Biggest revelations from Harry and Meghan
Some say those killed were unarmed activists
Weeks of media hype reached a crescendo Sunday when CBS aired Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan, who said she was so close to suicide during her time in the palace that she couldn’t be left alone.
“I didn’t want to be alive anymore,” she said, tearing up. “I was ashamed to admit it to Harry, but I knew if I didn’t say it, I would do it. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. It was clear, it was real, it was frightening, and it was a constant thought.”
Meghan couldn’t get any help from “the institution” of the monarchy, because she wasn’t an employee, she was told. She couldn’t check into a hospital because that wouldn’t look good. “You can’t just call an Uber to the palace,” she half-joked. She even consulted one of the late Princess Diana’s close friends, because “who else would understand what’s it’s like on the inside” of the royal family?
She and Harry went to a performance at the Royal Albert Hall one night, but Meghan told Winfrey she went only because she was afraid of being left alone. She wept when the lights went down and smiled when the lights went up.
“I can’t be left alone; I’m afraid of what I might do,” she said, starting to cry.
More of the biggest revelations from the interview:
Bombshell revelations: Palace worried ‘how dark’ Archie’s skin would be
“In those months when I was pregnant, and at the same time there was talk about no title, no security, and also conversations about how dark his skin might be when born,” she said. Who is saying that? Winfrey demanded. Meghan wouldn’t answer, because “that would be very damaging to them,” and later, Harry also refused to discuss it. Winfrey said Monday on “CBS This Morning” that Harry said neither the queen nor Prince Philip were involved in those conversations.
But “there was some real obvious signs, before we even got married, that this was going to be really hard,” Harry said.
In another revelation, Meghan told Winfrey she and Harry did not choose to forgo a title for baby Archie. She said she was told that the rules prevented it, at
least until his grandfather ascended the throne.
But she shocked Winfrey when she said they were told that the baby could not get royal security without a title and said unnamed palace officials raised “concerns” about the color of the baby’s skin.
Meghan Markle, Prince Harry secretly wed early
Other revelations in the two-hour interview, conducted last month near Santa Barbara, California, included word that Meghan, 39, and Harry, 36, were secretly married three days before their 2018 royal wedding, by the Archbishop of Canterbury in their backyard.
Duchess Kate ‘made me cry,’ Meghan says
That rumor that Meghan, a former actress, made her sister-in-law, Duchess Kate of Cambridge, cry in a dust-up before the wedding? Not true; it was the other way around, Meghan told Winfrey, who asked her about the story that whirled around the internet six months after the wedding. Meghan didn’t want to reveal too many details of the incident, because Kate “is a good person” and she wanted to protect her privacy.
“She made me cry. It hurt my feelings,” she said, confirming that the subject was flower-girl dresses. “But it was a really hard week before the wedding. She was upset and apologized and brought flowers and wrote a note. I’ve forgiven her. What’s hard to get over is that I was being blamed for something I
didn’t do but happened to me.” Everyone in the palace knew it wasn’t true, she said. “Why not say that?” Winfrey asked. “Good question,” she replied.
Harry and Meghan reveal baby’s gender: It’s a girl
The couple also revealed that their second baby, due this summer, will be a girl: a sister for Archie, who turns 2 in May. “Having a boy and then a girl: What more could you ask for?” said Harry, who had joined Meghan for the interview.
What would Diana say?
The couple also denied “blindsiding” Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, with their plan to step back from senior working royal roles. “I have too much respect for her,” Harry said.
He said they left because they were refused support after asking for help, and because of a constant “barrage” of media criticism. Harry said he was afraid of “history repeating itself,” a reference to the experiences of his mother, the late Princess Diana.
When asked how Diana would view what’s happened with her younger son and his wife, Harry replied: “I think she would feel very angry with how this has panned out and also very sad. All she’d ever want is for us to be happy.”
What about his relationships with his family? He said he’s still close to the queen and talks to her regularly. Is his father, Prince Charles, taking his calls?
Harry admitted to feeling “let down” by the Prince of Wales. “Because he’s been through something similar, he knows what pain feels like and Archie is his grandson,” he said. “At the same time, I will always love him. I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship.”
As for brother Prince William, he repeated what he has said before. “I love him to bits, we’ve been through hell together, we had a shared experience, but we’re on different paths.” Later, he conceded: “The relationship is spaced at the moment. And, you know, time heals all things, hopefully.”
Harry acknowledged that he was cut off from his family’s money in the first quarter of 2020 and that he was able to move to the U.S. only because of his inheritance from his mother. He said he wanted to make only enough money to pay for the security needed to protect his family, who moved to a luxury estate in Montecito, California, and signed major deals with Netflix and Spotify.
The interview wasn’t without moments of lightness. When explaining how unprepared Meghan felt on joining the royal family, she said “there’s no class” on how to be royal. She described having to learn on the fly how to curtsy to the queen, and having to look up things she didn’t know.
“I had to Google stuff at night, like the words to the (British) national anthem,” she said.
Thomas Markle lied to Meghan about working with tabloids
Leading up to Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, arose as a major figure in British tabloids. Around that time, Meghan said, she called her dad, who denied working with any of them. She told Thomas if he told the truth they could ask royal officials to try to kill the narrative surrounding them, but that doing so would prevent them from using “that same leverage to protect our own kids one day.”
“I’m talking about (his) grandchildren,” Meghan said. “I look at Archie … and I genuinely can’t imagine doing anything to intentionally cause pain to my child. I can’t imagine it. So it’s hard for me to reconcile that.”
She also touched on a supposed “tellall book” in the works by her half-sister, Samantha, who Meghan says only started using the last name “Markle” again when she started dating Harry. She said the two did not grow up together and last saw her “18 or 19 years ago.”
MANILA, Philippines – Philippine police backed by military forces killed nine people over the weekend in a series of raids against suspected communist insurgents, with authorities saying the suspects opened fire first. Others, however, said those killed were unarmed activists.
Police said Monday that all of those killed were associated with “communist terrorist groups” and had shot at officers while being served search warrants. The suspects died before arriving at hospitals, police said.
Police served at least 24 search warrants, mostly for illegal firearms and explosives, in a number of locations in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Rizal provinces over the weekend. Police said six other suspects were arrested and nine escaped.
The killings immediately drew condemnations by left-wing and rights groups, which demanded an independent investigation into what some described as executions of legitimate activists being carried out under the guise of a crackdown on rebels who have been fighting a Marxist insurgency for the past five decades.
The Department of Justice will investigate the deaths, officials said.
Cristina Palabay of the rights group Karapatan said many of those killed belonged to political and workers’ groups. She said one slain couple who led a fishermen’s group were gunned down by police as their 10year-old son watched while hiding under a bed.
National police chief Gen. Debold Sinas denied the suspects were victims of extra-judicial killings.
“Those were legitimate operations because they were covered by search warrants,” Sinas told reporters.
Renato Reyes of the left-wing alliance Bayan said the Supreme Court should look into what he said was an alarming pattern of authorities providing questionable or fabricated details about suspected criminals to judges, who then issue warrants.
“A policeman makes a wild allegation that you are in possession of just one hand grenade and a judge will sign a search warrant that could lead to your arrest or death,” Reyes said in a statement. “That is how bad things have become. Search warrants have been weaponized to go after unarmed activists.”
Palabay blamed President Rodrigo Duterte, who she said encouraged military and police personnel to commit acts with impunity through his regular televised threats to kill insurgents and drug traffickers.