Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Will Never Get out of the Shadow of Their Oprah Interview, Commentator Says: ‘Will Always Trump the Other Things’
Try as they might, it seems Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will never shake their Oprah Winfrey interview. According to a commentator, the couple’s 2021 sit-down with Oprah will forever “trump” anything else they do. Why? Because it launched the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s side of the story surrounding their exit from royal life.
Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview ‘created the narrative,’ will ‘always’ surpass projects to come
As Jack Royston said on the Jan. 8, 2024, episode of The Royal Report podcast, the TV special, which aired on March 7, 2021, holds a unique place.
It “will always trump the other things that Harry and Meghan do in years to come,” he said. The reason, the commentator explained to listeners, is because the interview came first.
“This set a narrative that people will return to, despite any future elaboration or context they may choose to give,” Royston said.
“When people look back, it will trump the Netflix documentary [Harry & Meghan]. And it will trump Harry’s memoir, Harry’s book Spare. And the reason it will trump those two things is because it came first.”
“Because it came first, it’s created the narrative. It created the drama, and it created the interest. It was the original manifestation of the Harry and Meghan perspective. And this was its centerpiece.”
While Harry and Meghan are now done with “look-back” projects, nothing they’ve done since has created shockwaves like their Oprah interview.
Most notably, the claim “concerns and conversations” about Prince Archie’s skin color prior to his 2019 birth taking place.
The late Queen Elizabeth II released a statement following the Oprah interview. In it, she famously remarked, “Recollections may vary,” a supposed addition from Kate Middleton.
Meanwhile, Harry’s brother, Prince William, who was later said to be “sick with worry” ahead of the interview, addressed the talk of racism in the royal family, telling a reporter: “We’re very much not a racist family.”
Harry and Meghan’s explanation for doing the 2021 Oprah interview: ‘filling in the blanks’
In their 2022 Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, the couple discussed, among other things, why they ultimately decided to do the Oprah interview.
Meghan explained that after leaving royal life and relocating to Montecito, California, a “vacuum” filled up with speculation as to why she and Harry left.
“The more distance that came between us having a smaller role with the institution and coming over here, the more of a vacuum was being built. And people just genuinely didn’t understand why we left,” she said.
So they decided to explain all the “blanks” on camera with Oprah. “That interview,” she continued, “it was less about setting the record straight than at least filling in the blanks that other people were filling in for us.”
“Whatever we were creating and whatever new path we were trying to forge, you couldn’t really do that without some clarity,” Meghan added, noting she and Harry didn’t see the interview “until the world saw it.”
Race being the ‘biggest takeaway’ from the Oprah interview surprised Meghan
Elsewhere, Meghan admitted her surprise that the “biggest takeaway” from the Oprah interview wasn’t that she’d had thoughts of ending her own life in 2019 while pregnant with her and Harry’s now-4-year-old son, Prince Archie.
“It’s interesting,” she told the streamer. “I thought that me being very open about the depression that I experienced and just how extreme that became … I thought that would be the biggest takeaway. But it was entirely eclipsed by the conversation surrounding race.”
“This is still very much a live issue in people’s imaginations,” Royston said of the discussions surrounding royals and racism.
“It was the big takehome from the Oprah Winfrey interview,” he went on. “Whatever Harry and Meghan might now say about whether they didn’t intend that. It was the biggest take-home from the Oprah Winfrey interview. And it always will be.”
The conversation surrounding racism and royals has continued. The comments were back in the spotlight with the publication of the names of the royals alleged to have made comments about Archie’s skin color.
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