An Intriguing Moment of Harry and Meghan in the Early 2020s: A New Look at the Prince and Meghan’s Secret Relationship with the Media

And Harry accuses the royal family of “unconscious bias” that blinded them to the struggles he and Meghan experienced in the years and months leading up to their dramatic departure.

The streaming giant has promised an “unprecedented and in-depth documentary series” over six episodes in which Harry and Meghan “share the other side of their high-profile love story.” The first three episodes are out on Thursday and the other two will be released in December.

Harry said he “learned things” from his mother’s anger at the media while she was alive that affected his view of royal life, including seeing firsthand “the pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution.”

Buckingham and Kensington Palaces will likely be braced for the fallout from the series, after sustained tensions between Harry and his father, King Charles, and brother, Prince William.

It is hard to look at it from a different perspective, and wonder what happened. The first episode of the series was recorded a short time after the pair completed their final royal duties in March 2020.

He became concerned for the safety of his family because of the intrusion of the media.

Harry took aim at the media within the first few minutes of the show. No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth, the institution knows the full truth, and the media knows the full truth because they’ve been in on it,” Harry said. He said he considers it his “duty” to “uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”

The series comes over a year and a half after the couple’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, which contained a flurry of criticisms of members of the royal family and caused turmoil at the palace.

It marks a first major public relations test for the monarchy under King Charles III, who himself has been tacitly criticized by Harry since their split from the family, and whose relationship with his son has frayed.

Buckingham Palace said on Thursday that it will not be commenting on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new docu-series that was released on Netflix on Thursday.

The couple have spoken before about the constraints placed on them while members of the royal family, and that frustration re-emerged repeatedly in the documentary.

Meghan described her engagement announcement in 2017 as an “orchestrated reality show.” And speaking of the media’s initial fascination with the prince’s then-girlfriend, Harry recalled how other members of the royal family struggled to share his concern.

“As far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well. Harry said it was almost like a rite of passage. “My wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why do you need to get a special treatment? He said, according to their arguments, why should she be protected.

The race issue became a big part of the monarchy after Harry andMeghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. Meghan alleged that before their first child was born, a member of the royal family commented on how dark the baby’s skin might be.

“These are the skeletons in the closet that frequently make an unwelcome appearance in daily life in this family – sometimes, you know, you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution and there is a huge level of unconscious bias,” Harry said.

“The thing with unconscious bias – it is actually no one’s fault. He said that once it was pointed out, or identified, you need to make it right.

What do they tell us about marriages and their struggles? “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what happened to me,” Harry said in the first episode

Harry talked about some previous marriages with his relatives and ancestors in the first episode. “I think for so many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mold as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with,” he said.

“They were surprised … the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgement more than anything else at the beginning,” he added. The actress thing was funnily enough.

Harry also compared Meghan to his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash while being chased by paparazzi in 1997. There are so many things that are similar to my mother in how she is. She has the same confidence, she has this warmth about her,” he said in the first episode.

I remember wondering how could I find someone who could endure all the baggage that comes with being with me. he said.

And it charted the breakdown of her relationship with her father, over a controversy of whether he staged a series of paparazzi-style photographs in the build-up to their wedding in 2018.

She didn’t have a father before and now she doesn’t have a father, it’s incredibly sad. Harry said his dad would still be her dad if Meg weren’t with him.

The First Three Seasons of CNN’s Royal News: Inside the Prince and Meghan of Buckingham Palace, in the Aftermath of Meghan’s Separation

The first three episodes were released on Thursday, with three more scheduled for next week. Interviews were done the month before the Queen died according to the series.

Sign up for CNN’s Royal News, a weekly dispatch bringing you the inside track on the royal family, what they are up to in public and what’s happening behind palace walls.

LONDON — Britain’s monarchy is bracing for more bombshells to be lobbed over the palace gates Thursday as Netflix releases the first three episodes of a series that promises to tell the “full truth” about Prince Harry and Meghan’s estrangement from the royal family.

The heir to the throne and Harry’s older brother defended the royal family, telling reporters that they are not a racist family.

Buckingham Palace was the site of renewed allegations of racism last week when a black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse said a senior member of the royal household questioned her about her origins. The issue was front and center in the British media, overshadowing William and Kate’s visit to Boston which the palace had hoped would highlight their environmental credentials.

The program will be watched carefully in the U.K., where even the teasers were criticized for offering misleading images to back up the emotive narration alleging misogyny, unfair media treatment and racism.

There is a part of the movie where Harry talks about the pain of women marrying into this institution and how it is followed by the media. … I was terrified, I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”

Sky News reported one of the clips used to show his words shows the reporters and photographers waiting outside the court to see Price.

“There’s a hierarchy of the family,” Harry says, over an image of the royal family standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. There’s also planting stories, but there’s leaking.

That is followed by a picture of a photographer perched on another balcony as Harry and Meghan walk with their young son Archie down below. The scene suggests the photographer was snooping into the private moment of the couple, but the photo proves the accredited press photographer was covering their meeting with Desmond Tutu.

Whatever the series reveals, palace officials hope to deflect the storm by portraying William and Kate as forward-looking young royals who are tackling difficult issues such as climate change and early childhood education, in contrast to Harry and Meghan, who are described by critics as merely celebrities selling their story to the media.

The BBC and the Daily Telegraph, one of Britain’s most influential newspapers, picked up on this theme in their coverage of William and Kate’s three-day trip to Boston, where they handed out environmental prizes, met with anti-violence campaigners and went to a basketball game.

These days in Britain, very little unites the right and left. “Harry & Meghan,” the intimate Netflix series released Thursday, is quickly shaping up to be the exception.

The Independent was not a fan of the series but said it was entertaining and self-aggrandizing. In her review, Jessie Thompson finds the couple, at times endearing and sympathetic, and the points about racism in Britain eloquently made.

Piers Morgan, who has been vociferously critical of the couple in the past, wastes no time laying into the series in his scathing review in The Sun, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch:

What are the World’s Biggest Victims? A Review of Meghan Morgan’s Theorem for Prince Harry and Lucy Mangan

Who are the world’s biggest victims right now? The poor people of Ukranian may look like they are being bombed and shot by the invading barbarians. Those who have had their lives ruined by the Covid epidemic, which has caused deaths and long-term illness. Or the millions battling crippling financial hardship in a devastating cost-of-living crisis that has swept the globe.

But no. The world’s biggest victims are a couple of rich, stupendously privileged, and entitled narcissists, one of them being Prince Harry.

Later in his review, Morgan cautions viewers they may need a “sick bucket.” He was not the only one to have GID. The headline for Lucy Mangan’s review in the left-leaning Guardian, exclaims that the first three episodes were “so sickening I almost brought up my breakfast.”

The series so far has plenty of sweet moments, including Prince Harry and his fiancée, but she ultimately finds the finished product wanting.

In the end, what are we left with? The story we’re told is the same one we’ve been told before, and we would expect it to come from the people telling it. Those who don’t care will not watch. Those who do not care, but are voyeuristically invested in the fictional soap opera, will still read into it any way they want, and they will most likely confirm their previous ideas. There is plenty here to start another round of tabloid frenzy, particularly in Harry’s mention of members of the royal family who consider the pressure placed on anyone “marrying in” a rite of passage and resist allowing anyone else to avoid what their own spouses went through, and who bow to internal pressure to choose a wife who “fits the mould.” Which is to say — it is hard to see who, beyond the media, the villains of the piece, will really gain from this?