Queen Elizabeth Summed up Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Oprah Interview With 3 Words, Biography Claims
Queen Elizabeth II reportedly had a simple way of summing up Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2021 Oprah interview. In his book, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, author Gyles Brandreth claims the late monarch described the interview in three words.
‘This television nonsense’ is how Queen Elizabeth described Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview, book claims
According to Brandreth, a friend of the queen’s and her late husband Prince Philip, the monarch summed up Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview with three words, “this television nonsense.”
“I can tell you, because I know this, that the Queen was always more concerned for Harry’s well-being than about ‘this television nonsense,’” he wrote in an excerpt (via Daily Mail).
The phrase didn’t apply to only Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview “which caused so much controversy.” It also applied to “the lucrative deal the Sussexes made with Netflix.”
Queen Elizabeth didn’t publicly respond to Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview until 2 days after the U.S. broadcast
The Harry and Meghan Oprah interview aired stateside on March 7, 2021. No word from Buckingham Palace came in the hours after the CBS primetime special. It wasn’t until March 9, two days after the two-and-a-half-hour program initially aired, that the palace responded.
Royal author and historian Robert Lacey claimed in his book, Battle of Brothers, the queen didn’t want to rush it. So, while the royal household has reportedly crafted a carefully worded by the end of the day on March 8, the queen didn’t give it the go-ahead until March 9.
The press was panting at the gates,” Lacey wrote. “The media wanted and expected some reaction in time for the evening TV news. But Elizabeth II—in touch with all the family and palace discussions that day via telephone and video conference from Windsor—decided they could wait.
“The Queen wanted ‘to sleep on it.’ And the interview had not yet been seen by most people in Britain, since it was not scheduled to go out on ITV until 9 p.m. that night.”
Ultimately, the royal family publicly responded shortly before the U.K. broadcast of Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview. The “whole family” was said to be “saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.”
Meanwhile, the phrase, “some recollections may vary,” subtly pushed back against the couple’s various claims.
Book suggests Queen Elizabeth wouldn’t have been ‘overly concerned’ by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s latest projects
The queen wouldn’t have been sweating the current goings-on with Harry and Meghan based on Brandreth’s book, according to Express.
“Despite the apparent damaging nature of the interview and the upcoming release of Harry’s tell-all memoir, a Netflix documentary, and Meghan’s podcasts, Mr Brandreth’s book paints of picture of a queen who would not have been overly concerned.”
What did concern the queen at one point was that Harry seemed to be “perhaps a little over-in-love” with Meghan, the author wrote. “This was as far as she came – to my knowledge at least – to ever uttering a word against the new Duchess of Sussex.”
Beyond the “television nonsense,” Queen Elizabeth “was anxious that Harry should ‘find his feet’ in California and ‘find really useful things to do’” after he and Meghan left their positions as working royals and moved to Montecito.
Brandreth’s Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait drops Dec. 8.
