“No, sadly not,” Harry replied. He said that in his family’s opinion it was his and Meghan’s decision to break away, and any consequences are their responsibility to bear. This is despite the fact that for three years prior to their departure he had been asking them for help. He went on to say that it’s hard because he has always been a part of the “system” of the monarchy, but that whereas he was able to eventually leave, someone like his brother Prince William is unable to. “Does your brother want to leave the system?” Oprah asked. “I don’t know, I can’t speak for him,” Harry said, going on to describe the environment he escaped from as “toxic” due to the monarchy’s dependence on keeping the tabloids on its side. Oprah went on to ask whether his family shares this opinion and if his father Prince Charles also believes it’s a toxic environment. “He’s had to make his peace with it,” Harry said. On being asked why they couldn’t simply make their peace with it, Meghan said it was different for them because of the racism aspect, because she’s American, and because of social media. “It translated in a different way across the Pond,” she said. Meghan seemed to imply that the royals downplayed the abuse she was getting from the British press, because they have all been on the receiving end of the media’s negative coverage. For example, she said, Duchess Kate used to be called ‘Waity Katie’ because of her apparent willingness to wait almost a decade for William to propose. While she said that must have been “really hard”, Meghan said that it was “not the same” as the abuse she was receiving. “Rude and racist are not the same.” She also said that the royals’ press team are supposed to defend them when something is said that is not true, but that wasn’t the Sussexes’ experience. When Oprah asked whether it would make a different to Harry if the royals acknowledged that the hurt he and Meghan gone through is in fact because of race, he said, “It would make a huge difference.” He went on, “There’s a lot of people who have seen it for what it was… Like, it’s talked about across the world. Yet the very people that don’t want to see it, or can’t see it, choose not to see it.” Next up, Meghan Markle compares herself to Ariel in The Little Mermaid in Oprah Winfrey interview.
