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Meghan Markle: The 6 best interviews with the Duchess of Sussex
Ahead of Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, we take a look at some of Meghan’s best Q&As
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After stepping down as senior royals in March 2020 - and ending the official transition period last month - Meghan and Harry have permanently set up camp on the west coast of America, in California.
Now, following their victory in a privacy case against the Mail on Sunday, the Duke and Duchess are set to have an intimate interview with US-chat show guru, Oprah Winfrey on US Channel CBS, set to air on 7 March.
The chat show host is rumoured to have “free reign”, according to close friend of Oprah’s Gayle King. “This is a big deal,” King told CBS This Morning. “I know Oprah has been working on the questions all weekend long, I'm told that nothing is off-limits. She can ask anything she wants.”
Read more: What will Meghan Markle talk about on Oprah
And if that wasn’t enough royalty for you: Buckingham Palace also announced this week that the Queen will be giving a speech to mark Commonwealth Day just hours before the Meghan and Harry interview.
Each television appearance from the California couple has been met with intense reaction, and while royal fans wait with bated breath for the next instalment of Meghan and Harry candidness, we take a look back at Meghan’s best interviews.
ITV News anchor Tom Bradby and crew followed the Sussex’s during their royal tour to southern Africa. In Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, which aired in 2019, Bradby famously asked Meghan how she was dealing with the pressures of living in the spotlight.
“Not many people have asked if I'm okay, but it's a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes," said Meghan, who candidly spoke about her struggles. “It’s hard,” she admitted.
“When I first met my now husband, my friends were so happy because I was so happy, but my British friends said to me ‘I’m sure he’s great, but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.”
The pair shared the details of their engagement in 2017, a year and a half after meeting, with the BBC's Mishal Husain. “It was a cosy night, we were roasting a chicken,” said Meghan on the evening of the proposal at their cottage.
Clearly elated with each other - sat very close together on a sofa throughout the interview, Meghan said: “It was just an amazing surprise, it was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee”. “Of course,” said Harry. It was an instant yes, said Meghan who turns to Harry: “As a matter of fact, I barely let you finish proposing”.
The couple also shared details of how they connected through a mutual friend, and then had a couple of meetings before going to Botswana and camping out under the stars for five days. Meghan admits that being from the US she didn’t have “the same understanding of the royal family,” but now understand the global interest there. “I didn’t know much about him. Everything I learned about him, I learned through him, as opposed to having grown up around different news stories,” she continued.
Following another interview with Larry King in 2013, in which Meghan showed King how to do calligraphy and he stumped her by calling her character in Suits “seductive”, King interviewed Meghan again in 2016, in a more serious context. For the majority of the interview, Meghan champions women’s rights.
“It’s not just a women’s fight for women, it’s a people’s fight for all people”, she said. “The biggest obstacles are people being set in their ways … change is difficult for people. You watch some of these fathers or men supporting their wives and daughters and perhaps in some communities those men are shunned in their communities who are saying ‘what are you doing? You’re upsetting a norm that has been comfortable for us.’
“It takes a lot of courage for anyone to be able to fight against what has been customary and say ‘even if we’ve been doing this a long time, doesn’t mean it necessarily the right things we should be doing’.”
This interview was shot in a garden in August 2020 (thought to be the Sussex’s property in Santa Barbara), following their announcement about stepping down, with 86-year-old activist Gloria Steinem, dubbed the “world’s most famous feminist”.
Released to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, the relaxed pair chat politics against the background of a wooden clapboard house. “People forget that women like you and so many others before you fought for us to just be where we are now”, said the Duchess to Steinem. “If you don’t vote, you don’t exist”, said Steinem, “it is the only place where we’re all equal, the voting booth”.
At one point Meghan and Harry’s dogs Guy and Pula come in. “What worries me the most are young people, who I understand are the least likely to vote”, said Steinem, “but it’s more important for them to vote than anyone else as they will be here long after I am and they will be suffering the consequences”.
The pair cover subjects ranging from voter suppression and Kamala Harris’s nomination for VP, to Prince Harry’s views on feminism.
“I look at our son and what a beautiful example that he gets to grow up with a father who is so comfortable owning that as part of his own self-identification,” said Meghan. “That there’s no shame in being someone who advocates for fundamental human rights for everyone, which of course includes women.”
An 11-year-old Meghan wrote to the makers of Ivory Dishwashing Liquid after she saw a TV ad that said “women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans”. During the show, young Meghan is upset by the status quo: “It’s always mom does this and mom does that”.
She was inspired to write a letter to Hilary Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, plus journalist Linda Ellerbee, women's rights attorney Gloria Allred, and, of course, the soap manufacturer to get the advert changed.
After her letters, the soap manufacturer did in fact change its ad from “women” to “people”.
Although not strictly an interview, Meghan revealed in November 2020, during a personal opinion piece for the New York Times, that she’d suffered a miscarriage. “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second," she wrote. "I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right," she wrote.
"Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband's hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears.
"Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we'd heal."
Explaining that 2020 had been a difficult year for everyone, the Duchess wrote. “Loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020". She urged us to care for one another during challenging times. “Commit to asking others, 'are you OK?'” she said.
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