Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s new docuseries, titled Harry & Meghan, has taken the population by storm.
Volume II of the series joined Netflix on Thursday, December 15, following the release of the first three episodes on December 8.
Take a look at the biggest bombshells that emerged throughout the six-part series:
Harry is “concerned” for his family’s safety
In the first episode of the series, Harry says: “My job is to keep my family safe. By the nature of being born into this position and with everything else that comes with it and the level of hate that is being stirred up in the last three years especially against my wife, and my son, I’m generally concerned for the safety of my family.”
Appearing emotional, Meghan says: “I just really want to get to the other side of all of this… I don’t know what to say anymore.”
Harry then says: “This is about duty and service and I feel as though being part of this family, it is my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”
Meghan adds: “Unfortunately, in us standing for something, they are destroying us.”
Harry continues: “This isn’t just about our story. This has always been so much bigger than us.”
“No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth. The institution knows the full truth. And the media know the full truth because they’ve been in on it.”
“And I think anybody else in my situation would have done exactly the same thing.”
Later in the episode, Harry discusses the harassment his late mother Princess Diana faced.
He says: “Back in my mum’s day it was physical harassment, cameras in your face, following you, chasing you. Paparazzi still harass people but the harassment really exists more online now.”
“To see another woman in my life go through this feeding frenzy.. That’s hard. It is really the hunter vs the prey.”
Speaking in episode two, Harry says: “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 had been put through as well. So it was almost like a rite of passage.
“Some of the members of the family were like ‘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?’ I said ‘the difference here is the race element’.”
“The biggest mistake” of Harry’s life
Harry admitted that wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005 was “one of the biggest mistakes of my life”.
In episode three of the show, the Duke of Sussex says: “It was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right.”
The photos of Harry in the uniform, along with a swastika armband, made headlines at the time.
Clarence House later issued a statement which read: “Prince Harry has apologised for any offence or embarrassment he has caused. He realises it was a poor choice of costume.”
In the docuseries, Harry says he spoke to the Chief Rabbi in London after the incident, which had a “profound” impact on him.
He also went to Berlin and spoke to a holocaust survivor.
“I could have got on and ignored it and made the same mistakes over and over in my life… but I learnt from that,” he adds.
How Harry and Meghan first met
While Harry and Meghan previously said they were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend in 2016, the Duke and Duchess have admitted they actually met through Instagram.
The 38-year-old said he stumbled across Meghan when he saw a video of her using the Snapchat dog filter.
Harry explained: “Meghan and I met over Instagram. I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them.”
Meghan then laughed, “Oh gosh, isn’t that whole thing, it’s got like doggy ears,” before Harry added, “That was the first thing, ‘I was like who is that?’”
Harry then messaged their mutual friend and they mentioned it to Meghan, who proceeded to stalk the Prince’s Instagram feed to see “what he was about”.
Reciting the email their mutual friend sent her, Meghan revealed it said: “Between you and I, thought you might want to know this being newly single and all.”
“I put our Snapchat on Instagram and Prince Haz follows me (he’s a friend) he called me last night dying to meet you. I just might have to set you up,” the email added.
Harry explained: “Then we got each other’s numbers. We were just constantly in touch, and I went ‘let’s meet’.”
The couple went on their first date at 76 Dean Street in Soho, and Meghan poked fun at Harry for being late.
Harry admitted he was “freaking out” as Meghan wondered if he was “one of the guys who has so much of an ego that any girl would wait and sit around for 30 minutes for you.”
“I was not interested in that,” she confessed.
Thankfully, Harry proved her wrong when he eventually showed up, and the pair went on to have a great first date.
The couple then met up one more time at Soho House before Harry invited her to go to Botswana with him.
Meghan said: “So I had one week off [filming Suits] and it was the same week, so he said ‘do you want to come to Botswana?’ I said let me think about it and then I did.”
Harry confessed he was “astonished that she said yes” as they had only met each other twice at that point.
He laughed: “This woman that I have only met twice, she’s coming to Botswana and we are going to be living in a tent for 10 days.”
Meghan then said: “I am getting on a plane, and we are living in the middle of a bush, what, like what if we don’t like each other and then we are stuck in the middle of a bush in a tent.”
“So, I get there, this is the first time I have seen him in a month, we are awkward at first, do we kiss, do we hug, and I just remember he handed me a chicken sandwich.”
Harry continued: “Then we jumped in a land cruiser and off we went. We were sitting next to each other and then we were holding hands and then we squeezed in a kiss, and everything felt natural. We had to get to know each other before the rest of the world knew.”
Meghan’s first time meeting Kate Middleton
Meghan opened up about her “surprising” first time meeting Kate Middleton.
Meghan confessed she was “bare foot” and wearing ripped jeans at the time, and didn’t realise that the “formality” carries on behind closed doors.
The Duchess of Sussex said: “Even when Will and Kate came over and I was meeting her for the first time I remember I was in ripped jeans, I was bare foot… Like I was a hugger, I have always been a hugger I didn’t realise that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”
“I started to understand that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside, that there is a forward facing way of being and then you close the door and thing OK we can relax now, but that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me,” she confessed.
The 41-year-old also recalled meeting the Queen for the first time at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, shortly after her and Harry went public with their romance in 2016.
Meghan explained: “I mean. it’s surreal. There wasn’t like some big moment of ‘Now you’re gonna meet my grandmother’. I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before.”
“We were in the car and we were going to the Royal Lodge for lunch, and he [Harry] was like, ‘Oh, my grandmother is here, she’s gonna be there after church.'”
“I remember we were in the car, driving and he’s [Harry] like, ‘You know how to curtsy, right?”. And I just thought it was a joke.’”
Harry interjected: “How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you would need to curtsy, especially to an American. That’s weird.”
Meghan continued: “Now I’m starting to realise this is a big deal. I mean, American’s will understand this. We have Medieval Times dinner and tournament. It was like that. Like, I curtsied as though I was like… ‘Pleasure to meet you your Majesty.’
“It was so intense. And then when she left, Eugenie and Jack and Fergie say ‘you did great!’ Thanks. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Meghan’s mum Doria Ragland speaks out for the first time
Meghan discussed what it was like growing up as a biracial woman, with her mother Doria Ragland doing her first public interview in episode two.
On the negative words about Meghan in the media, Doria recalled saying: “‘This is about race,’ and Meg said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to hear it.’ But this is what is coming down the pike.”
Meghan said: “At that time, I wasn’t thinking about how race played a part in any of this. I genuinely didn’t think about it.”
“[It’s] very different to be a minority but not be treated as a minority right off the bat. Obviously, now, people are very aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the U.K. But before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ‘Black woman.’ So that talk didn’t have to happen for me.”
Harry claims King Charles III’s office leaked their move to Canada
After holidaying with their son Archie in Vancouver Island, Canada, Harry and Meghan discussed relocating there with King Charles II, who allegedly asked his son to put his plans in writing.
Meghan claims Harry wrote the plan out in a series of emails, adding that they would give up their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles if they had to, “and five days later, it was on the front page of the newspaper.”
The Duke of Sussex said: “It became clear that the institution leaked the fact that we were going to move back to Canada, and the key piece of that story that made me aware that the contents of the letter between me and my father had been leaked was that we were willing to relinquish our Sussex titles. That was the giveaway.”
He added that their plan was “scrapped because it’s now become a public debate.”
Harry “hates himself” for his response to Meghan’s suicidal thoughts
Harry recalled a difficult period of their lives when Meghan was having suicidal thoughts.
“I was devastated,” he admits. “I knew that she was struggling. We were both struggling, but I never thought that 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’ as opposed to ‘husband Harry.’ And what took over my feelings was my royal role.”
“I’d been trained to worry more about what are people gonna think if we don’t go to this event, we’re gonna be late,” he added. “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.”
Harry blames legal battle with the British press for Meghan’s miscarriage
Prince Harry blamed a legal battle with the British press for Meghan’s miscarriage.
The sixth episode of the series showed the couple reflecting on Meghan’s lawsuit against the Mail on Sunday over the publication of letters between the Duchess and her father Thomas Markle.
During the legal battle, Meghan suffered a miscarriage, which Harry has now attributed to their stress caused by the publication.
Reflecting in the episode, Meghan said: “I was pregnant. I really wasn’t sleeping, and the first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried.”
Harry claimed: “I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what The Mail did.”
“I watched the whole thing. Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course we don’t.”
Harry continued: “But bearing in mind the stress 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 miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her.”
In October 2019, Meghan sued Mail on Sunday following the publication of a letter the former actress had written to her father ahead of her wedding to the Duke of Sussex.
The Duchess claimed that Mail on Sunday’s act of publishing the letter was misuse of private information, copyright infringement and a breach of the UK’s Data Protection Act.
In January 2020, the outlet filed its defence, attempting to justify the published letter because it was of “huge and legitimate public interest” into the private lives of the Royal Family.
The Guardian reported at the time that the filed documents claimed the Royal Family “rely on publicity about themselves and their lives to maintain the privileged positions they hold” and that Meghan doesn’t “have a reasonable expectation of privacy that the contents of the letter were private and would remain so”.
Mail on Sunday’s owner Associated News Limited (ANL) claimed Thomas only shared the letter after Meghan’s friends gave an interview about it to PEOPLE magazine, which he felt portrayed him negatively.
In July 2020, the Duchess of Sussex identified the five friends in question; however, she denied she had authorised them to do the interview.
At the time, Meghan stated she “did not know about the interview having been given, and only found out about it, and any reference to the Letter, after the People magazine article was published”.
Harry claims Prince William “screamed and shouted” at him
Harry claimed his brother Prince William “screamed and shouted” at him over his decision to leave the Royal family.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped away from their roles as senior working members of the Royal family in 2020.
In episode five of the explosive Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the 38-year-old recalled discussing his decision with his father, now King Charles III, brother William, and his late grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.
He said: “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren’t true… and my grandmother sit there and quietly take it all in.”
“You have to understand that from the family’s perspective, especially from hers, there are ways of doing things. And her ultimate mission, goal, slash responsibility is the institution.”
Harry continued: “The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother so that he’s on the institution side, and part of that I get, that’s his inheritance.”
“So to some extent, it’s already ingrained in him that part of his responsibility is the survivability and continuation of this institution.”
He later spoke about a joint statement that was released squashing rumours of William “bullying” Harry and Meghan out of the royal family, claiming he had no part in the statement.
The father-of-two said: “I got in the car after the meeting. I was told about a joint statement that had been put out in my name and in my brother’s name, squashing the story about him bullying us out of the family. I couldn’t believe it, no one had asked me.”
“No one had asked my permission to put my name to a statement like that. I rang M and I told her, and she burst into floods of tears because within four hours they were happy to lie to protect my brother and yet for three years they were never willing to tell the truth to tell us.”
Meghan claims she was described as a “foreign organism”
In episode four, Meghan detailed her “struggle” to fit in with the Royal Family.
“here was this moment where our private secretary, she worked for the Queen for almost 20 years and what she said to me was it’s like this fish that’s swimming perfectly with the right current then this little organism comes in,” the Duchess says.
“This foreign organism and the entire thing goes mmm – what is that? What is it doing here, doesn’t look like us, doesn’t move like us, we don’t like it, get it off of us.”
The former actress claims that the private secretary had tried to reassure her by saying: “You know they’ll soon see that it’s stronger, faster even better with this organism as part of it. It will be hard at the beginning for them to adjust to this new thing but then it will be amazing.”