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BBC news presenter Mishal Husain is known for her cool, calm manner, even when grilling the most bumptious politicians on Radio 4’s Today programme.
So, her decision to respond publicly to the Duchess of Sussex’s criticism of a 2017 television interview conducted by Ms Husain – to mark Meghan and Harry’s engagement – has made waves.
‘Mishal is not easily riled, to put it mildly, so this is a notable intervention,’ one BBC source tells me. ‘She clearly felt strongly about it.’
The criticism came in the 2022 Netflix ‘docuseries’, Harry & Meghan, when the duchess dismissively suggested that Husain’s interview with the couple had been an ‘orchestrated reality show’.
Meghan’s body language, which saw her lean across her fiancé at times, made her seem the dominant half of the partnership, writes Richard Eden
‘It was, you know, rehearsed,’ she said. ‘So we did the thing out with the press and then we went right inside, took the coat off, sat down and did the interview. So it was all in that same moment.’
According to a senior royal source, Meghan had complained that the presenter ‘wasn’t empathetic enough, wasn’t warm enough’ to conduct the interview.
It was said that the former actress would have preferred her fellow American Oprah Winfrey to have been selected for the job.
Now, writing in the August edition of Saga magazine, Husain suggests that the attack on her interview left her astonished.
And that, far from Meghan being the naive victim of some co-ordinated Establishment plot, she believed the royal couple had given significant thought to what they would tell the listeners.
‘When the Duchess of Sussex said that my engagement interview with her and Harry was an “orchestrated reality show” I didn’t know what to make of it,’ Husain writes.
‘They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular.’
Husain adds that there was no hint of the trouble to come later – when the couple chose to quit royal duties.
‘There was nothing that pointed to what would happen,’ she writes. ‘It was two people who were full of joy in each other and life.’
After the Netflix series was broadcast, Husain was asked about Meghan’s comments by a colleague on the Today programme.
Borrowing a phrase from Queen Elizabeth’s response to the duchess’s allegations of racism within the Royal Family, she said wryly: ‘Recollections may vary.’
This week, I spoke to sources who worked for the Royal Household at the time of Husain’s interview in 2017 and they said the duchess’s ‘performance’ should have raised more concerns than it did.
Lady Diana Spencer, who was 19 at the time, was painfully shy when interviewed standing alongside Prince Charles in 1981, says Richard Eden
Kate Middleton, then 28, looked nervous when ITV’s Tom Bradby put questions to them at Kensington Palace in 2010, Richard Eden writes
‘At the time, there was so much excitement about the engagement that no one really questioned some of Meghan’s comments,’ one source says. ‘But, if you watch it again now, some of her responses seem insincere and her body language is telling.’
Meghan undoubtedly cut a far more confident figure than had other women marrying into the Royal Family.
Lady Diana Spencer, who was 19 at the time, for example, was painfully shy when interviewed standing alongside Prince Charles in 1981.
Kate Middleton, then 28, looked nervous when ITV’s Tom Bradby put questions to them at Kensington Palace in 2010. She let Prince William take the lead.
In contrast, Meghan, then 36, seemed more confident than Harry in their interview. She was, after all, an experienced actress.
Her body language, which saw her lean across her fiancé at times, made her seem the dominant half of the partnership.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is hard not to hear some of her answers differently now.
For example, Meghan told Husain that she had met Harry on a ‘blind date’ with Harry adding: ‘It was a blind date, for sure.’
However, in the Netflix series, the duke says he got to know his future wife via a photo-sharing app.
‘Meghan and I met over Instagram,’ he explained.
In 2017, Meghan told Husain that, when a mutual friend helped organise the ‘blind date’, she had known little about Harry.
‘Because I’m from the States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the Royal Family,’ she mused.
‘I didn’t know much about him and so the only thing that I had asked her when she said she wanted to set us up was — I had one question. I said, ‘Well, is he nice?’
However, it subsequently emerged that Meghan had taken a close interest in the Royal Family since childhood.
Indeed, she had been pictured posing outside Buckingham Palace as a 15-year-old tourist with her then friend Ninaki Priddy, who remarked of her marriage to Harry: ‘I’m not shocked at all. It’s like she has been planning this all her life.
Now, Husain suggests that the attack on her interview (pictured) left her astonished
‘[Meghan] gets exactly what she wants and Harry has fallen for her play. She was always fascinated by the Royal Family.
‘She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0. She will play her role ably, but my advice to him is to tread cautiously.’
As an adult, Meghan was so fascinated by royal news that she would comment on it through her now-defunct blog, The Tig.
The more I look back at that 2017 interview with Mishal Husein, the more it seems that the truly ‘orchestrated’ thing about it was, in fact, the performance by the duchess.
In the US drama Suits, she played the part of paralegal Rachel Zane – with some success.
But she found a new role at Kensington Palace: the naive outsider marrying into the Windsors. I would argue that she was rather less convincing.
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