Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wage fresh war on Royals in Netflix series

Meghan and Harry today took a series of new swipes at the Royal Family and Britain in their new and incendiary Netflix series being described as a transatlantic ‘TV bomb’ aimed at The Firm.

Episode one begins with a thinly veiled attack on Buckingham Palace’s decision not to co-operate with their six-part documentary charting their courtship, marriage and Megxit.

As part of their $100million deal with Netflix, the privacy-conscious couple have handed over a trove of pictures and videos from their relationship including the moment Harry proposed in 2017 and the duke filming himself in the VIP lounge at Heathrow as he emigrated in March 2020. 

The first three episodes contain a series of barbs that will upset his father King Charles III, including Harry’s claim that he was ‘literally brought up’ by a ‘second family’ in Africa where he chose to spend three-month stints in his late teens and twenties as he came to terms with his mother’s death.

Harry also describes a ‘huge level of unconscious bias’ in the Royal Family – with reference to Princess Michael of Kent wearing an offensive Blackamoor-style brooch in front of his wife at Buckingham Palace. There is also a suggestion that the UK is racist and more obsessed with race than the US, with Meghan declaring that she ‘wasn’t really treated like a Black woman’ until she came to Britain. 

And in a swipe at the choice of wives by his male relatives, viewed as an attack on his father and other senior royals, perhaps even his brother William, Harry insisted that his decision to marry Meghan sets him apart from his family because it was ‘from his heart’ and not simply because she ‘would fit the mould’.

He said his wife being an American actress ‘clouded’ his family’s view of her – and they believed it wouldn’t last.

The Duke of Sussex said: ‘I think for so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mould as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with. The difference between making decisions with your head, or your heart. And my mum certainly made most of her decisions – if not all of them – from her heart. And I am my mother’s son’.

There will also be some aspects of the series that will likely anger Prince William, including his younger brother’s decision to use a clip from their mother’s BBC interview with Martin Bashir, which the Prince of Wales said should never be shown again after she was duped into taking part. Justifying the decision, Harry told his documentary: ‘She felt compelled to talk about it. Especially in that Panorama interview. I think we all now know that she was deceived into giving the interview, but at the same time she spoke the truth of her experience’.

Meghan also hits out at the formality of the royals, describing meeting the Prince and Princess of Wales wearing torn jeans and bare feet. Discussing what happened, she said: ‘I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger, I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits’. 

She also admits to being baffled by the ‘formality’ of meeting the Queen for the first time, claiming she thought Harry was ‘joking’ when she learned she had to bow or curtsey and comparing her first meal at Windsor to a ‘Medieval Times, Dinner and Tournament’.

The highly anticipated series is being put out in two parts, with the first three episodes of the six-part docu-series now available to stream online.

The series contains tears from Meghan, who Harry repeatedly compares to Princess Diana claiming that both his mother and wife were being hunted by the press. Meghan also claims that as an American she found the ‘formality’ of being in the Royal Family ‘surprising’ – declaring that meeting the Queen for the first time was a ‘shock to the system’. She said Harry had told her in the car: ‘You know how to curtsy, right?’ And I just thought it was a joke,’ she said.

They also discuss Princess Michael of Kent’s Blackamoor-style brooch to a pre-Christmas event the Duchess of Sussex attended in 2017. She was forced to apologise. Harry said: ‘In this family sometimes your part of the problem rather than part of the solution. And there is a huge level of unconscious bias. The thing with unconscious bias is actually no one’s fault.’

Meghan adds: ‘Obviously now everyone is aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK. Before then I wasn’t really treated like a Black woman.’ Harry claims that his family had dismissed her when they found out she was an American actress – but he insisted he knew in his ‘heart’ he would marry her because he is his ‘mother’s son’.

In episode one, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex begin by filming themselves on the day they ended their royal duties in March 2020, with Harry in the VIP lounge at Heathrow as he flew to Canada. Meghan cries with a towel on her head as she declares: ‘I don’t even know where to begin.’ Viewers pointed out this footage was captured six months before their $100million deal with Netflix was signed in September 2020.

The privacy-conscious couple have given extraordinary access to the streaming giant, including a treasure trove of pictures and footage from their private lives including of their children. There are also private texts and emails they shared at the time of their courtship. Meghan’s mother Doria also speaks publicly about their relationship for the first time.

MailOnline can reveal:

The first three episodes also cover Harry’s birth and upbringing and he blames the media for the failure of his previous relationships. The Sussexes then describe how they get together, their engagement and then quitting as frontline royals. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex discuss Megxit, racism and their new life in California. It also begins with a pointed comment that the Royal Family declined to comment on allegations in the show and reveals it was completed in August 2022 – before the death of the Queen.

Episode one begins with Harry filming himself at Heathrow Airport in March 2020 as he finishes his final royal engagements before emigrating. His wife, in Vancouver, breaks down on her bed as she says: ‘I don’t even know where to begin’.

The show opened with words written in white on a black background which said: ‘This is a first-hand account of Harry & Meghan’s story, told with never before seen personal archive. All interviews were completed by August 2022. Members of the royal family declined to comment on the content within this series.’

The opening scenes of the first episode show an airport with a close-up of a departures sign while piano music plays over the footage.

It then cuts to Harry and words on the screen tell viewers he is in the Windsor Suite at Heathrow Airport in March 2020.

He appears to be filming himself speaking into his phone camera and says: ‘Hi. So we’re here on Wednesday the something of March.

‘We’ve just finished our two weeks, our like final push, our last stint of royal engagements.

‘It’s really hard to look back on it now and go “what on earth happened?” Like, how did we end up here?’

As Harry speaks, images of the couple flash on screen, followed by newspaper headlines and broadcasters’ audio from coverage about their decision to step back from royal life.

The first episode then shifts to what appears to be phone footage, filmed vertically, showing Vancouver Island, Canada.

Meghan appears with a towel wrapped around her hair, appearing to speak into her phone camera, saying: ‘H is in London and I’m here.’

She shakes her head and says: ‘I don’t even know where to begin.’

The first episode of Harry & Meghan cuts to London in July 2016 and Harry can be heard saying that is when they met.

Meghan said another season of Suits was confirmed and she had plans to travel with friends having been ‘single for a couple of months’.

The episode features an interview with Meghan’s friend Lindsay Jill Roth, who says: ‘In the summer of 2016 she had a few different trips planned and she was just going to be free.’

This part of the episode features photos of Meghan with friends including Jessica Mulroney.

Meghan said: ‘I was really intent on being single and just have fun girl-time.’

Another friend called Lucy Fraser tells the documentary: ‘She had planned her single-girl summer and she had a lot of plans of going around Europe.’

It cuts to Meghan who says: ‘I had a career. I had my life. I had my path… and then came H.

‘I mean, he literally, talk about a plot twist.’

Harry said he first spotted Meghan on a friend’s Instagram.

He said: ‘I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them, it was like a Snapchat.’

An image of Meghan with the popular dog ears filter is then shown.

Harry said: ‘That was the first thing. I was like “who is that?”’

Meghan said the friend then sent her an email, the words of which are typed out on the screen, saying: ‘Between you and I thought you might want to know this being newly single and all. I put our Snapchat on Instagram and Prince Haz follows me (he’s a friend) he called me last night dying to meet you. hehehe. I might just have to set you up’ (sic).

Meghan’s reply, which was also typed out on screen, was: ‘Who is prince haz?????’

Below her reply viewers can see the words: ‘Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse all technological mishaps. I’m a Luddite’.

Meghan said she asked her friend who had contacted her about Harry if she could see his social media feed.

Speaking in the first episode, Meghan said: ‘That’s the thing. People say “did you Google him? No. That’s your homework”… That, to me, was the best barometer. So I went through and it was just like beautiful photography and all these environmental shots and this time he was spending in Africa.’

Harry said they then got each others’ numbers.

‘We were just constantly in touch,’ he said, adding that they decided to meet.

The Duke of Sussex has said his wife being an American actress ‘clouded’ his family’s view of her.

Meghan, talking about meeting the Queen during episode two of their Netflix documentary, said: ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

Harry went on: ‘I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed, some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves.

‘Because I think they were surprised. They were surprised that a ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman.

‘But the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else at the beginning, “oh she’s an American actress, this won’t last”.’

Meghan added: ‘The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough. There is a big idea of what that looks like from the UK standpoint – Hollywood – and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.’

Harry and Meghan’s attack on ‘racist’ Britain and links Brexit to racial prejudice

Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Netflix documentary today unleashed a series of incendiary claims labelling Britain a ‘racist’ country – and linking the debate over Brexit to racism and ‘horrible views’. 

In one segment, Harry says the Royal Family has ‘unconscious bias’, and is ‘part of the problem’ when it comes to racism in Britain. 

Lengthy segments are also given to academics Afua Hirsch and David Olusoga who say British tradition is ‘filled with racist imagery’ while discussing the country’s colonial legacy – and call anti-immigration sentiment in the UK a ‘cipher for race’.

The accusations are levelled across the first three hour-long episodes of Harry & Meghan, which dropped at 8am on Thursday. 

The Commonwealth, much-loved by the late Queen, is branded ‘Empire 2.0’ by Ms Hirsch, while author Kehinde Andrews claims ‘nothing has changed’ from the UK’s colonial past, apart from the Royal Family’s ‘better PR’. 

The commentators suggest this racist legacy made it difficult for Meghan to be both assimilated into the firm and widely accepted and loved by the British public. 

Even the UK’s departure from the EU is dragged into the fray, as Harry says the series is not ‘just about our story’, adding: ‘This has always been much bigger than us’, amid the back drop of a Brexit protest followed by former-PM Boris Johnson vowing to ‘take back control of this country’.

The visuals point to racism being a key factor behind the Brexit vote and suggest the wider political climate was hostile to Meghan becoming a royal. 

The debate around Brexit is revisited at the end of episode two. Mr Olusoga says that the ‘fairy tale’ of Harry and Meghan was ’embedding itself in a nation that is having a pretty toxic debate about the European Union’.

He adds that ‘immigration was at the absolute centre’ of that debate, and that ‘immigration is very often in this country a cipher for race’.

A series of clips then shows British people making racist comments.

Harry then says: ‘So the EU commissioned a report in 2016, exactly the same time that our relationship became public. It warned that if the government wasn’t going to do something, or if the media aren’t going to sort themselves out, that a culture war that had already existed was going to become huge and become a real problem.’

Former palace spokesman James Holt adds: ‘It was a perfect storm that gave credence to jingoism and nationalism and gave people with really horrible views of the world a little bit more strength and confidence to say what they wanted to say and do what they wanted to do.’  

In the same episode, Meghan tells interviewers she felt a shift in treatment after moving to the UK. 

‘At that time, I wasn’t thinking about how race played a part in any of this,’ she said. ‘I genuinely didn’t think about it.

‘It’s very different to be a minority but not be treated as a minority right off the bat…I’d say now, people are very aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK. 

‘But before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ”Black woman’.’ So that talk didn’t happen for me.’

In the third episode, the Sussexes chart their relationship with the media from the announcement of their engagement in 2017 right up until the day before their wedding in May 2018. 

It touches on Britain’s ‘racist past’ and various scandals to have hit the firm in recent years – including Princess Michael of Kent’s ‘Blackamoor-style’ brooch and Harry’s Nazi uniform furore. 

Experts, authors and friends – including Meghan’s mother Doria and Serena Williams – are called upon to comment on how Britain’s history, the press and expectations from royal fans impacted the couple. 

In the opening segment, Meghan claims ‘we’ve never been allowed to tell our story… until now’.

Mr Olusoga, author of Black and British, then tells interviewers: ‘Who dreamed that Britain would have a Black princess? Who could have conceived that? It was the conclusion to a history that was so improbable, as to be astonishing.’ 

He and fellow author Afua Hirsch give a brief history lesson on Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and how it ‘fuelled’ the British Empire, which was ‘financed by kings and queens right up until its abolishment’ in the early 1800s. 

Ms Hirsch said Britain is often described of having its ‘own deep south’ that was ‘just as brutal’ as the US’s and that ‘actually enslaved more Africans’ than the Americans did, but that that deep south was the Caribbean. 

But ‘it was out of sight and out of mind,’ she said, adding that the first slave voyage was ‘personally financed’ by Queen Elizabeth I and continued to be financed by kings and queens until abolishment. 

According to Mr Olusoga, the fact that slave owners were then compensated to the tune of £20million ‘for their human property’ is often ‘left out’ of history lessons, which he said is ‘just another way in which our memory of British slavery has been airbrushed out of Britain’s story.’ 

James Holt, former palace spokesman, tells producers he was ‘oblivious’ to the legacy of Britain’s links to the slave trade, claiming his teachers focused on the UK’s colonial power and ‘just how important the country used to be globally’.

Linking back to Harry and Meghan’s engagement, Mr Olusoga says he felt it could have shown the Royal Family had ‘caught up with the rest of Britain’.

Then recalling her first Christmas at Sandringham, Meghan said she found it ‘amazing’ as she was ‘with a big family like I always wanted’.

‘And there was just this constant movement, energy and fun,’ she adds, ‘and at dinner I was sat next to H’s grandfather and I just thought it was so wonderful and I was like ”we chatted about this and this”… and he [Harry] was like ”you had his bad ear he couldn’t hear anything you were saying” and I was like ”oh… well I though it went really well”.’

But things went awry when reports emerged that the Princess Michael of Kent wore a ‘Blackamoor-style’ brooch to the Queen’s annual Christmas lunch  – which was widely viewed as ‘racist’. 

Harry then says: ‘In this family, sometimes you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. There is a huge level of unconscious bias.

‘The thing with unconscious bias, it is actually no one’s fault. But once it has been pointed out, or identified within yourself you then need to make it right.

‘It is education. It is awareness. It is a constant work in progress for everybody, including me.’

Meghan lifts the lid on meeting Royal Family for the first time

Meghan has today lifted the lid on what it was truly like to meet the Royal Family – as she compared her first encounter with the Queen to a themed dinner at America’s ‘Medieval Times’.

The Duchess of Sussex described the pomp and ceremony of meeting the senior members of the Royal Family as part of Harry and Meghan’s explosive Netflix documentary, which saw the first three episodes released on Thursday. 

In it, the 41-year-old described her first ‘amazing’ Christmas at Sandringham, where she was sat next to the late Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.

And she recounted the ‘intense’ moment of meeting Her Majesty for the first time during a lunch at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, joking that the whole occasion felt like an antiquated banquet at Medieval Times, a family dinner theater in the US featuring staged medieval-style games, sword-fighting, and jousting.

The Queen was the first senior member of the Royal Family that Meghan met after she and Prince Harry announced their relationship in 2016. 

‘She had no idea what it all consisted of,’ Harry tells the docuseries, as he sits with his arm around his wife. ‘So it was a bit of a shock to the system for her.’

Grinning, Meghan added: ‘I mean. it’s surreal. There wasn’t like some big moment of “Now you’re gonna meet my grandmother”.

‘I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before. We were in the car and we were going to the Royal Lodge for lunch, and he [Harry] was like, “Oh, my grandmother is here, she’s gonna be there after church”.

‘I remember we were in the car, driving and he’s [Harry] like, “You know how to curtsy, right?”. And I just thought it was a joke.’

The duke continued: ‘How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you would need to curtsy, especially to an American. That’s weird.’

Meghan then tells the documentary: ‘Now I’m starting to realise this is a big deal. I mean, American’s will understand this. We have Medieval Times dinner and tournament. It was like that. Like, I curtsied as though I was like… “Pleasure to meet you your Majesty.”

‘It was so intense. And then when she left, Eugenie and Jack and Fergie say “you did great!”. Thanks. I didn’t know what I was doing.’

Meghan and Harry’s Netflix documentary is out today and begins with an attack on Buckingham Palace’s decision not to co-operate with the series that declares a fresh war on the Royal Family and the media.

The highly-anticipated series is being put out in two parts, with the first three episodes of the six-part docu-series now available to stream.

The series contains tears from Meghan, who Harry repeatedly compares to Princess Diana claiming that both his mother and wife were being hunted by the press. 

There are also a series of jibes at his father, King Charles III, and brother Prince William as well as speaking about alleged racism and ‘unconscious bias’ in the Royal Family.

During the second episode, Meghan speaks about the ‘formality’ of the royals behind closed doors, saying she was ‘surprised’ by this.

‘I was a hugger always being a hugger I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits,’ she added.

‘I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside. 

‘That there is a forward-facing way of being. And then you close the door and you are like (sighs) “Oh great. Okay, we can relax now”. But that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.’

Recalling her first Christmas at Sandringham, Meghan said she found it ‘amazing’ as she was ‘with a big family like I always wanted’.

‘I remember so vividly the first Christmas at Sandringham,’ Meghan said. ‘Calling my mom, and she’s like, “How’s it going?” and I said, “Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. It’s just like a big family like I always wanted”.’ 

And she recounted a lighter moment with the late Prince Philip, who she sat next to during the royal festive lunch. 

‘There was just this constant movement, energy and fun,’ she added, ‘and at dinner I was sat next to H’s grandfather and I just thought it was so wonderful and I was like ”we chatted about this and this”… and he [Harry] was like ”you had his bad ear he couldn’t hear anything you were saying” and I was like ”oh… well I though it went really well.’

The Royal Family seemed ‘incredibly impressed’ with Meghan during the early days of their relationship, added Prince Harry.

But the duke also claimed his family thought the relationship with the former Suits actress would never never last.   

‘I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed. Some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves… They were surprised that the ginger could land such a beautiful woman. And such an intelligent woman. 

‘But the fact I was dating an American actress, was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else in the beginning: “Oh, she’s an American actress, this won’t last”.

Meghan added: ‘The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough. There is a big idea of what that looks like from the UK standpoint – Hollywood – and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.’

Elsewhere in the third episode, the Duchess of Sussex said she didn’t know what a royal walkabout was – where royals meet members of the public who have gathered on the streets – before going on her first one.

‘I never saw pictures or videos of a walkabout. Like, what’s a walkabout?’ she said.

Harry explained: ‘I could talk her through as much as I knew from my own experience of what I’d seen. The piece I really didn’t know about was the style, right, and what a woman needed, how they needed to dress and all that.’

Meghan added that before her first walkabout in Nottingham, her zip broke on her ensemble and had to be safety pinned, to which Harry said: ‘The whole thing was just ridiculous.’

The duke recalled: ‘Everybody was just so excited and pleased and happy. And I think people looked at it and went, “Wow, what a breath of fresh air”.

Doria Ragland speaks out for the first time

Meghan Markle’s mother reveals her ongoing support for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex by taking a surprise starring role in the couple’s new Netflix series.

Doria Ragland, 66, who lives in LA and has maintained a close relationship with the couple and her grandchildren, appears in all three episodes released by the streaming giant today. 

Intimate family photos show the grandmother to Archie, three, and Lilibet, one, celebrating key milestones including Archie’s first birthday. 

And in the first half of the second episode, Doria takes centre stage, saying she’s now ready for her voice to be heard on the couple’s story – and revealing how she felt when the world first learned her daughter was dating her a prince.

She tells the series she wanted to share ‘a little bit of my experience as her mom’  – including how she raised the Duchess ‘with a network of women’.

In the first half of the much-anticipated six-part series, the couple aired footage that they began filming in March 2020, in the days after their final royal engagements.

This is the first time Doria has spoken so freely to camera about her daughter’s relationship – showing just how close she remains to the duke and duchess.  

She also reveals she instantly knew Prince Harry was ‘The One’ for her daughter from their first meeting. 

Speaking straight to camera, the mother was quizzed by producers about the first time her daughter told her about her new royal romance back in 2016.

Recalling their phone conversation, Doria says Meghan – who was starring as Rachel Zane in Suits at the time – whispered: ‘Mommy, I’m going out with Prince Harry.’

Doria said: ‘I started whispering [and said] “oh my god!”

During that first call, Meghan told her mother she needed to keep her relationship a secret.

She explained: ‘From the beginning, it was very sort of… nobody could know.’

Doria then went on to share her first impressions of her son-in-law – but didn’t reveal where or when the meeting took place.

She continued: ‘He was this 6’1 handsome man with red hair, [he had] great manners. He was just really nice. They look really happy together.

‘He was The One.’

Meghan Markle claims she was a ‘daddy’s girl’ growing up as Harry declares: ‘She doesn’t have a father’

Meghan Markle has insisted she was a ‘daddy’s girl’ growing up as she recited her childhood poem about divorce in her new Netflix docuseries where Harry said: ‘She doesn’t have a father.’

In the second episode of their new £88m Netflix series, the Duchess of Sussex, 41, explained how she lived with her mother Doria Ragland, 66, during the week before spending her weekends with her father Thomas Markle, 78.

Former makeup artist Doria and ex-cameraman Thomas met on the set of General Hospital and married in 1979 – before then separating when Meghan was six years old.

Describing herself as a ‘daddy’s girl’ as a child, Meghan said: ‘I do remember feeling lonely as a kid and wanting to have more people around.’

This then prompted the duchess to write about her experience as a child of divorced parents when she was 12 years old and a student at Immaculate Heart school in LA. 

She explained: ‘One of the assignments was to write a poem about your life and I remember this poem to this day.

Reciting it word-for-word, Meghan began: ‘Two houses, two homes, two kitchens, two phones.

‘Two coaches where I lay, two places where I stay. Moving, moving here and there, from Monday to Friday, I’m everywhere. 

‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that bad but often times it makes me sad. I want to live that nuclear life with a happy dad and his loving wife.

‘A picket fence, a shaggy dog, a fireplace with a burning log. But it’s not real, it’s just a dream, I cannot cry or even scream. 

‘So here I sit with cat number three, life would be easy if there were two of me.’

She then proceeded to share a home movie clip from 1993 from when she took a fishing trip with her estranged father Thomas Markle. 

She added: ‘My dad lived alone, he had two adult children who had moved out of his house.

‘I was a daddy’s girl my whole life and I was with him a lot.’

After Thomas was unable to travel from his home in Mexico to Windsor for the couple’s 2018 wedding, the Duchess of Sussex wrote a letter to her father asking for him to stop giving press interviews.

The 78-year-old claims he has never met his grandchildren Archie, three, and Lili, one.

Elsewhere in the clip, Prince Harry opens about the effect Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ divorce had on him.

He explained: ‘I think most children who are the product of divorced parents have a lot in common – no matter what your background is.

‘Being pulled from one place to another or maybe your parents are competitive, or you’re in one place longer than you want to be and you’re in another less than you want to be.’

 

Meghan Markle reveals she was ‘bare foot’ and wearing ripped jeans when she first met Prince William and Kate

Meghan Markle revealed she was ‘bare foot’ and wearing ripped jeans when she first met Prince William and Kate.

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, admitted she didn’t realise the ‘formality’ carries through behind closed doors and revealed she is a ‘hugger’ which she didn’t realise was ‘jarring for some Brits’.

In the explosive new Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan admitted she was ‘surprised’ that there is a ‘forward facing way of being and then you close the door’.

She said: ‘Even when Will and Kate came over and I was meeting her for the first time I remember I was in ripped jeans, I was bare foot, like I was a hugger, I have always been a hugger I didn’t realise that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.

‘I started to understand that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside, that there is a forward facing way of being and then you close the door and think OK we can relax now, but that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me.’ 

The couple had been reported to have tried to push it back to 2023 despite the streaming giant paying them a rumoured $100million (£88million) for the fly-on-the-wall series. 

There have been mixed reports, with the couple reportedly ‘at odds’ with the production staff on their Netflix docuseries because the ‘panicked’ pair want to make ‘such extensive edits’ that the team believe the project could be ‘shelved indefinitely’.

King Charles and Prince William are poised to issue a ‘swift and robust’ response to any unjust claims in Harry and Meghan’s series – but William and his wife Kate are not likely to watch it themselves, sources have said.

Prince Harry says Meghan and Diana are ‘so alike’ as Netflix series shows touching moment Archie looks at a portrait of his late grandmother

One of the most touching moments viewers of Harry and Meghan’s new Netflix series are privy to is the couple’s son cooing over a photo of his late grandmother, Princess Diana. 

The emotional footage, shown in the opening episode of the new £100million series sees Archie, now three, as a baby touching a black and white portrait of Princess Diana.  

Meghan is seen pointing to the picture of Diana on the wall of their Montecito home to a baby Archie saying: ‘That’s grandma Diana.’ 

The couple say that they’re determined to keep the late royal’s memory alive for their children – as Harry also reveals in the first episode how he felt the British public ‘swept him up’ following his mother’s untimely death in August 1997, and says Meghan is ‘so similar’ to his late mother. 

However, while the Duke of Sussex says his own childhood was ‘filled with laughter, filled with happiness and filled with adventure’, he admits that he’s bereft of memories of his mother.

He told series makers: ‘I don’t have many early memories of my mum. It was almost like internally I’ve blocked them out. But I always remember her laugh, her cheeky laugh.

‘And she always said to me, if you get into trouble just don’t get caught. And I’ll always be that cheeky person inside.’ 

In the first three episodes of the series, which was released globally at 8am this morning, Prince Harry talks frequently of his late mother, saying the royal, who was killed in 1997, is ‘so similar’ to his wife. 

He told the series: ‘So much of who Meghan is, is so similar to my mum.

‘She has the same compassion, empathy and confidence – she has this warmth about her.’ 

The royal also spoke about his ‘private’ grief for his mother, saying that he mourned her loss in private and had to be ‘stoic’ and claimed he had to ‘wear two hats’ after her untimely death in 1997 when he was aged 12.

He added: ‘The  UK literally swept me and William up as their children.

But he said: ‘The expectation to see me and William out and about was really hard for the two of us.’

The duke lifted the lid on his own initial fears about marrying, saying he feared history would repeat itself. 

Harry revealed he was ‘scared of Meghan getting driven away by the press’ and that many of his relationships didn’t last more than a few months. 

Sharing details of the early days of the relationship saying: ‘You can see the suffering of the women who marry into this institution, when I got to meet M I didn’t want her to be driven away, so at the beginning I knew to make this work I had to keep it as quiet as possible.’

Meghan went on to say: ‘At the beginning our relationship was a treasure, it was relaxed and easy.’

Harry and Meghan wore penguin costumes to their engagement party – but have they changed their story about how they met?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have revealed intimate details about the early days of their relationship in their new Netflix documentary – including how they used disguises and enjoyed a private engagement party.

The Duke, 38, and Duchess of Sussex, 41, who are now based in the US with their children Archie, three, and Lilibet, one, opened up about their pre-marriage life on the six-part docuseries, with the first three episodes released today.

Meghan revealed how she had planned a hot girl summer in 2016 – but Harry was the ‘plot twist’ when they encountered each other in July, with the Prince revealing that the couple met over Instagram.

However, this snippet shared by the couple in episode one, was in contrast to the ‘how we met story’ they previously shared, according to royal fans.

The first picture Prince Harry ever saw of his future wife was a snap of Meghan with a Snapchat dog filter on. They then talked over FaceTime for some time as they got to know each other.

Harry said: ‘Meghan and I met over Instagram. I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them.’

‘Oh gosh, isn’t that whole thing, it’s got like doggy ears,’ a laughing Meghan said, before Harry added: ‘That was the first thing, “I was like who is that?”. His wife continued: ‘That’s ridiculous.’

Harry messaged their common friend and they mentioned it to Meghan, who stalked the Prince’s Instagram feed to see ‘what he was about’.

However, the couple have previously claimed they met on a blind date. In 2017 Harry told the BBC: ‘It was definitely a set-up – it was a blind date. It was a blind date for sure.’

Viewers questioned the variation, with one person writing on Twitter: ‘Harry and Meghan are remarkably bad at remembering which lies they have told.’

Elsewhere, Harry, 38, who is now based in Montecito, LA, with his wife and their two children, admitted to being late on their first date which took place at 76 Dean Street in Soho, as the couple shared text messages and other details about how they got together before the world knew. 

Harry and Meghan also talked about how they used disguises in order to keep their relationship private and revealed they had a private engagement party in 2017 where the duo and their friends wore animal onesies.

In never-before-seen snaps from the romantic proposal Harry is captured down on one knee surrounded by candles as he holds a ring in his hand.

The prince is kneeling on a blanket in the garden next to Meghan’s adorable pooch and a large bouquet of white roses.

Harry said: ‘I wanted to do it earlier, because I needed to ask permission from my grandmother, I couldn’t do it outside of the UK.

‘I popped a bottle of champagne while she was roasting a chicken and that kind of slightly gave the game away, she was like “you never drink champaign what’s the occasion” and I was like I don’t know, just had it lying around.’

Meghan quipped ‘it was a magnum’ before bursting into laughter.

Harry revealed he got 15 electric candles and placed them around the walled garden of their home to propose to Meghan.

In a candid clip, Meghan calls her friend Jess in excitement and whispered down the phone: ‘Oh my god Jess. It’s happening. He told me not to peek.’

However, in contrast, talking about how the news was given to the world in episode three, Harry and Meghan branded their engagement announcement in 2017 an ‘orchestrated reality show’ 

In the opening segment, Meghan claims ‘we’ve never been allowed to tell our story… until now’, before Harry agrees: ‘We’ve never been allowed to tell our story, that’s the consistency.’ 

Elsewhere, the couple shared glimpses of their long-distance relationship with Harry and Meghan talking over FaceTime in the early stages. 

One snap showed Meghan in bed with her computer, plastered with selfies of her and Harry and her dog by her side.  Another intimate snap showed Harry gazing lovingly at Meghan during a Facetime session. 

Elsewhere, the couple were filmed reminiscing about their first date in a sneak peak of the show released as the first three episodes dropped on Netflix today. 

‘You were late,’ Meghan laughed, saying Harry kept messaging her, writing: “I’m struck in traffic, I’m so sorry, I am in traffic, I am sorry”.’

Harry added he was ‘panicking, I was freaking out, I was so sweaty.’ Meghan said waiting alone for him to show up left her wondering: ‘is this what he does, this I’m not doing.’

She said she wondered if he was ‘one of the guys who has so much of an ego that any girl would wait and sit around for 30 minutes for you’. ‘I was not interested in that,’ she added. 

But her doubts were proved wrong when Harry actually showed up. ‘When I walked in, I was hot and sweaty and a red ball of mash,’ he said. 

Meghan laughed and recounted how Harry was ‘genuinely like so embarrassed you were late.’

The couple also shared a picture of their second date, which took place at Soho House.  

Meanwhile, the couple also discuss keeping their relationship private during the first few months.  They share a number of clips and snaps from the period, including one showing Prince Harry larking about with some swans. 

The clip, which was filmed by Meghan, shows the pair relaxed and enjoying their time together before their relationship became public.

In one highly personal photograph of the couple from the period, Meghan and Harry can be seen enjoying a kiss with one another.

In another intimate revelation in episode one, Meghan and Harry opened about their week together in Botswana at the beginning of their relationship.

Meghan said: ‘So I had one week off [work] and it was the same week, so he said do you want to come to Botswana? I said let me think about it and then I did.’

Harry admitted he was ‘astonished that she said yes’ as he had only met Meghan twice at that point.

He said: ‘This woman that I have only met twice, she’s coming to Botswana and we are going to be living in a tent for 10 days.’

Meghan admitted: ‘I am getting on a plane, and we are living in the middle of a bush, what, like what if we don’t like each other and then we are stuck in the middle of a bush in a tent.’

’So, I get there, this is the first time I have seen him in a month, we are awkward at first, do we kiss, do we hug, and I just remember he handed me a chicken sandwich.

Harry continued: ‘Then we jumped in a land cruiser and off we went. We were sitting next to each other and then we were holding hands and then we squeezed in a kiss, and everything felt natural. We had to get to know each other before the rest of the world knew.’

Speaking in the first episode of the docuseries, Meghan’s friend Lindsay Jill Roth said that in the summer of 2016 Meghan ‘had a few different trips planned, and she was just going to be free.’

Prince Harry revealed the first time he saw a picture of Meghan was a snap of her with a dog filter on. 

‘Meghan and I met over Instagram. I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them, like a Snapchat,’ he recalled. 

‘Oh gosh, isn’t that whole thing, it’s got like doggy ears,’ Meghan said, laughing. 

‘That was the first thing, “I was like who is that?”,’ Harry said, with Meghan adding: ‘That’s ridiculous.’

This set things in motion with Harry messaging their common friend to get to Meghan. 

Meghan admitted she had planned a single girl summer and ‘had a career life and a path and then came H.’ 

‘She sent me an email,’ Meghan said as the text of the message rolled out on screen. 

‘Between you and I thought you might want to know this being newly single and all. 

‘I put our snapchat on Instagram and Prince Haz follows me (he’s a friend) he called me last night dying to meet you. I just might have to set you up,’ the message read. 

Meghan admitted she asked to see the royal feed: ‘So that’s the thing. People say “did you Google him?” “No.”

‘But that’s your homework. You’re like “Hmm let me see what they’re about in their feed, not what someone else says about them but what they are putting out about themselves.” That to me was the best barometre,’ she explained. 

‘Then we got each other’s numbers. We were just constantly in touch, and I went “let’s meet”,’ Harry added.  

A friend of Meghan named Silver Tree said that Meghan texted her saying: ‘Silver you’re not gonna believe this. And basically told me that she was going out on a date with him.

‘We thought it was really funny. Like “In what world does this happen?”,’ she said. 

Reflecting on why he fell for the Hollywood actress, Harry said: ‘I’m my mother’s son – I make decisions from my heart not my head.’

He added: ‘I just opened my heart to see what’s going to happen.

Harry reflected on the ‘unhealthy’ way in which the love story started.

‘Dating became a combination of car cashes, multi surveillance driving and disguises which isn’t particularly a healthy way to start a relationship,’ he said said. 

But Meghan added the couple were also ‘relaxed and easy’ in the early days of getting serious with one another. 

‘It was just relaxed and easy. We just got top know each other. Truly, it was like any other couple: “what do you like to eat, what do you like to cook, what movies do you like?”

The son of Princess Diana also admitted that his experience with past relationships left him unsure of whether he wanted to pursue a new one. 

‘Every relationship that I had, weeks or months, were splattered over the newspapers, the person and their family harassed, their lives turned upside down, by the third or fourth girlfriend, I didn’t know if I wanted this,’ he admitted. 

‘So when I got to meet “M”, I was terrified of her being driven away from me by the media, the media who had turned away so many people away from me. 

‘I knew that the only way it could work was to keep it secret for as long as possible,’ he added. 

The couple were filmed reminiscing about their first date in a sneak peak of the show released as the  first three episodes dropped on Netflix today. 

‘You were late,’ Meghan laughed, saying Harry kept messaging her, writing: “I’m struck in traffic, I’m so sorry, I am in traffic, I am sorry”.’

Harry added he was ‘panicking, I was freaking out, I was so sweaty.’

Meghan said waiting alone for him to show up left her wondering: ‘is this what he does, this I’m not doing.’

She said she wondered if he was ‘one of the guys who has so much of an ego that any girl would wait and sit around for 30 minutes for you. 

‘I was not interested in that,’ she added. 

But her doubts were proved wrong when Harry actually showed up.  

‘When I walked in, I was hot and sweaty and a red ball of mash,’ he said. 

Meghan laughed and recounted how Harry was: ‘genuinely like so embarrassed you were late.’

After their relationship became serious, the couple got engaged in 2017, and kept the news quiet for a few weeks before it was announced to the world. 

A friend recalled how Harry and Meghan threw an engagement party with their friends. 

‘We had a little engagement part and everyone was dressed in animal onesies,’ she said. 

‘And Meghan and Harry were in matching penguin onesies because penguins mate for life. And they were so sweet,’ she added. 

From their engagement evening to snaps at home with the kids: The HIGHLY-intimate moments Harry and Meghan shared

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix’s docuseries is filled with intimate moments that the couple have decided to share with the public. 

The Montecito-based Duke and Duchess of Sussex have lifted the life on their relationship, from its early days spent exchanging dates to their married life and life as parents. 

They’ve opened about their first date in Soho in London, to which Prince Harry, 38, showed up late, and their engagement, where an excited Meghan called a friend to say it was ‘happening.’

Here, Femail has compiled some of the intimate moments the couple have decided to share with the public. 

In the explosive documentary, Harry claims he was ‘brought up by friends in Africa’ in jibe at Charles and says Royal family is ‘part of the problem’ as Netflix show brands Britain ‘racist’ -and shows Meghan taking aim at ‘formal’ Kate and William 

FaceTimes

The couple met over Instagram, with the first picture Prince Harry ever saw of his future wife being a snap of Meghan with a Snapchat dog filter on. They then talked over FaceTime for some time as they got to know each other. 

The docuseries’ first episode shares glimpses of their long-distance relationship with Harry and Meghan talking over FaceTime. 

One snap showed Meghan in bed with her computer, plastered with selfies of her and Harry and her dog by her side. 

Another intimate snap showed Harry gazing lovingly at Meghan during a Facetime session. 

Engagement  

In never-before-seen snaps from the romantic proposal Harry captured down on one knee surrounded by candles as he holds a ring in his hand.

The prince is kneeling on a blanket in the garden next to Meghan’s adorable pooch and a large bouquet of white roses.

Harry said: ’I wanted to do it earlier, because I needed to ask permission from my grandmother, I couldn’t do it outside of the UK.

‘I popped a bottle of champagne while she was roasting a chicken and that kind of slightly gave the game away, she was like “you never drink campaign what’s the occasion” and I was like I don’t know just had it lying around.’

Meghan quipped ‘it was a magnum’ before bursting into laughter.’

Harry revealed he got 15 electric candles and placed them around the walled garden of their home to propose to Meghan.

In a candid clip Meghan calls her friend Jess in exciting and whispered down the phone ‘oh my god Jess. It’s happening. He told me not to peek.’

Meghan showing baby Grandma Diana

In the first episode of the documentary, The Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry shared how they keep ‘grandma Diana’s’ memory alive for their children.

Meghan appears to film her young son as she shows the little boy a photograph of Princess Diana.

Meghan is seen pointing to a picture of Diana on the wall of their Montecito home to a baby Archie saying: ‘That’s grandma Diana.’  

Pregnancy with Lilibet

A snap shared in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s explosive Netflix docuseries shares a sweet glimpse of her pregnancy with Lilibet in 2021. 

In a sweet picture shared in one of the first three episodes released today, viewers can see a pregnant Meghan relaxing on a bed at home in Montecito, California, with her son Archie while she is pregnant with her second child. 

The couple announced Meghan was expecting on Valentine’s Day in 2021 with another intimate picture of their in their garden and Archie. 

Their daughter was born on first July last year and celebrated her first birthday in London with the Queen. 

Meghan kisses Archie on the lips 

Meghan’s close bond with her young son is evident throughout the documentary, with lots of clips and snaps showing the two snuggling and playing together.

However there is one particularly intimate moment, which shows the Duchess scooping her son up to give him a kiss on the lips.

The royal mother-of-two can be seen embracing her son, while he places his hands on either side of her face to share a peck with one another.

The clip, which may have been filmed by Prince Harry, appears to have been taken shortly after the little boy woke up from a nap, with Archie dressed in a sleep sack. 

Archie’s first birthday

The image of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex celebrating their little boy’s big day is among the first royal fans have seen of Archie as the couple have been notoriously private about him.

However in the first episode of their new £100million Netflix documentary, they shared a series of photographs and clips of Archie, including him seeing snow for the first time.

Highly personal clips show him running on the beach, at their home and the couple snuggling up with the toddler.

Archie seeing snow for the first time 

In one adorable moment in the documentary, Meghan, wrapped in a huge green anorak, can be seen whisking her son outside so he can see snow.

The clip is believed to have been filming during the period in which the couple lived briefly in Vancouver Island. 

At the time, in autumn 2019, they had departed from the UK and were said to be taking a brief break from royal duties. 

They went on to stay at a $14million home on Vancouver Island, Canada, around Christmas.

She can be seen saying: ‘Look at the snow! Look at the snow!’ 

The little boy, who was dressed in a bright blue snow suit, can be seen looking up at his mother from her arms.

Archie’s sunset

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s son Archie has been heard making an adorable comment in his American accent in the coupe’s new £88m Netflix documentary.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s eldest child, three, has appeared throughout the first three episodes of the couple’s new TV series, which landed on the streaming service this morning.

In the second episode, Prince Harry is seen taking his son for a walk in an area that appears to be near their home in Montecito.

As his three-year-old son walks ahead of him, Prince Harry is heard singing Heigh-Ho from Snow White. 

Harry wheeling Archie on the suitcase  

Elsewhere, the Duke can be seen wheeling around his young son Archie on top of a suitcase.

The clip appears to have been taken while they were living in Vancouver Island.

Prince Harry and his son appear delighted to be playing together on the hardwood floors of the mansion. 

Shoulder rides with Prince Harry  

In one adorable snapshot of Prince Harry and his young son Archie, the Duke can be seen giving the little boy a shoulder ride.

Dressed in matching white t-shirts, the pair can be seen gazing at one another as they enjoy the warm sunshine. 

It’s one of the clearest photographs royal fans have ever seen of the young boy – who is dressed in a white t-shirt, striped blue trousers and adorable little blue Croc shoes.   

Meghan and Archie heading to the playhouse  

In 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex showed off a lavish playhouse built for their son in the garden of their home in Montecito, California, in an illustration shared on the front of their new Christmas card.

The miniature cottage, designed in a traditional British style, is thought to have been a custom commission and would have cost the couple up to $7,000, toy specialists told FEMAIL.

Featuring a thatched roof and split stable doors, the playhouse has a ‘rustic British cottage’ feel and has ‘English countryside vibes’ that wouldn’t look out of place in the grounds of one of the British royal residences, according to Jamie Stanford, managing director at UK-based toy company Liberty Games.

Indeed the playhouse looks strikingly similar to the Wendy house Prince Harry’s grandmother the Queen was gifted on her sixth birthday by ‘the people of Wales’ that remains in the grounds of Windsor’s Royal Lodge.

But in the new documentary, royal fans were treated to a better shot of the playhouse as Meghan and Archie, dressed in matching outfits, walked towards it.

The mother and son duo, wearing matching cream tops with tanned trousers and brown Ugg-boots, strolled across the lawn to the premium playhouse hand-in-hand in the clip. 

Meghan cuddling up with Archie in the car  

In another intimate black-and-white photograph of the couple with their children, Meghan can be seen cuddling up with her son Archie in the back of a car.

In the snap, the little boy can be seen cuddling up on his mother’s lap as they take a drive.

Archie, who is dressed casually in a shirt and jeans, can be seen holding an American flag in the car.

Meanwhile Meghan holds onto her young son’s head and appears to offer him a kiss.

It is not known when or where the snap was taken.  

Reading with the children 

In one moment in episode two, Prince Harry can be seen snuggling up with one of his children on the sofa of his $14 million mansion.

The Duke appears to be reclining on the sofa while reading a book with a young Archie in the clip.

Meanwhile two of the couple’s dogs, Pula and Guy, are also seen lounging around with the Prince. 

It is not known whether the clip was filmed by Meghan, or by the documentary film makers, but offers an intimate glimpse into the couple’s life at home with their children. 

Trip to Botswana 

In another intimate revelation in episode one of the fascinating documentary Meghan and Harry opened about their week together in Botswana at the beginning of their relationship.

Meghan said: ‘So I had one week off [work] and it was the same week, so he said do you want to come to Botswana? I said let me think about it and then I did.’

Harry admitted he was ‘astonished that she said yes’ as he had only met Meghan twice at the point.

He said: ‘This woman that I have only met twice, she’s coming to Botswana and we are going to be living in a tent for 10 days.’

Meghan admitted: ‘I am getting on a plane, and we are living in the middle of a bush, what, like what if we don’t like each other and then we are stuck in the middle of a bush in a tent.’

’So, I get there, this is the first time I have seen him in a month, we are awkward at first, do we kiss, do we hug, and I just remember he handed me a chicken sandwich.

Harry continued: ‘Then we jumped in a land cruiser and off we went. We were sitting next to each other and then we were holding hands and then we squeezed in a kiss, and everything felt natural. We had to get to know each other before the rest of the world knew.’

Meghan baby feeding chicken

In another moment in the first episode of the series, Meghan can be seen with a baby strapped to her chest as she feeds the chickens at the couple’s $14 million mansion.

The baby can be seen wearing an adorable hat which featured pom-poms on the top.  

While it’s not known whether the baby is Lilibet or a young baby Archie, the couple previously revealed photographs of Archie feeding the chickens.

In the image shared during the explosive Oprah interview, the little boy is seen feeding chickens in the garden of his parents’ $19million home in Montecito, California, whilst wearing jeans, a grey t-shirt and yellow Peppa Pig Hunter wellies. 

Meghan and Harry previously revealed in their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey that they had rescued chickens which were destined to die at a factory farm.

They live in a hut emblazoned with a sign which reads: ‘Archie’s Chick Inn. Established 2021’.

Sneaking around in London 

In the first episode of the Netflix drama, the couple discuss keeping their relationship private during the first few months. 

They share a number of clips and snaps from the period, including one showing Prince Harry larking about with some swans. 

The clip, which was filmed by Meghan, shows the pair relaxed and enjoying their time together before their relationship became public.

In one highly personal photograph of the couple from the period, Meghan and Harry can be seen enjoying a kiss with one another.

The couple met over Instagram, with the first picture Prince Harry ever saw of his future wife being a snap of Meghan with a Snapchat dog filter on. They then talked over FaceTime for some time as they got to know each other.

First dates  

Harry, 38, who is now based in Montecito, LA, with his wife and their two children, admitted to being late on their first date which took place at 76 Dean Street in Soho, as the couple shared text messages and other details about how they got together before the world knew. 

The couple were filmed reminiscing about their first date in a sneak peak of the show released as the  first three episodes dropped on Netflix today. 

‘You were late,’ Meghan laughed, saying Harry kept messaging her, writing: “I’m struck in traffic, I’m so sorry, I am in traffic, I am sorry”.’

Harry added he was ‘panicking, I was freaking out, I was so sweaty.’

Meghan said waiting alone for him to show up left her wondering: ‘is this what he does, this I’m not doing.’

She said she wondered if he was ‘one of the guys who has so much of an ego that any girl would wait and sit around for 30 minutes for you. 

‘I was not interested in that,’ she added. 

But her doubts were proved wrong when Harry actually showed up.  

‘When I walked in, I was hot and sweaty and a red ball of mash,’ he said. 

Meghan laughed and recounted how Harry was: ‘genuinely like so embarrassed you were late.’

The couple also shared a picture of their second date, which took place at Soho House.  

Halloween party with Eugenie and Jack

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shared previously unseen photographs as they partied with Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank on Halloween in their new Netflix documentary.

The Duchess of Sussex previously revealed how she and the Duke went out incognito in Halloween costumes with his cousin and her then boyfriend for a final night out before their relationship was revealed on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

And in the first episode of their new £88 million Harry & Meghan series today, the couple shared a number of photographs from the big night out. 

In one snap, Meghan and Harry can be seen crowding in for a photograph with Eugenie and Jack, as well as another friend, Marcus. 

Prince Harry and Meghan sharing a kiss 

In what appears to be another highly personal photograph of the couple shared by the Duke and Duchess in the documentary, the pair can be seen taking a walk in the English countryside. 

In the snap, the pair shared a kiss while walking Meghan’s dog Bogart through the hills on a grey day.

The couple appeared low-key as they were dressed in matching green wellington boots, jeans and green jackets. 

Meanwhile Meghan, who is known for being ultra-glamorous, appeared make-up free with her hair swept back into a ponytail.

While it is not known when the image was taken, it appears to offer an insight into the couple’s life while living in Windsor.  

Sneaking off to the beach

In the first episode of the docu-series, Prince Harry appears to film intimate footage of the two sneaking off to the beach.

The documentary shows the couple were in Big Sur in California in September 2020. 

Meghan  can be heard saying: ‘We’ve gone rogue’ as she films Prince Harry, while the two share a laugh.

She continued: ‘I feel like we’re doing something so naughty.’

The two could be seen taking a walk to a secluded beach, before she said: ‘Oh my goodness, my love.’ 

Fresh faced Meghan 

The Duchess of Sussex appeared bare-faced and with her hair wrapped in a towel within moments of her Netflix documentary series. 

Meghan Markle, 41, reflected on her decision to step back from royal duties in a clip filmed in Canada, with the duchess shown in a low-key denim shirt and jeans. 

It was a far cry from the usual ultra-glamorous Meghan, who is known for her love of designer brands and highly personal jewellery, the public may be used to seeing. 

 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle son Archie takes centre stage in explosive documentary  

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s son Archie has been given a starring role in his parents’ explosive Netflix documentary. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s three-year-old son has appeared in each of the three episodes of their television series, which landed on Netflix at 8am today. 

In the first episode, the couple shared a touching home video of their son – who was just a few months old at the time – reaching out to touch a photo of Princess Diana hanging up on his nursery wall. 

The footage – which appears to have been filmed on an iPhone in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Frogmore Cottage home – shows Archie babbling away as Meghan says: ‘Who’s that? Hey grandma!’

After her baby son reaches out to touch the black-and-white portrait, Meghan said: ‘Yeah – that’s your Grandma Diana.’

Later on in the episode, the mother-and-son are seen holding hands and running through what looks like the garden of their Montecito home together. 

New never-before-seen images of the couple’s son feature throughout the first episodes, including a selfie Meghan took with her newborn in what appears to be the Frogmore Cottage nursery and another black-and-white image of her reading Archie a story as he sits in her lap. 

What’s more, Meghan also shared a heartwarming photo from when she was pregnant with Lili, who was born in June 2021.

The phone selfies shows Meghan lying back on a bed in what appears to be their Montecito home as Archie rests against her growing baby bump.

In the second episode, the couple then shared a strikingly intimate moment of the mother-of-two appearing visibly emotional as she gives her son a kiss on the lips. 

The footage – which appears to have been taken after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped down as working royals in January 2020 – shows Meghan cuddling her son in a new nursery. 

The Duchess is then heard speaking about being the ‘product of divorce’ as the heartwarming clip plays in the background. 

Moments later, Prince Harry is seen taking his son for a walk in an area that appears to be near their home in Montecito. 

As his three-year-old son walks ahead of him, Prince Harry is heard singing Heigh-Ho from Snow White.

Elsewhere, the toddler is seen happily walking along a path with the family’s black labrador before telling his dad: ‘Archie is running away!’

It then jumps to a clip of the father and son back at their home in Montecito, where Prince Harry is admiring some hummingbirds.

‘We won’t get a chance to be this close to hummningbirds ever again,’ Prince Harry tells his son. As Meghan films them both, Archie then asks: ‘Why?’

Despite asking his toddler to stay quiet and watch the wildlife, the toddler then exclaims: ‘I’ve got a dirty foot mama because I was with you!

Trying her best to stifle her laughter, Meghan tells him: ‘You’ve got a dirty foot, sweetheart. Papa is a birdwatcher so this is a really big moment for him.’

The docu-series then jumps to a clip of Prince Harry reading the their son a storybook on the sofa.

Earlier on in the episode, Prince Harry says off-camera: ‘My son, my daughter, my children are mixed race and I’m really proud of that.

‘When my kids grow up and they back look at this moment and they turn to me, they say, “what did you do in this moment?” I want to be able to give them an answer.’

The image of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex celebrating their little boy’s big day is among the first royal fans have seen of Archie as the couple have been notoriously private about him.

However in the first episode of their new £100million Netflix documentary, they shared a series of photographs and clips of Archie, including him seeing snow for the first time. 

Highly personal clips show him running on the beach, at their home and the couple snuggling up with the toddler.

In one clip, the little boy described a sunset as ‘beautiful’.

In another moment, he can be seen running along as the couple walk around the grounds of their $14million mansion in California. 

Meghan said: ‘We’ve been really conscious about protecting our kids as best we can and also understanding the role they play in this really historical family.’

Another clip shows a baby Archie being rolled around on a suitcase at home, while in another Meghan discusses putting him and his sister Lilibet down for the night.   

‘I felt so ashamed’: Prince Harry reveals in Netflix documentary how wearing Nazi fancy dress costume was ‘biggest mistake of my life’

Prince Harry has said in his new Netflix series that dressing as a Nazi was one of the ‘biggest mistakes’ of his life. 

The Duke of Sussex expressed contrition for his 2005 gaffe, in which he went to a fancy dress party wearing a mock uniform that featured the Nazis’ infamous swastika on his arm and the badge of the German Wehrmacht on his collar.  

The story made global headlines after an image of then 20-year-old Harry in the uniform featured on the front page of The Sun newspaper. 

Speaking in the third episode of his and his wife Meghan Markle’s new Netflix show, Harry expressed his regret and said ‘all I wanted to do was make it right.’ 

He said he met with the Chief Rabbi and also spoke to a Holocaust survivor as part of efforts to repair the damage done by the gaffe. 

At the time, the Chief Rabbi was Jonathan Sacks, who passed away in 2020.  

The Duke of Sussex said: ‘It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. 

‘I felt so ashamed afterwards. 

‘All I wanted to do was make it right. I sat down and spoke to the Chief Rabbi in London, which had a profound impact on me. 

‘I went to Berlin and spoke to a holocaust survivor.

‘I could have got on and ignored it and made the same mistakes over and over in my life, but I learnt from that.’

Harry issued a grovelling apology shortly after the image was published.

He said: ‘I am very sorry if I have caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.’ 

The Duke of Sussex wore the Nazi uniform at a party thrown by Olympic show jumper Richard Meade. 

The theme of the event – held to mark the birthday of Mr Meade’s son Harry – was ‘native and colonial’. 

Harry wore the desert uniform of General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. 

Earlier in the evening he had worn an army-style jacket with a German flag on the arm.

Harry had arrived with his elder brother Prince William, who reportedly dressed in a skin-tight black leotard with leopardskin pattern and a matching leopardskin tail and paws. 

One guest told the Daily Mail afterwards: ‘If this was his idea of a joke then it went down like a lead balloon.’  

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle share previously unseen snaps from Halloween party with Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shared previously unseen photographs as they partied with Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank on Halloween in their new Netflix documentary.

The Duchess of Sussex previously revealed how she and the Duke went out incognito in Halloween costumes with his cousin and her then boyfriend for a final night out before their relationship was revealed on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

And in the first episode of their new £88 million Harry & Meghan series today, the couple shared a number of photographs from the big night out. 

In one snap, Meghan and Harry can be seen crowding in for a photograph with Eugenie and Jack, as well as another friend, Marcus. 

Speaking about the event in 2016, Meghan recalled going to a Halloween party with Prince Harry.

Prince Harry was dressed in a gas mask, while Meghan also pulled her hat low over her face. 

The couple said they ‘wanted to pull the pin on the fun grenade.’ 

Meghan said: ‘His cousin Eugenie, her boyfriend Jack and my friend Marcus were there too. It was so great, just silly fun.’

Meghan has previously spoken of the event during an appearance on the  Ellen DeGeneres last year. 

Speaking about the event in 2016, she told Ellen: ‘He came to see me in Toronto and our friends and his cousin Eugenie and now her husband Jack, they came as well, and the four of us snuck out in Halloween costumes to just have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that we were a couple. It was a post-apocalypse theme, so we had all this very bizarre costuming on, and we were able to just have one fun final night out.’ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Duke of Sussex said it is important that he and the Duchess of Sussex ‘don’t repeat the same mistakes’ their parents made.

Episode two of Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan showed the duke walking with his son, Archie, who was speaking with an American accent.

Harry said: ‘My son, my daughter, my children are mixed race, and I’m really proud of that.

‘When my kids grow up, and they look back at this moment, and they turn to me and say ‘What did you do in this moment?’ I want to be able to give them an answer.

‘I think it is such a responsibility as human beings that, if you bring a small person into this world, that you should be doing everything you can to make the world a better place for them.

‘But, equally, what’s most important for the two of us is to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes that perhaps our parents made.’

After the initial opening scenes and introduction, the first episode of Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan opens with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex sitting next to each other on a sofa.

Harry can be heard saying: ‘I’m nervous. Why am I nervous?’

The couple are shown footage of Meghan from Hello! Canada, filmed in October 2015, in which she is asked who she prefers out of Harry and his brother William.

In the footage, she laughs and says ‘I don’t know’ before the interviewer appears to say ‘Harry?’ and Meghan then says ‘Harry? Sure.’

It cuts back to the couple on the sofa and Harry, who found the footage funny, says it was ‘less than a year’ before they met.

Meghan then says sorry to Harry and adds: ‘I’d of course choose you.’

Harry replies ‘OK, great’, adding: ‘This just again shows how little you knew. And look at how far we’ve come.’

Episode three of Harry & Meghan sees the Duke of Sussex discussing his decade-long stint in the army and describing how that time ‘burst’ the bubble of his life in the royal family.

After footage of him meeting US servicemen and women, Harry says: ‘Working and living with normal people – and I fully appreciate my life is not normal – certainly has an effect on you. The bubble within the bubble that I was brought up in got burst.’

The Duke of Sussex said he and the Duchess of Sussex were keen ‘not to make the same mistakes our parents did’ while bringing up their children.

In part two of the couple’s tell-all Nextflix documentary series, Harry and Meghan spoke about how the breakdown of their parents’ marriages had affected their approach to raising son Archie, three, and daughter Lilibet, one.

Meghan said: ‘There’s so much from anyone’s childhood that you bring with you into the present. Especially when you’re the product of divorce.’

Harry added: ‘What’s most important to the two of us is to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes that perhaps our parents made.’

‘I think most kids who are the product of divorced parents have a lot in common, no matter what your background is.

‘Being pulled from once place to another or maybe your parents are competitive, or you’re in one place longer than you want to be or in another place less than you want to be. There’s all sorts of pieces to that.’

The Duke of Sussex has spoken of being ‘pulled from one place to another’ during his parents’ divorce.

Speaking in episode two of the six-part Harry & Meghan Netflix docuseries, released on Thursday, he said: ‘I think most kids who are the product of divorced parents have a lot in common, no matter what your background is.

‘Being pulled from one place to another, or maybe your parents are competitive, or you’re in one place longer than you want to be in, you’re in another place less than you want to be…

‘There’s all sorts of pieces to that.’

The first episode of the Harry & Meghan documentary shows footage of Montecito, California, in 2021, including a striking red sky.

The Duchess of Sussex can be heard saying: ‘Look at that. How would you describe it, Archie?’

And Archie can be heard saying the word ‘beautiful’, and Meghan replies: ‘It’s so beautiful.’

Phone footage filmed by the duchess shows the family out walking, with Archie running along in front and the Duke of Sussex pushing a pram.

Harry says: ‘This is a great love story. And the craziest thing is that I think this love story is only just getting started.

‘She sacrificed everything that she ever knew, the freedom that she had, to join me in my world, and then pretty soon after that I end up sacrificing everything that I know to join her in her world.’

The Duke of Sussex said there is a ‘huge level of unconscious bias’ in the royal family during episode three of his Netflix series Harry & Meghan.

The documentary referenced when Princess Michael of Kent wore a Blackamoor-style brooch to an event the Duchess of Sussex attended in 2017.

Harry said: ‘In this family, sometimes you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. There is a huge level of unconscious bias.

‘The thing with unconscious bias, it is actually no one’s fault. But once it has been pointed out, or identified within yourself you then need to make it right.

‘It is education. It is awareness. It is a constant work in progress for everybody, including me.’

Harry then spoke about when he wore a Nazi uniform to a private party in 2005.

He said: ‘It was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right.’

 

In episode two of Harry & Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex spoke about how their relationship survived the increased media attention.

Meghan said: ‘When all of that started happening, my friends and people in my life who love me and care about me were like ‘Is he worth this? Like, we know you’re happy and we know that you love him. Is this worth this? Look what is happening to your life.’

‘We just did everything we could to be there for each other. We had to stay connected. We wouldn’t have survived it if we weren’t.’

Harry said: ‘I don’t know how we did it, but we did it. Most of the time we were on the other side of the Atlantic. She was in Canada working, I would try and get over to see her, and she would come over here and see me a hell of a lot more.’

The Netflix documentary showed text messages between the couple on organising trips back and forth to see each other as Meghan described landing in the UK, getting harassed and going to hunker down in Kensington Palace until she left.

Harry said: ‘Dating became this combination of car chases, anti-surveillance driving and disguises, which isn’t a particularly healthy way to start a relationship, but we always came at it with as much humour as possible.

‘Whenever we saw each other we would just give each other a massive hug and try and have as much of a normal life as possible.’

The Duchess of Sussex said she found the ‘formality’ of being in the royal family ‘surprising’.

Speaking in episode two of the six-part Harry & Meghan Netflix docuseries, she said: ‘When Will and Kate came over, and I met her for the first time, they came over for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot.

‘I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger, I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.

‘I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside.

‘There is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and go ‘You can relax now’, but that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.’

The Duke of Sussex described during episode two how Meghan meeting the Queen for the first time was a ‘shock to the system’.

Harry said: ‘My grandmother was the first senior member of the family that Meghan met. She had no idea what it all consisted of so it was a bit of a shock to the system for her.’

Meghan said: ‘There wasn’t like some big moment of ‘Now you’re going to meet my grandmother’. I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before.

‘We were in the car and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch, and he’s like ‘Oh, my grandmother’s here, we’re going to meet her after church.’ And I remember we were in the car driving up and he’s like ‘You know how to curtsy, right?’ And I just thought it was a joke.’

Harry said: ‘How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you will need to curtsy. Especially to an American. That’s weird.’

Meghan added: ‘Now I’m starting to realise ‘This is a big deal’. I mean, Americans will understand this… We have medieval times, dinner and tournament. It was like that.’

In episode three of Harry & Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex reflected on the time leading up to their wedding in May 2018, claiming ‘salacious’ stories were ‘planted’ by the press.

She said: ‘We were playing whack-a-mole. Every day it was like ‘Wait, another one popped up – wait, stop, another story’. Constant. They were going through the woodwork and pulling out people to create and plant the most salacious stories that they could. Then it started to get scary.’

The documentary then features headlines from Australia’s New Idea, the US’s National Enquirer and the UK’s Mirror about their tightened security after a letter was sent holding white powder, sparking an anthrax scare.

Meghan adds: ‘It was on the heels of those terrorist attacks, so there is so much concern at the wedding. It was so scary. They were talking about getting snipers.’

She said that ‘behind the scenes’ she was ‘just turtling’.

In the first episode of Harry & Meghan, the Duke of Sussex said a friend told them they should document this particular period of their lives.

He said: ‘A friend of ours actually suggested that we document ourselves through this period of time.

‘With all of the misinformation that was going on out there, especially about us and the departure, it seemed like a really sensible idea.’

Meghan is then seen speaking into her phone camera and seems to ask if this is the first video she has filmed, saying: ‘I don’t know. We’ve talked about it. We keep talking about it, because we know that, right now it might not make sense, but one day it will make sense.’

In interview footage, she says: ‘We’ve been really conscious of protecting our kids as best as we can and also understanding the role that they play in this really historical family.’

The Duke of Sussex has said his wife being an American actress ‘clouded’ his family’s view of her.

Meghan, talking about meeting the Queen during episode two of their Netflix documentary, said: ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

Harry went on: ‘I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed, some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves.

‘Because I think they were surprised. They were surprised that a ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman.

‘But the fact that I was dating an American actress was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else at the beginning, ‘oh she’s an American actress; this won’t last’.’

Meghan added: ‘The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough. There is a big idea of what that looks like from the UK standpoint – Hollywood – and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.’

The opening credits of the documentary feature footage of Harry and Meghan in their carriage on their wedding day and an image of the late Queen in a carriage.

They also show the King at his investiture as Prince of Wales, Harry as a child with his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Meghan facing into a sea of Union flags.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are shown introducing their son, Archie, to the media, Harry as a young man, the couple looking lovingly at one another, and what appear to be photo-booth style pictures of the pair having fun.

The image of Harry and Meghan showing Archie to the Queen, watched by Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, is also included. The opening credits also show Harry and Meghan enjoying the outdoors with their children.

Footage of the couple introducing son Archie to the media then plays with Harry’s voice saying: ‘My job is to keep my family safe. By the nature of being born into this position and with everything else that comes with it and the level of hate that is being stirred up in the last three years especially against my wife, and my son, I’m generally concerned for the safety of my family.’

Meghan can then be seen again, towel wrapped around her hair, saying: ‘I just really want to get to the other side of all of this.’

There is a pause where she sits silently and then she appears emotional and says: ‘I don’t know what to say anymore.’

In the opening of the first episode, Harry says: ‘So like duty and service and I feel as though being part of this family it is my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.’

Meghan says: ‘Unfortunately, in us standing for something, they are destroying us.’

As the piano music continues to play, Harry says: ‘This isn’t just about our story. This has always been so much bigger than us.

‘No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth. The institution knows the full truth. And the media know the full truth because they’ve been in on it.

‘And I think anybody else in my situation would have done exactly the same thing.’

Speaking about the press coverage of Meghan’s background during the second episode of Harry & Meghan, her mother Doria Ragland said paparazzi would take pictures of deprived neighbourhoods in Los Angeles.

Ms Ragland told the Netflix documentary: ‘They would take pictures of different parts of say Skid Row and say that is where I lived and that is where she was from.’

‘It was horrible,’ Meghan said.

‘But I continued to hold the line. Say nothing.’

The Duke of Sussex has said members of the royal family asked why the Duchess of Sussex should be ‘protected’ when they questioned newspaper headlines about her.

Speaking in episode two of Harry & Meghan, the six-part Netflix docuseries released on Thursday, he said: ‘The direction from the Palace was don’t say anything.

‘But what people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well.

‘So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like ‘my wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?”

‘I said ‘the difference here is the race element’.’

Buckingham Palace has been braced for the worst after two trailers revealed the couple 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 said to be ready to respond to the series if necessary. 

King Charles and Prince William are said to be 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 Royal Family believes the series will actually by slim on new revelations.

A source told The Mirror: ‘There’s a real feeling in the camp that Harry and Meghan are making a lot of noise and there isn’t much more to say.

‘But preparations are being made for all outcomes, especially if there are unjust accusations being made.’

Members of the Sussexes’ now defunct household are also said to be ‘seething with rage’ over trailers for the six-part documentary. 

Officials from both Buckingham and Kensington Palace will watch the first three episodes of the series on Thursday morning.

But it is understood that the Prince and Princess of Wales will refuse to watch the first three episodes of the documentary.

An insider also told The Sun that the royals are reluctant to engage in a tit-for-tat battle over the series.

They said: ‘If there are parts which are blatantly wrong, then it is only right that they are corrected.

‘The trailers already have some glaring errors and misrepresentations, which doesn’t bode well for the full series. But the plan is to keep schtum and carry on.’

But sources told the newspaper they are unlikely to respond until the full series has been released – due next Thursday.

Aides are understood to have been briefed by the King and Prince of Wales to issue a ‘swift and robust’ response if required.

 ‘If there is a need to respond to anything in the upcoming series then you can be assured that response will be swift and robust.’

It is understood that Netflix offered a right of reply to senior royal to allow them the chance to respond to any allegations featured in the series.

But Buckingham and Kensington Palace both deny receiving any such approach.

Harry and Meghan, meanwhile, have vowed that it is just the ‘beginning’ and have earlier spoken of ‘sweeping down walls of oppression’.