Harry and Meghan interview was ‘utterly ridiculous from start to finish’: Piers Morgan
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sit down with Oprah Winfrey for tell-all interview; Piers Morgan reacts on ‘Fox & Friends.’
Like Princess Diana before her, who threw herself down a flight of stairs out of despondency while pregnant, Meghan Markle claims lack of "protection" by the Palace, nearly drove her to suicide while she was expecting her firstborn.
Having been called out for her claims that royal life was nearly "unsurvivable," the Duchess of Sussex spilled all to Oprah in an interview Sunday night to make it clear that she meant it literally.
The turning point for her, she says, was when the Palace failed to defend her to the notoriously brutal British press, when, let’s be clear, it was sister-in-law Kate who made her cry over the flower girl dresses, during a "really hard week of the wedding."
And then came the racism. A member of the royal family, Harry and Meghan said, expressed concern during her pregnancy over the potential skin color of their unborn baby, now known as Archie.
They wouldn’t say who made these abhorrent comments because they say that would be too damaging. It seems, by process of elimination, that Charles or William and Kate, are the alleged villains in this drama.
Harry said he hopes that ‘time heals all things, hopefully." But having thrown his father, brother and sister-in-law under the double-decker bus by labeling them inhumane, racist and too obtuse to understand that they are "trapped," that may be a bridge too far.
Could it really be that Meghan did not "Google" anything about her boyfriend’s family? That she thought because she saw lots of celebrities growing up in L.A. that meeting the royal family would be sort of the same? That she was shocked that she would have to curtsy to "The Queen," as Harry reminded her that his grandmother in fact, is?
At 36 years old, when Markle married into "The Firm," she was the same age as Diana when she died in a tragic car crash in a Paris tunnel.
Diana had two children and had divorced Harry’s father, Prince Charles by then.
Yet at that same age, Markle claims she was ‘naïve,’ despite being an independent woman with a budding acting career.
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It should be pointed out, that if the Palace really didn’t advise and support Markle, at all, they evidently learned nothing from the Diana years and the fall-out for them that followed after her death.
Meghan and Harry were roundly embraced by the press during their courtship and wedding. The glossy photo spreads and homages to their love story were everywhere. But Harry claims it all turned because Meghan was simply too amazing at her job, during their trip to Australia.
The suggestion here is clearly that William and Kate were jealous and that’s when the Palace machine turned against them. And we were reminded many times, that the job of being a royal, is well, grueling. The travel, the smiling, the being ‘on,’ well, you can imagine.
The pressure appears to have turned ugly back at home as well.
In 2018, a high ranking Palace staffer sent an email expressing his concern that "the Duchess [Markle] was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year," and went on to inquire "if the Household policy on bullying and harassment applies to principles." The staffer quit the Sussex employ and moved on over the Cambridge side of Kensington Palace.
All of this drama and introspection reminds us of the central character in this drama, who does not indulge in either.
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Queen Elizabeth, has reigned for 69 years, and alongside 14 Prime Ministers from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson.
In South Africa in 1947, in a radio address to mark her 21st birthday she said to her people:
"I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."
The message was clear. At the tender age of 21, she made a promise. My life is not about me. It is about you, the people of the United Kingdom, of the great imperial family’ she swore to serve until her death.
Regardless of the great divide over royalty, or the bemoaning over why anyone gives a fig about these people or their dramas (and it’s worth pointing out here that in the U.K., the Queen enjoys a 73% approval rating, and the ratings for the Meghan and Harry Oprah sit down are expected to rival the Super Bowl), the idea of commitment to something larger than yourself, of duty, and of humility before it, is a concept, that is sadly declining in our times.
If you’ve watched "The Crown," you’ve picked up on the reason that the series is not named, "The Queen." It is about preserving The Crown, which is not a person, it is the centuries-long institution that has been a source of stability for the British people, through the Great Wars and beyond, and no doubt it will survive Meghan and Harry, too.
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This is likely why the Queen indicated that she would not pause from her duties, or abandon her ailing 99-year-old husband of 73 years, to sit in front of the telly on Monday night for two hours and watch Meghan and Harry whinge. (Whinge: A British word meaning "to complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way.")
The outsized attention to Markle and her husband, Prince Harry has little to do with ‘The Crown.’ As the son of Prince Charles, brother of Prince William, and uncle to William and Kate’s three children, Harry is a distant sixth in line to the throne.
Although Prince Charles’ brother Andrew has brought shame to his family and is therefore infamous, could you pick their younger brother Prince Edward out of a line-up? Quick, who is he married to? (Answer: Sophie)
The point is, that being so distant in the line of succession, Meghan and Harry could have likely toughed out a few more years of rope lines and ribbon cuttings and then decided to divide their time between the U.K. and the U.S. and live a more private life and no one would have really noticed. But instead, they made a proclamation in January of 2020 that they would "step back" as senior royals and work to become financially independent.
In the Oprah interview on Sunday night, they came across as shocked that this was greeted with anger from the Palace. But their announcement started a spiral that would ultimately drive a Stonehenge-sized wedge between Harry and his family. The pain of that was evident in the interview.
So if what Meghan and Harry wanted was less attention and a quiet life, living in a $14 million dollar house in Oprah’s neighborhood in Montecito, California and scoring a multiyear, possibly $100 million dollar deal with Netflix, because the Prince needs extra money for security, seems an odd way to go about it.
The interview was the first salvo in the Sussexes effort to right the wrongs done against them and turn public opinion in their favor.
When Harry’s mother, Princess Diana sneaked a camera crew into Kensington Palace and told interviewer Martin Bashir, after he asked about Camilla Parker Bowles’ role in her unhappiness, "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," she too succeeded in stunning the viewing public and shaking the Palace to its core. It may have felt "liberating" at the moment, but she later said she regretted it.
Diana did earn an enormous amount of empathy. Her ungracious and unloving frog of a Prince left her no choice but a divorce, which he welcomed.
Abandoned and alone, she was embraced as the People’s Princess and she learned to play the press perfectly.
It remains to be seen if Meghan and Harry will have the same lasting goodwill. The Prince reportedly ticked off Oprah before Sunday’s show by upstaging her big interview with a pre-cursor double-decker bus ride with the hilarious and good-natured James Corden, who managed to bring out the old loveable version of Harry.
As for Markle, a painfully awkward moment in 2019 where her husband was shocked that former Disney CEO Bob Iger, was ‘really?!" really, not aware that Meghan did voiceover work, combined with the sometimes quizzical look on Oprah’s face as the Duchess laid out her awful, stunning grievances, could point to a short-ish honeymoon for the pair in Hollywood as well, but time will tell.
Meghan and Harry say they want to serve and spread kindness to the world, making it a nicer place for all. It is hard to imagine a bigger platform for world service than the jobs they left behind.
Though Harry and Meghan painted William and Kate as trapped royal robots, the Cambridges appear to be humbled and driven by their titles and the history they uphold.
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They are parents to three children and spent their time visiting health care workers and mental health advocates during the pandemic. They haven’t done a sit-down interview about themselves since they were engaged in November 2010.
As the Queen Mother visited Britons in the underground, while the bombs fell relentlessly during World War II, the message was to "Keep Calm and Carry On." As the bombing grew worse, Britons banded together, seeming to grow stronger as the Germans tore apart their homes and lives. They stood behind their Prime Minister and their King.
They sent their children to live with total strangers in the country to keep them safe. They went down in history as a people who served and persevered and sacrificed and put everything before their own desires.
They stood up to a real-life bully, Adolf Hitler. No doubt during all this they were rarely asked if they "were OK," which clearly they were not.
There is a reason that even those who can’t stand royalty, or even the Brits themselves, respect this about them and why as Americans, we respect the cry attributed to Winston Churchill when we encounter adversity, to "never give in."
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This is the 1,200-year history that Markle chose to make her future. To leave her home country, to join the Anglican Church, and to serve her new country alongside her husband, the Prince. She says she’d hoped it would not end like this.
Meghan once said she had attempted to adopt a ‘stiff upper lip’ but realized that "what that does internally is probably really damaging." So for now she appears to have opted to "Keep Californian and Whinge On."