Meghan Markle ‘says she did everything she could to part of the royal family’ and ‘make them proud’ but she was ‘fed to the wolves’ in fifth episode of explosive Netflix series
- Last three hour-long episodes of Harry & Meghan bombshell series have landed
- Fresh attacks on the Royal family and Palace aides by the Sussexes are featured
- Prince Harry and Meghan LIVE: Follow all the Royal Family news here
Prince Harry has revealed he and Meghan tried to move to New Zealand in 2018 in their new Netflix series.
Harry said: ‘At the end of December and the beginning of January I was on the phone to my father saying we’ve got a plan
Meghan then pops up and says ‘What if we move to Canada?’
Harry then adds: ‘We thought it would be good to give ourselves some breathing space, but we were also really passionate about continuing our work throughout the Commonwealth supporting the Queen
Meghan then interrupts: ‘What I think is also important is that the pack of the royal rota is based there in London. If we are not there they can’t cover what we are doing.
‘You guys can be on the front pages of all the papers, exactly how you want it, and we can just go about doing the work, in the name of the Queen.’
Harry continues: ‘If you want us to go and do things on behalf of the Queen we will go and do it and we’ll pay for it ourselves/ We don’t want to be dependant on any taxpayer funding.
‘Guess what, you get us and you get us for free. And this was years in the making.
‘In 2018 we had already talked about moving to New Zealand. That never transpired.
‘At the beginning of 2019 we discussed the whole concept of us moving to South Africa, supporting charities organisations.’
Harry reveals the Royals had agreed this could happen.
He told the documentary: ‘The palace signed off on us moving to South Africa. My father’s office knew about, my brother’s office new about it and my grandmother’s office knew about it.
‘No-one else knew it was very much an internal document. Then it was leaked to the Times newspaper. And then that whole plan was all scrapped because it now becomes a public debate.’
Harry said that by the time he spoke to Charles from Canada the family knew they wanted to leave.
He adds: ‘My father said “Can you put it in writing?” I said I would rather not because what had happened last time. He said he couldn’t do anything unless it was put in writing. I put it in emails.’
Earlier Meghan has spoken about being ‘fed to the wolves’ in the fifth episode of she and Harry’s incendiary series.
The show, which dropped on Netflix at 8am, opens with a charming home video of Archie running through a maze with Harry commentating.
Then over a montage of the Royals, Meghan says: ‘When I look back at my own childhood it was great but I remember being alone a lot. I just wanted all these cousins and all these people I just wanted all of that and I didn’t have this big family.
‘When I was pregnant with Archie, I was just so excited that we were going to be able to create for thing that thing that I had always wanted.
Meghan speaks about being ‘fed to the wolves’ in the fifth episode of she and Harry’s series
The show, which dropped on Netflix at 8am, opens with a charming home video of Archie
Fresh attacks on the Royal family and Palace aides by the Sussexes are featured in the series
‘I just did everything I could to make them proud and to really be a part of the family – and then the bubble burst.
‘I realised that I wasn’t just being thrown to the wolves I was being fed to the wolves.’
The couple then speak about coverage they had received in the media in various publications and their 2019 Christmas in Vancouver.
Harry said: ‘The main thing we needed was some space to think and work out what we are doing.’
The couple talked on media coverage they’d received and deciding to have Christmas abroad
Another home video showed Meghan and Harry playing with Archie and a candle and duck
The young lad laughs with joy when they use the duck to blow out the flame on the candle
Yesterday a trailer released showed the couple making claims that the Palace briefed against the Sussexes to deflect attention from less favourable coverage of other royals.
The Royal family and Palace aides are braced for the second installment, which is anticipated to feature further claims.
Jenny Afia, who is Meghan’s lawyer, was featured in Wednesday’s trailer in a starring role.
Meghan recounts the first moment she was introduced to the Queen while husband Harry looks on as part of the couple’s new Netflix docu-series, released today
In it she alleged that she had seen evidence of briefing from the Palace against the couple to suit other people’s agenda.
In a teaser clip, the duchess herself was seen saying: ‘You would just see it play out, like a story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute and they’d go ‘We’ve got to make that go away’.’
Her friend Lucy Fraser added: ‘Meg became this scapegoat for the Palace. And so they would feed stories on her whether they were true or not to avoid other less favourable stories being printed.’
Ms Afia said: ‘There was a real kind of war against Meghan and I’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the Palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas.’
Meghan appears to perform a deeply exaggerated curtsey recounting what it was like when she first met the Queen, while her husband Harry watches on awkwardly
The looming attack on The Firm by the Sussexes – expected to be unprecedented in nature – will be laid out in full from 8am today, when the second half of their six-part docuseries is finally released
Harry, in another trailer released on Monday, said ‘They were happy to lie to protect my brother (William). They were never willing to tell the truth to protect us’, while Meghan said she was ‘fed to the wolves’.
Was launched last Thursday and opened with an attack on Buckingham Palace’s decision not to co-operate with the series that declares a fresh war on the Royal Family and the media.
The highly-anticipated series is being put out in two parts, with the first three episodes of the six-part docu-series now available to stream.
The series contains tears from Meghan, who Harry repeatedly compares to Princess Diana claiming that both his mother and wife were being hunted by the press.
In the trailer, Harry said ‘they were happy to lie to protect my brother’. It is not clear who he is referring to
In a teaser clip, Meghan’s lawyer Jenny Afia said: ‘There was a real kind of war against Meghan and I’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the Palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas’
There are also a series of jibes at his father, King Charles, and brother Prince William as well as speaking about alleged racism and ‘unconscious bias’ in the Royal Family.
During the second episode, Meghan speaks about the ‘formality’ of the royals behind closed doors, saying she was ‘surprised’ by this.
‘I was a hugger always being a hugger I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits,’ she added.
‘I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside.
The documentary makers also use a picture of Buckingham Palace and footage of the duke and Prince William at their grandfather’s funeral as Harry says: ‘They were happy to lie to protect my brother’
Prince Harry opens the docu-series from Heathrow as he left the country and frontline royal duties in March 2020
‘That there is a forward-facing way of being. And then you close the door and you are like (sighs) “Oh great. Okay, we can relax now”. But that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.’
The Duchess admitted that joining the Royal Family was nothing like The Princess Diaries as she said she did not receive training on royal protocol.
Meghan referenced the 2001 coming-of-age comedy about an American high school student who discovers she is heir to the throne of Genovia, a fictional European kingdom, as she spoke about struggling to adapt to life as a working royal.
The Disney film, based on Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel of the same name, was a commercial success, grossing around $165million worldwide.
During the third episode of her docuseries, Meghan said: ‘Joining this family I knew that there was a protocol for how things were done. Do you remember that old movie Princess Diaries with Anne Hathaway?’
The episode featured a clip from the film in which Hathaway, in character as gawky teen Mia Thermopolis, discovers her ancestry and exclaims: ‘Me a princess? Shut up.’
Dame Julie Andrews, playing her grandmother, the Queen regent of Genovia, promises to help her adapt to royal life.
She tells her: ‘I can teach you to walk, talk, sit, stand, eat, dress like a princess.’
Meghan said of her arrival to the British royal family: ‘There is no class and some person who goes, “Sit like this, cross your legs like this, use this fork, don’t do this, curtsy then, wear this kind of hat”. It doesn’t happen.
‘So I needed to learn a lot including the national anthem.’
Asked how she learned the anthem, then God Save The Queen, Meghan replied: ‘Oh, I Googled it. I Googled it and I would sit there and I would practise and practise and practise.’
Later, the 41-year-old described her first ‘amazing’ Christmas at Sandringham, where she was sat next to the late Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.
Recalling her first Christmas at Sandringham, Meghan said she found it ‘amazing’ as she was ‘with a big family like I always wanted.’
‘I remember so vividly the first Christmas at Sandringham,’ Meghan said. ‘Calling my mom, and she’s like, “How’s it going?” and I said, “Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. It’s just like a big family like I always wanted”.’
And she recounted a lighter moment with the late Prince Philip.
‘There was just this constant movement, energy and fun,’ she added, ‘and at dinner I was sat next to H’s grandfather and I just thought it was so wonderful and I was like ”we chatted about this and this”… and he [Harry] was like ”you had his bad ear he couldn’t hear anything you were saying” and I was like ”oh… well I though it went really well”.
The Royal Family seemed ‘incredibly impressed’ with Meghan during the early days of their relationship, added Prince Harry.
But the Duke also claimed his family thought the relationship with the former Suits actress would never last.
‘I remember my family first meeting her and being incredibly impressed. Some of them didn’t quite know what to do with themselves… They were surprised that the ginger could land such a beautiful woman. And such an intelligent woman.
‘But the fact I was dating an American actress, was probably what clouded their judgment more than anything else in the beginning: “Oh, she’s an American actress, this won’t last”.
Meghan added: ‘The actress thing was the biggest problem, funnily enough. There is a big idea of what that looks like from the UK standpoint – Hollywood – and it’s just very easy for them to typecast that.’
Elsewhere in the third episode, the Duchess of Sussex said she didn’t know what a royal walkabout was – where royals meet members of the public who have gathered on the streets – before going on her first one.
‘I never saw pictures or videos of a walkabout. Like, what’s a walkabout?’ she said.
Harry explained: ‘I could talk her through as much as I knew from my own experience of what I’d seen. The piece I really didn’t know about was the style, right, and what a woman needed to, how they needed to dress and all that.’
Meghan added that before her first walkabout in Nottingham, her zip broke on her ensemble and had to be safety pinned, to which Harry said: ‘The whole thing was just ridiculous.’
The duke recalled: ‘Everybody was just so excited and pleased and happy. And I think people looked at it and went, “Wow, what a breath of fresh air”.’
The show later saw the Duchess of Sussex’s mother speaking out for the first time about her daughter’s relationship with Prince Harry, saying the past five years have been ‘challenging’.
Doria Ragland recalled the moment she heard the couple were dating. She said: ‘The last five years have been challenging. I’m ready to have my voice heard, that’s for sure. A little bit of my experience as her mum.’