From the rubble of last week’s explosive first installment, comes the second volume of Harry and Meghan’s all-access Netflix documentary, which promised to be more revelatory than the first three episodes — and it’s living up to that promise.
The second portion, which also takes the form of three near-hour long episodes, starts with a behind the scenes look into Harry and Meghan’s wedding day where we learn about Meghan’s wedding dress, the bride drinking mimosas and eating croissants before heading to the chapel, a surprise performance from Elton John and the couple’s spirited first dance. Then, much like the first installment’s love-story-to-horror-story arc, it all comes crashing down around them.
Once the couple are married, intrusion from the press increases, family ties are stretched to breaking point, and Meghan miscarries a baby. The final episode follows the couple as they jet out of the country, leaving the Royal Family behind, on what Harry calls “the freedom flight”.
But before takeoff, let’s have a quick briefing on everything that goes down in the three newest episodes.
1. Harry says William ‘screamed’ at him when he tried to leave the Royal Family
During the “Sandringham Summit”, the January 2020 crunch talks which saw Harry and Meghan walk out of the Royal Family, Harry claims that Prince William was furious at him, to the point where he shouted and screamed.
“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren't true. And my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there and take it all in.” Harry was the only one present at the Sandringham Summit, as Meghan was already in Vancouver looking after Archie.
In the documentary, he continues: “The saddest part of it was this wedge created between me and my brother so that he's now on the institution side. Part of that I get, I understand. That's his inheritance so part of that is already ingrained in him that part of his responsibility is the survivability and continuation of this institution.”
2. Meghan was better at royal role than those ‘born to do it’
“The issue is when someone who’s marrying in who should be a ‘supporting act’ is then stealing the limelight or is doing the job better than those who was born to do this then upsets people,” says Harry. “It shifts the balance.”
3. There was no option but to leave the UK
Following the Sandringham Summit, the Duke of Sussex says that something “clicked” in his head. “Suddenly, what clicked in my head was, ‘It's never going to stop.’ Every rumour, every negative thing, every lie and everything I knew wasn't true, and that the palace knew wasn't true and internally they knew wasn't true, was being allowed to fester. So there was no other option at this point. I said that we need to get out of here.”
The pair then based themselves in Vancouver for a period of time before eventually moving to an area in California, one hour out from Los Angeles.
4. Meghan says that the Royal Family viewed her as a ‘foreign organism’
In one scene, Meghan recalls how her private secretary — who she says had worked for the Queen for around 20 years — compared her to a “foreign organism” which the Royal Family would have to get used to, but when they did it would be “amazing.”
Meghan Markle explained in her own terms: “It’s like this fish that’s swimming perfectly… and one day this little organism comes in. This foreign organism, and this entire thing… [sqeauling noise]. What is that what, what is it doing here? It doesn’t look like us. It doesn’t move like us, get it off of us.”
5. They discuss her suicidal thoughts
Meghan first revealed that she had considered suicide during the couple’s Oprah interview in March 2021, but they explore it further in the documentary. Meghan tells her interviewers about her thought process, saying: “All of this will stop if I'm not here. And that was the scariest thing about it. It was such clear thinking.”
Her mother, Doria Ragland, is brought to tears when discussing the suicidal period. “I remember her telling me that she had wanted to take her own life,” she remembers. “And that really broke my heart. Because I knew that it was bad, but to just constantly be picked at by these vultures, picking away at her spirit, that she would actually think of not wanting to be here... that's not an easy one for a mom to hear.”
6. Harry hates himself for the way he handled Meghan’s suicidal thoughts
“I was devastated,” Harry says. “I knew that she was struggling, we were both struggling. But I’d never thought it would get to that stage. And the fact that it got to that stage, I felt angry and ashamed. I didn’t deal with it particularly well. I dealt with it as institutional Harry rather than husband Harry.
“And what took over my feelings was my royal role. I had been trained to worry more about what are people going to think if we don’t go to this event... looking back on it now I hate myself for it. What she needed from me was so much more than I was able to give.”
“They knew how bad it was,” alleges Harry. “They thought why couldn’t she just deal with it? As if to say, well, everybody else has dealt with it, why can’t she deal with it? But this was different. It was really different. But even if you strip that all away and say fine, it was exactly the same, so do we still believe that she should have just sucked it up like other members of the family?
“Or does one think maybe it’s about time that we stop?”
7. Oprah came round for tea
On a lighter note, Harry and Meghan also discuss their blissful life immediately post-marriage, when they were living in a small cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace with only themsleves and their dogs for company... oh, and Oprah, once.
Explaining the humble size of the cottage, Harry says: “It had really low ceilings. I don't know who was there before, must have been short.” Meghan adds that Harry “would hit his head constantly because he’s so tall,” and that “It was a time in our lives that people probably couldn't believe what was going on behind the scenes.”
This was confirmed by Oprah, who came round to Nottingham Cottage for tea one day and was apparently quite surprised by the couple’s modest dwelling. “She [Oprah] said: “No one would ever believe it,” Harry laughs, with Meghan repeating the phrase after him and giggling along.
8. Beyoncé texted Meghan
In the next big name drop of the series, Meghan reveals that none other than Beyoncé Carter-Knowles reached out to her after the Duke and Duchess released their Oprah interview and told her that she was “selected to break generational curses.”
“Beyonce just texted,” she says in a clip. “I still cant believe she knows who I am.” Harry jokes: “Just checking in, just casual. Go call her,” to which Meghan replies, “No it's ok, she said that she wants me to feel safe and protected, she admires and respects my bravery and she thinks I was selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.”
9. The pair claim that the palace purposefully leaked stories to the press
Harry accuses the palace communications team of purposefully leaking stories to the media, and suggests that the Royal Family did nothing to intervene or help him when it happened.
“There’s constant briefings about other members of the family, inviting the press in, it's a dirty game,” Harry says, explaining that he has 30 years of experience of this behaviour. “There's leaking but there's also planting of stories. So if the comms team want to avoid a negative story about their ‘principal’, they will trade and give you something negative about someone else. So the offices end up working against each other. You end up with this weird understanding or acceptance that it happens."
10. Including the story that he and Meghan were leaving for Canada
“It became clear that the institution had leaked the fact that we were going to be moving back to Canada," Harry says. "The key piece of this story that made me aware that the contents of that letter between me and my father had been leaked was that we were willing to relinquish our Sussex titles. That was the giveaway [...] I was like wow, our story, our life, literally got taken from underneath us."
11. Harry was willing to fight the media, Charles and William were not
Harry reveals how he wanted to fight against this relationship with the press instead of working alongside them, but King Charles was not up for it. “No one would have private conversations with the editors saying ‘enough,’” he says. “My dad said to me, ‘Darling boy you can't take on the media. The media will always be the media.’ And I said ‘I fundamentally disagree.’”
He also says that he and William had a deal to never exchange information on each other that could be leaked, but that William broke that promise. “William and I both saw what happened in our dad's office. And we made an agreement that we would never let that happen to our office. I would far rather get destroyed in the press than play along with this game or this business of trading. To see my brother's office engage in the very thing we said we'd never do... that was heartbreaking.”
12. They believe the intrusion of the press caused Meghan’s miscarriage
Harry takes further aim at the media for their harassment of Meghan, including a direct shot at the Daily Mail, where he accuses the paper of causing her to have a miscarriage in July 2020. Harry and Meghan have been at odds with the Mail for years, since they published the letter Meghan wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, which led to the couple successfully suing the paper for intrusion of privacy.
But now, Harry lets rip. “I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did,” he says, plain and simple. “I watched the whole thing. Now do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course we don't. But bearing in mind the stress that that caused, the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say from what I saw that that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her.”
Meghan also discusses the miscarriage from her perspective, saying: “I was pregnant, I really wasn’t sleeping and the first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried.” Her best friend and Suits co-star Abigail Spencer also mentions the miscarriage, saying that Meghan was in a “lot of pain.” “Meg is standing outside, waiting for me,” Spencer says, “and I can tell something’s off, and she is showing me the new home [but] she’s like, ‘I’m having a lot of pain’. She was holding Archie and she just fell to the ground and…” she trails off.
13. They discuss their decision to leave the Royal Family
Harry and Meghan detail their reasoning for leaving the Royal Family, citing the press intrusion as one of the driving forces, but also how this would allow the other members of the Royal Family to get some much needed airtime. “You guys can be on all of the front pages, exactly as you want it,” Meghan reasons, “and we can just go about doing the work in the name of the Queen.”
Harry adds: “If you want us to go and do work on behalf of the Queen, we’ll go and do it. We don’t want any taxpayer funding. Guess what - you get us but you get us for free [...] This was years in the making. We really wanted to remove the supposed public interest argument that the press had over every element of our lives.”
14. And their desire for financial freedom
This very Netflix documentary has been the topic of intense scrutiny, with Harry and Meghan’s lucrative Netflix deal (Deadline estimates it could be up to $150m) leading to claims they’ve “sold out.” But the Duke and Duchess are embracing the transparency, and even actively address how they want to earn their own money.
“For my whole life the purse strings have been controlled by my father,” Harry says, “Within [my] family, it's normal to have that financial control over other members of the family."
15. Meghan on treating the Queen like her husband’s grandma
“I treated her as my husband’s grandma, and knowing that of course there has to be a completely different sense of propriety in public, when you’re sitting and having breakfast to just be able to talk.
“When we got into the car in between engagements she had a blanket and she put it over my knees and we were sitting in this car with this blanket and I thought ‘I recognise and respect and see that you’re the Queen, but in this moment I’m so grateful that there is a grandmother figure because that feels like family’.”
16. Harry on Prince Philip’s funeral
Harry says returning to the UK for his grandfather’s funera was tough. “It was hard, especially spending time having chats with my brother and my father who just were very much focused on the same misinterpretation of the whole situation.
“So none of us really wanted to have to talk about it at my grandfather’s funeral, but we did.
“I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I’m probably never going to get genuine accountability or a genuine apology.
“You know, my wife and I, we’re moving on. We were focused on what’s coming next.”
