Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Oprah Winfrey interviews the Duke and Duchess of Sussex
‘Many of us watching will remember the 1995 interview with Harry’s mother, Diana’. Photograph: Joe Pugliese/Harpo Productions/PA
‘Many of us watching will remember the 1995 interview with Harry’s mother, Diana’. Photograph: Joe Pugliese/Harpo Productions/PA

Oprah with Meghan and Harry review — just give in and watch

This article is more than 3 years old

From solidarity to salacious gossip, there was something for everyone, but are we complicit in feeding a monster?

Look, it doesn’t matter if you watched it or not. It doesn’t matter if your entire being cleaves to the desire to see justice done for a brutally traduced should-be princess, or convulses in fear for the wellbeing of a thousand-year-old monarchy at the hands of another evil American divorcee, or reckons the entire House of Windsor and anyone who comes within a corgi’s yap of it should be guillotined with a blade made of melted Buck House railings. You are going to find yourself assailed on all sides by reports – hello from this one, by the way! – of Mrs Duchess Meghan and Prince Ginger Duke Harry California-Sussex’s tell-all/tell-quite-a-lot/tell-almost-nothing really and absorbing all the major points and almost all the minor details by cultural osmosis anyway … so give in now. Watch it. Enjoy it however you see fit.

Really, there was something for everyone. As Meghan – alone at first then joined for the last third or so by Harry – took her seat indirectly, un-adversarially opposite Oprah on a beautiful terrace at the luxurious LA home of a mutual friend, you could almost see the ghosts of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons gather to enjoy this celebrity interview of celebrity interviews by a woman whose patented blend of warmth, empathy and persistence makes her still the best in the business.

There was salacious gossip aplenty – or at least more than many had expected, and certainly more than the palace must have hoped. After small talk about her current pregnancy bump, and reminiscences about the wedding in St George’s Chapel we were swiftly into how royally peculiar things were behind the scenes. Meghan spoke of being (largely) welcomed by the family itself and frozen out by “the institution”, and her gradual discovery that the British tabloid press were gunning for her while the royal promise of protection from its worst excesses wasn’t worth the vellum it was printed on.

She spoke of the suicidal thoughts its persecution induced, the wish for a title for Archie because it would mandate security measures for the family, and the lack of support from those who could have enabled her to do her royal job and do it well.

The moment that has grabbed the most attention, however, since it was first broadcast in the US, nearly 24 hours before ITV, was the duchess’s revelation that there had been “a conversation” between Harry and an unnamed royal personage or personages about how dark their baby Archie’s skin would be. Oprah’s appalled disbelief was mirrored on social media, which speaks – among many, many other things – to a fascinating level of general ignorance of/sweetly misplaced faith in the way the English aristocracy operates.

When Harry joins, a further ghost does too – that, of course, of Diana. He speaks of his fear of history repeating itself and, with fleeting fury and despair, his wish “that we could learn from history”. Many of us watching will remember the 1995 interview with Martin Bashir his mother gave with the same hope of, if not rewriting history, at least giving us a parallel text to read. And ask ourselves the same questions about whether or not by watching it we are at least fractionally complicit in feeding the monster that drove both women to the brink.

Whether they will succeed in the mission better than Diana did remains to be seen. They are as charming – especially together – and more savvy, better-trained, less naive than she was. They have more ways and means by which to take control of the narrative, but they also have a more multi-tentacled, vicious and indefatigable media beast to contend with than Diana in 1995 could probably imagine in her worst nightmares.

They deliver their version of events in a world of proliferating truths, fake news, competing conspiracy theorists. Was it wise? It’s hard to see how Harry’s sharing of the fact that Prince Charles refused to take his son’s calls when he said that he wanted to step down as a senior royal or that Harry and William’s relationship is now best defined as “space” will be improved by this move.

On the other hand, knowing that they can and will answer back might begin to shift the dial of their relationship with the press. But it’s still easily possible to imagine a world 30 years from now in which Archie sits down in front of Oprah 2.0 and begins, with a weary sigh, to explain his side of things to a public eager to hear, a media unwilling to listen and a skein of aged aristos attending to nothing but the colour of his skin.

Most viewed

Most viewed