At the start of the new Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the first three episodes of which premiered today, Prince Harry, Duke says: "It's really hard to look back on it now and go, 'What on earth happened? How did we end up here?'"
Harry is referring to the decision he and wife Meghan Markle made to break away from the British royal family and relocate from the U.K. to California, a subject likely to be covered in more detail on the second half of the series, which arrives next week. The first three episodes instead detail the couple's early lives and the blossoming of their relationship, leading up to their wedding at Windsor Castle in 2018. Even so, these opening installments featured plenty of shocking and revealing moments, which you can read about below.
Prince Harry remembers the tears of his mother, Princess Diana
In the opening episode of the series, Harry recalls as a child recognizing the stress and pressure placed upon his mother, the late Princess Diana, and other royal family members by the media.
Rarely do we have a holiday without someone with a camera, you know, jumping out of a bush or something," he says. "Within the family, within the system, the advice that's always given is, 'Don't react, don't feed into it.' There was always public pressure with its fair share of drama, stress, and also tears, and witnessing those tears. You could always see it on my mum's face, and I guess those are the moments when I thought, 'Hang on, what am I? Who am I? What am I part of?'"
Meghan Markle recalls being scared by media attention in early days of the relationship
early days of the relationship
In episode 2, Meghan remembers being pursued by members of the media in Toronto, where she shot the legal drama Suits, after news broke of her relationship with Harry.
"It felt like all the U.K. media descended upon Toronto," she says. "My house was just surrounded. Just men sitting in their cars all the time, waiting for me to do anything... My neighbors texted me saying, 'They're knocking on everyone's doors, they're trying to find you.' They had paid certain neighbors to put like a livestream camera into my backyard. Suddenly, it was like everything about my life was just getting so much more insular, like all the curtains were pulled, all the blinds were pulled. It was scary."
Prince Harry was advised not to react to negative media coverage of their relationship
The British media often covered the biracial Meghan in ways which were, to say the least, unenlightened.
"Within that first week that [the relationship] became public knowledge, the first story was, 'Harry's new girl (almost) straight outta Compton,'" says Harry in episode 2. "I was like, whoa."
The direction from the Palace was, 'Don't say anything.' But what people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they'd been put through as well. So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family [were] like, 'Right, but my wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently, why should you get special treatment, why should she be protected?' And I said, 'The difference here is the race element.'"
Meghan Markle is a big hugger (compared to the rest of the royal family)
In episode 2, Meghan reveals that her informal habits could be shocking even to members of the royal family who were her own age.
"When Will and Kate came over... for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot," she says. "Like, I was a hugger, always been a hugger, I didn't realize that that is jarring for a lot of Brits."
She also didn't realize that the royal family's rules of etiquette were not only to be observed in public. "I guess I'd start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside, carried through on the inside," she shares. "There is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and you relax now." Or so she thought. "But that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me."
Meghan Markle says she didn't believe she was required to curtsy the first time she met Queen Elizabeth
Episode 2 also finds the pair recalling the first time that Meghan met Harry's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
"My grandmother was the first senior member of the family that Meghan met," says Harry. "She had no idea what it all consisted of, so it was a bit of a shock to the system for her."
"I mean, it's surreal," says Meghan. "There wasn't like some big moment of, like, and now you're going to meet my grandmother. I didn't know I was going to meet her until moments before. We were in the car... and he's like, 'Oh, my grandmother's here, she's going to be there after church,' and he's like, 'You know how to curtsy, right?' And I just thought it was a joke."
"How do you explain that to people?" adds Harry. "How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you will need to curtsy, especially to an American? Like, that's weird!"
Prince Harry calls wearing a Nazi uniform 'one of the biggest mistakes' of his life
When he was 20 years old, the Prince caused a scandal when he attended a party wearing a Nazi uniform. Harry addresses the incident in episode 3 of the docuseries.
"It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life," he says. "I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right. I sat down and spoke to the Chief Rabbi in London, which had a profound impact on me. I went to Berlin and spoke to a Holocaust survivor. I could have just ignored it and got on and probably made the same mistakes over and over again in my life. But I learned from that."
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