Trust me, this is the real Harry and Meghan we’re seeing at last
As someone who formed a bond with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Bryony Gordon says their tell-all Netflix series rings true
There are few certainties in life: death, taxes, the terrible and endless fear that England are going to crash out of a major football tournament on penalties. This week, we can safely add one more to the list: the tabloids being outraged at Harry and Meghan’s titular documentary series on Netflix. “Orf with their heads!” is more or less the verdict – or at the very least, orf with their titles. Yesterday, as the country faced freezing conditions, a cost of living crisis, and a set of strikes that threaten to ruin Christmas, the Conservative MP Bob Seely was busy trying to table a Private Member’s Bill that would give the Privy Council power to downgrade the couple’s status by adapting the 1917 Titles Deprivation Act, last used against aristocrats who sided with the Germans during the First and Second World Wars. Which, if nothing else, at least makes as compelling an argument about the occasional lunacy of this country as any number of interview hours with historian David Olusoga could.
As it turns out, the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight could have saved himself the trouble of trying to table this motion by simply watching the first volume of Liz Garbus’s Netflix series, at which point he would have realised that Harry and Meghan have beaten him to it, by removing their titles themselves. Throughout the three hours currently available on the streaming service, there is none of the pomp or ceremony that the tabloids, and various politicians, are so keen to strip the couple of today. Here we get to see H and M – or Haz and Meg – rather than the Duke of Duchess of Sussex, who have variously been portrayed as hypocritical, money-grabbing, deceitful, and at one point even partly responsible for fuelling drought, murder and human rights abuses after Meghan once had the temerity to admit to liking avocado on toast. “That’s one loaded piece of toast,” she wryly observed in last year’s sit down with Oprah Winfrey. But if that interview had more in the way of headline-grabbing revelations, I think that Garbus’s documentary series has come the closest to capturing the couple as they really are in private.
And I have witnessed them in private quite a lot. Over the past six or so years, I have rather unexpectedly formed a bond with the couple, a bond that I could never have predicted as a member of the media myself. I have had lunch with them, enjoyed transatlantic Zooms with them, and even been round to their house for Sunday afternoon tea. And what I have seen during those encounters was reflected pretty faithfully in the three episodes I have watched so far: the Harry and Meghan I know personally are the Harry and Meghan portrayed on screens for anyone with a Netflix subscription to see. It is neither contrived nor fake. What you see on your telly is what you get in real life.
Here we see them as a pretty normal couple in pretty abnormal circumstances. To me, it turns on its head the ever-so-slightly sexist narrative which says that Meghan somehow brainwashed Harry and took him away from his family. It shows what I have long suspected: that he has probably wanted out from the crazy cult of royalty since he was a schoolboy at Eton, and perhaps even as early on as at prep school, when as a nine-yearold boy he was forced to pose for photographs with his brother and cousins while on a skiing holiday in Klosters. In free-spirited Meghan, he not only met his match, but also the catalyst for a process that had been in place since childhood.
The series has prompted many to suggest that the pair have merely swapped one gilded cage for another. It will not surprise Harry and Meghan that the programme has been met with hostility from some sections of the media. I doubt, either, that it will bother the couple too much. For this series is not an attempt to change the hearts and minds of the tabloids; rather, it is an exercise in explaining themselves to the public, in their own words. As Harry himself says early on in episode one: people might fundamentally disagree with what he has done, and the way he has gone about doing it. But he at least wants to be able to explain to those people just why it is he’s done it.
I first met Prince Harry in October 2016, when he was in the early stages of his relationship with Meghan Markle. At the time I knew nothing about that relationship – I was just a journalist who wrote a lot about mental illness, and because of that, I had been invited along to an event held in honour of the Heads Together campaign, which was a joint initiative by Harry and his brother and sister-inlaw to change the conversation around mental health.
Heads Together was to be the official charity partner of the 2017 London Marathon, and I had signed up to run it and raise funds for the campaign. I wanted to do this because my own mental health was, at the time, pretty awful, and I figured being part of it might make me feel better. I had no idea that it would end up leading to the biggest story of my career.
But back to that event in October 2016. It was World Mental Health Day, and a group of us running for Heads Together had been invited along to meet the “principles” at County Hall in London. I cannot remember what I spoke about with Prince Harry, just that I was very excited that three members of the Royal family were shining a light on a dark cause that was very close to my heart. I met the three on a number of occasions over the next few months, even being invited to Kensington Palace for Christmas drinks.
I liked William and Catherine very much – I still do – but I felt a particular connection with Harry, who always seemed fascinated with people’s lived experience of mental illness. Chatting to him about depression and OCD was a bit like chatting to a mate down the pub; I sensed a real personal link to this subject. I had been thinking of starting a podcast in which I spoke to people about mental health, and I took a punt and asked if Harry might consider being my first guest. I was as surprised as anyone when he said yes – and even more surprised when, on the day of the recording, he opened up to me about his own mental health in a way that was utterly unthinkable at the time.
It is neither contrived nor fake. What you see on your telly is what you get in real life
We stayed in touch – he called me shortly after I crossed the marathon finish line, to congratulate me – and I continued to work with Heads Together. In 2018 I was part of the Royal Foundation Forum where we first saw the “Fab Four” together – I remember everyone was very excited and the atmosphere was positive and upbeat. The next day I had lunch with Meghan for the first time, which felt much like lunch with a girlfriend – we chatted about yoga and running and mental health and activism and I recall feeling like an old granny as I thought how lovely it was that Harry had settled down with such a nice young woman.
But by 2019, it was clear that all was not well. I visited the couple one Sunday afternoon at Frogmore Cottage, and with tears in her eyes, Meghan told me what she would later admit in the Oprah interview. Harry was clearly very worried. He gave me a lift to my car, and on the side of a road in Windsor, he discussed at length much of what he has said so far in interviews. I was with them at Buckingham Palace during their final engagement as working royals in February 2020. There were tears from Meghan and tears from her aides as she said her goodbyes. The couple seemed gutted that they hadn’t been able to make things work.
Harry was now having to sacrifice the military relationships and commitments so close to his heart. Bear in mind even his time in the Army had been tainted by an Australian magazine revealing his presence in Afghanistan.
The supposed “war” they are waging on the royals and a small part of the press feels to me more like a perfectly reasonable attempt by the couple to speak on their own terms, rather than via second, third and fourth-hand accounts. (I thought one of the most striking quotes in the series was when Harry spoke about trying to keep his relationship with Meghan under wraps, noting that “It’s not about who you trust; it’s about who they trust. That’s how it works.”) Harry and Meghan are not asking anybody to like what they say – just to listen to it, if they happen to have a passing interest in the story. And as strange as it may seem reading some of the fevered fury online, the world will no doubt keep on spinning as normal when the next three episodes are released on Thursday.
There’s a bit in the documentary where Harry talks about being chased on foot by paparazzi 30 or 40 times. He has been pursued by the media for all of his adult life and most of his childhood, too. He has mostly put his head down and tried to ignore it, occasionally lost his temper and snapped at it, and sometimes forced himself to go along with it. What has remained constant is the intense interest about what it means to be royal – an interest that is rarely indulged by a family whose job it is to be representative rather than human. Now, finally, Harry has given us what we wanted. He has responded extensively and eloquently to the question we have been asking him his whole life. That so many seem not to like the answer he has given is a problem for us, not him.