediately announced an investigation. Now that Meghan has revealed comments about her child’s skin colour, will they investigate racism in the Palace? I won’t be holding my breath.”
In the US, Bernice King, the youngest child of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King, tweeted: “Royalty is not a shield from the devastation and despair of racism. I’m grateful that Meghan Markle is still here.”
Charles Anson, the Queen’s press secretary between 1990 and 1997, insisted there is no racism within the royal household. Anson said he recalled from his time as a commentator on Harry and Meghan’s wedding “an overwhelming sense of welcome for Meghan and their marriage . . . I don’t think there’s a strand of racism within the royal household at all.”
A royal source said the palace had been preparing for damaging allegations but is not going to get involved “in a blow by blow dissection of the interview”. The strategy, they said, was to “let the frenzy play out in the morning” and possibly issue a statement later.
The interview was recorded before The Times revealed that members of Meghan’s staff had complained of bullying, leading to Buckingham Palace ordering an investigation into the allegations.
A spokesman for the couple called reports “a calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful misinformation”.
The Sussexes said that this newspaper was “being used by Buckingham Palace to peddle a wholly false narrative” before the Winfrey interview was broadcast. The claim has been strongly denied by a Buckingham Palace source, who said they were “deeply upset” by it.
