Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s highly anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on CBS in the US on Sunday night.
The bombshell interview airs on RTÉ2 tonight at 9:30pm, with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex discussing everything from their relationship with the Royal family to the birth of their second child.
Take a look at the biggest bombshells from Oprah with Harry and Meghan: A Primetime Special:
The couple secretly married days before their wedding day
Meghan and Harry’s televised wedding was held in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018.
The couple told Oprah that they married in private three days prior to this in their back garden.
Meghan said: “We called the Archbishop and we just said, look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world. But we want our union between us, so the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Meghan’s relationship with Kate Middleton
Back in 2018, The Telegraph reported that the Duchess of Cambridge was left “in tears” after an argument with Meghan – prior to her wedding to Prince Harry.
According to Meghan: “The reverse happened.”
“I don’t say that to be disparaging to anyone, because it was a really hard… and she was upset about something and she owned it and she apologised and sent flowers and a note, apologising.”
“And she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, right, to just take accountability for it,” the former Suits star told Oprah.
Meghan confirmed the falling out had to do with the flower girls’ dresses, saying: “It made me cry and it really hurt my feeling.”
The former actress insisted it was not “a confrontation” and that Kate had “apologised and I’ve forgiven her”.
There were ‘conversations’ about Archie’s skin colour
Meghan said that there were “concerns and conversations” about “how dark” Archie’s skin might be when he was born.
A shocked Oprah responded: “What? Who, who is having that conversation with you? What?”
Meghan explained: “There are several conversations about it, with Harry,” adding she wasn’t going to reveal who the conversations were with because it would be “very damaging” to them.
Meghan was suicidal while pregnant with Archie
Meghan admitted “stress and isolation” during her pregnancy with her first child, Archie, left her contemplating suicide.
“Look, I was really ashamed to have to say it at the time and ashamed to have to admit it to Harry especially, but I knew that if I didn’t say that, I would do it,” she told the US chat show host.
“I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” she tearfully revealed.
“I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that I’ve never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere.”
“And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution,” the former actress claimed.
“I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because they said, ‘My heart goes out to you, because I see how bad it is, but there’s nothing we can do to protect you, because you’re not a paid employee of the institution.'”
“You have no idea what’s going on for someone behind closed doors. You’ve no idea. Even the people that smile the biggest smiles and shine the brightest lights, it seems,” she added.
Meghan is not ‘fearful’ about backlash from the Royal family
Oprah asked Meghan how she thinks the palace will react to the tell-all interview, and whether she was fearful of any backlash.
Meghan replied: “I’m not going to live my life in fear. So much of it is said with an understanding of just truth.”
“But I think to answer your question, I don’t know how they could expect that after all of this time, we could still just be silent if there is an active role the firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us,” she said.
“If that comes with risk of losing thing, I’ve lost…there’s been a lot that’s been lost already. I grieve a lot. I lost my father, I lost a baby, I nearly lost my name. I mean, there’s the loss of identity, but I’m still standing.”
“My hope for people in the takeaway from this is to know there is another side, to know that life is worth living.”
Harry was fearful of ‘history repeating itself’
Harry revealed he was fearful of “history repeating itself” when he noticed similarities between the scrutiny his late mother Princess Diana faced and the scrutiny his wife was also experiencing.
He said: “My biggest concern was history repeating itself, and I’ve said that before on numerous occasions, very publicly.”
“And what I was seeing was history repeating itself, but more, perhaps – or definitely far more dangerous, because then you add race in and you add social media in.”
“When you can see something happening in the same kind of way, anybody would ask for help. Ask the system of which you are a part of – especially when you know there’s a relationship there – that they could help and share some truth or call the dogs off, whatever you want to call it.”
The Duke said he received no help, and was “told continuously, ‘This is how it is. This is just how it is. We’ve all been through it.'”
Prince Charles ‘stopped taking Harry’s calls’
Prince Harry claimed his father Prince Charles stopped taking his calls, after he decided to step down as a senior working member of the Royal family.
He explained: “Because by that point, I took matters into my own hands. It was like, I need to do this for my family. This is not a surprise to anybody.”
“It’s really sad that it’s gotten to this point, but I’ve got to do something for my own mental health, my wife’s, and for Archie’s, as well, because I could see where this was headed.”
“I feel really let down because he’s been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like and Archie’s his grandson.”
“At the same time, of course, I will always love him. But there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened and I will continue to make it one of my priorities to heal that relationship. But they only know what they know.”
Harry and William’s relationship
Speaking about his relationship with his older brother, Harry said: “I love William to bits. He’s my brother. We’ve been through hell together.”
“I mean, we have a shared experience. But we’re on different paths.”
“The relationship [with William] is space at the moment. Time heals all things.”
The couple watched The Crown
Meghan and Harry revealed they have watched the Netflix show The Crown.
“I’ve watched some of it,” Harry said, with his wife also confirming she had watched “some of it”.
“Look, I just wish that we would all learn from the past,” Harry said, after Oprah compared the couple’s 2018 tours of Australia and the South Pacific to the show’s depiction of Charles and Diana’s infamous Australian visit.
Prince Harry felt ‘trapped’
Harry admitted he would have never considered leaving the Royal family if it wasn’t for meeting Meghan in 2016.
“I wouldn’t have been able to, because I myself was trapped, as well. I didn’t see a way out,” he confessed.
“I didn’t know I was trapped. But the moment that I met Meg and then our words sort of collided in the most amazing of ways.”
“My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that,” the Duke added.
Meghan called the Queen after Prince Philip was hospitalised
After Prince Philip was hospitalised last month, Meghan revealed she reached out to Queen Elizabeth.
“I just picked up the phone, and I called The Queen just to check in,” she recalled.
“That’s what we do. It’s like being able to default to not having to every moment go, ‘Is that appropriate?'”
Harry said he’s spoken to his grandmother “more in the last year than I have done for many, many years.”
“My grandmother and I have a really good relationship, and an understanding. And I have a deep respect for her. She’s my colonel in chief, right? She always will be,” he added.
Meghan’s one regret
Meghan admitted she felt silenced and unprotected after entering “The Firm”.
She said: “I did anything they told me to do. Of course I did, because it was also through the lens of ‘And we’ll protect you.'”
“So, even as things started to roll out in the media that I didn’t see but my friends would call me and say, ‘Meg, this is really bad,’ because I didn’t see it, I’d go, ‘Don’t worry. I’m being protected.'”
“I came to understand that not only was I not being protected, but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren’t willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.”
“My regret is believing them when they said I would be protected,” Meghan shared.
“And I regret believing that because I think, had I really seen that that wasn’t happening, I would have been able to do more. But I think I wasn’t supposed to see it.”
“Now, because we’re actually on the other side, we’ve actually not just survived but are thriving. This is miracles. I think that all of those things that I was hoping for have happened, and this is in some ways just the beginning for us.”
The couple are having a baby girl
On Valentine’s Day, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they are expecting their second child, after welcoming their son Archie in 2019.
The couple told Oprah that Archie is set to become a big brother to a baby girl this summer.
Harry said: “To have a boy then a girl — what more can you ask for?”
Speaking about how he feels about becoming a father to a baby girl, Harry said: “Grateful, having any child, any one or a two would have been amazing, but to have a boy and then a girl… now we’ve got our family and we’ve got four of us.”
