["Wedding March" by Mendelssohn playing]
[male presenter] Elizabeth and Philip take their places on history's pages.
To the stirring strains of Mendelssohn,
they march as man and wife toward the west door
amidst nearly 3,000 invited spectators.
[crowd cheering, clamoring]
-[poignant music playing] -[crowd cheering]
[Meghan] There was this moment where our private secretary,
she had worked for the queen for almost,
I think 20 years,
and what she said to me was,
it's like this fish. It's, like, swimming perfectly.
Powerful, it's on the right current.
[crowd cheering]
[Meghan] And one day this little organism comes in.
[woman 1] She's independent, she's quite feisty.
-[woman 2] She's a controlling woman. -[woman 1] Ooh!
This foreign organism. And the entire thing goes…
[squeals]
"What is that? What is it doing here?"
"It doesn't look like us. It doesn't move like us."
"We don't like it. Get it off of us."
[calm music plays]
-[woman 1] There's polarized opinions-- [woman 2] I say it's doomed.
[woman 3] People are so cynical before the people are even married.
Give the couple a chance for goodness sake. They're obviously in love.
[woman 4] I agree.
[Meghan] And she just explained that, 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'll be amazing.
[woman 5] Times are changing. She's the first ever global princess.
[woman 6] I think what she and Harry are going to be capable of
is going to be quite impressive.
[woman 7] This couple is the one that is gonna change
the face of the royal family for me.
And I was really hopeful that that was true.
[emotive theme music playing]
[emotive theme music finishes]
[Meghan] On the day of our wedding,
it's like I went into a really calm space.
I don't know how I was so calm.
I look back and, "How was I so calm?"
And all I wanted was a mimosa, a croissant
and, uh, to play the song, "Going to the Chapel."
And that's what I did. And it was great.
♪ Going to the chapel ♪
♪ And we're gonna get married ♪
♪ Going to the chapel of love… ♪
[bell jingling]
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!
It's Harry and Meghan's big day. God save the Queen.
[bell jingling]
[female presenter 1] We can take you now to Windsor town center
where the streets are packed.
Everybody's going crazy. Yeah, everybody's wedding mad.
[crowd cheering]
The crowd. It was just literally like you were in the biggest football stadium.
This massive, massive roar.
[crowd cheering]
It's estimated that 115,000 people will be here in Windsor.
[speaking Korean]
[speaking Spanish]
[speaking Arabic]
[Heather Dorak] Everything was big and spectacular.
I mean it was just, like, hard to even comprehend
that I'm actually a part of this event.
♪ Going to the chapel… ♪
It's like… this is crazy, like absolutely crazy.
["Going to the Chapel" continues]
♪ Bells will ring ♪
♪ Ah ah ah, sun will shine ♪
♪ Whoa oh oh, I'll be his… ♪
[Meghan] So I knew that when I got to the actual castle…
How funny is that to say? "When I got to the castle for my wedding."
Um, that there'd be tons of people. What I didn't know was
people would be lining both sides of the street.
I mean, this was a 15-minute drive.
Me and my mom were like,
"What is going on? Look at all these people!"
Everyone's got their phones out. There we go. Wow! Look at that.
♪ Married ♪
♪ Going to the chapel… ♪
[Harry] There was an expectation, right? Diana's boy.
There was an expectation to have a public wedding.
It was like, "Mission complete with William."
"Now, let's see if this goes the distance with Harry
and then we can actually go, 'Job done.'"
[crowd cheering]
-[female presenter] Here she comes. -[male presenter] Here comes the bride.
♪ Going to the chapel of love ♪
♪Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
[male presenter] This is when you finally get to see that dress.
[crowd cheering]
[Clare Waight Keller] Looking at the design of the dress…
there were many conversations we had
over how you want to present yourself to the world.
I mean, most of us have a wedding with, you know, 70 to 200 people.
This was billions of people watching this wedding. [laughing]
It has to be flawless, it has to be perfect.
[stately intro music plays]
[Meghan] I just remember thinking, "Just take a deep breath and keep going."
[female voice vocalizing]
[Meghan] And you chose the song I walked down the aisle to.
[Harry] Yep.
[Meghan] Which was stunning. That was so beautiful.
[Harry] My father helped us choose an orchestra,
which made all the difference.
[vocalizing]
[Meghan] Harry's dad is very charming.
And… I said to him, like,
"I've lost my dad in this."
So, him as my father-in-law was really important to me.
So I asked him to walk me down the aisle and he said yes.
The whole thing was surreal.
It was at that moment, I could also see H.
[interviewer] What was going through your head when you saw her coming?
Look at… Look at me, look what I got.
-[Meghan laughing] Oh my gosh. -Look what I… look what I found.
[inaudible]
[Harry] The world was watching us, but when we were actually at the altar,
as far as I was concerned, it was just the two of us.
[inaudible conversation]
[Meghan] H and I are really, really good at finding each other in the chaos.
When we find each other, we reconnect to, like, "Oh it's you. It's you."
It's not that the rest of it doesn't matter, but…
The rest of it feels temporary.
It felt like a moment where the world paused and celebrated love.
I remember watching him look at her,
and I almost started to cry,
and I was like, "No Vicky, don't cry!"
♪ I won't cry, I won't cry ♪
♪ No, I won't shed a tear… ♪
[Clare Waight Keller] The whole ceremony was something quite unique.
A gospel choir. That had never been part of a royal wedding before.
♪ So darling, darling stand… ♪
[Harry] There wasn't too much pushback on that.
No.
Everyone was like, "Gospel choir. Wonderful idea. That's great."
And again, more help from, from, uh, from my dad on that one.
[Meghan] Yeah, said that they could just
take the best people from certain gospel choirs
and put them together.
And that's how Kingdom Choir came to be, and they're great.
♪ Trouble, won't you stand by me… ♪
[Serena Williams] To have her culture represented in that wedding,
amazing, I loved it.
And I thought it was really courageous and breaking boundaries but not trying to.
-♪ Stand by me ♪ -♪ So darling, darling ♪
We had this massive moment where myself, Oprah, Idris Elba and his partner,
we all looked at each other for a brief moment and had a little bit of a chuckle.
And nobody needed to say anything,
because everybody knew exactly the layers of symbolism
that were taking place that day.
[Gospel music playing]
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Oh, this little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ I say, this little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine Let it shine, let it shine ♪
♪ Oh, in my home ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ You know, oh, in my home ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ I say, oh, in my home ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine Let it shine, let it shine ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Oh, this little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ I said, this little light of mine ♪
[crowd cheering]
[bell jingling]
And then we had the reception at St. George's Hall.
[stately music playing]
-We cut cake. With a sword. -With a sword. [laughing]
With a sword.
[Meghan] It was great. It was all so over the top.
I think most people were just like, "What is happening?" Elton John's performing.
I couldn't find my mom because she had beelined to the stage to watch Elton sing.
I just really wanted the music to be fun.
Even our first dance.
-Song of a thousand, uh, dances? -Thousands…
A thousand… Help, I always get it wrong.
["Land of a Thousand Dances" by Wilson Pickett playing]
♪ One two three ♪
♪ Ow, uh, all right, uh! ♪
♪ Got to know how to pony ♪
♪ Like Bony Maronie ♪
-♪ Mash potato ♪ -There you go.
♪ Do the alligator ♪
That was our first dance. It was so fun.
I was just spinning like a whirlwind. It was so great.
It was just brilliant. It was how every wedding should be.
[woman] Meg was madly in love.
♪ Na na na na na na na na na na… ♪
Meg and I would always sign off on our texts, "Love wins."
♪ Na na na na na na na na na na ♪
[Silver] Love won.
[soft music playing]
[James Holt] Someone said to me,
"If you were writing the royal family story as a novel,
it's almost at this point in its history
that you would want to be writing in a new character like Meghan."
It needed a boost of energy.
A modernization that would speak to a new generation of people.
[indistinct conversation]
[Harry] Oh my God.
It's my favorite video.
Thursday afternoon. Someone's happy.
As far as people were concerned, we were living in a palace. We were. In a cottage.
We were living on palace grounds.
[Meghan] Yeah. Kensington Palace sounds very regal. Of course it does.
It says "palace" in the name, but Nottingham Cottage was so small.
The whole thing's on a slight lean.
Really low ceilings, I don't know who it was for. They must have been short.
[Meghan] He would hit his head constantly in that place 'cause he's so tall.
Me with a hoe, and H varnishing.
It was just a chapter in our lives where I don't think anyone could believe
what it was actually like behind the scenes.
[Harry] Well, Oprah came over for tea, didn't she?
-She did. -When she came in,
she sat down, she goes, "No one would ever believe it."
"No one would ever believe it." [laughing]
[Harry laughing]
[Meghan] My first official engagement with Her Majesty
was very early on after we got married.
We took the royal train together and we had breakfast that morning.
[man] Your Majesty, thank you so much for coming back to Cheshire.
And, um… I had a really great time with her.
[soft classical music playing]
[interviewer] What do you talk about with the Queen of England?
[Meghan] I treated her as my husband's grandma.
And knowing that, of course, there has to be
a completely different sense of propriety and whatnot in public.
When you're sitting and having breakfast, to just be able to talk.
I mean, when we got into the car in-between engagements,
she had a blanket and she put it over my knees
and we're sitting in the car with this blanket and I thought,
"I recognize and respect and see that you are the queen,
but in this moment, I'm so grateful that there's a grandmother figure."
"Because that feels like family."
And because I was so, so close with my grandmother
and I took care of her in her final years.
Yeah. It was really… It was such a… Such a good day. We laughed.
[female presenter] Meghan had the Queen in stitches of laughter.
You don't often see the Queen in giggles.
[Meghan] That day happened to be the one-year anniversary of the Grenfell fire.
[male presenter] The Queen and the Duchess of Sussex remembering Grenfell in Chester.
[female presenter] Seventy-two seconds of silence. One for every life lost.
[Meghan] It was really important to me because I had become so close
with so many of the women who had survived that,
even though no one knew that at the time.
[melancholic music playing]
[female presenter] Beneath a still moon, a blaze of such ferocity
it is almost filmic.
[Meghan] The Grenfell fire was horrendous.
We were watching it on the news.
[female reporter 1] Residents have complained for years
that their concerns about safety at the flats were simply being ignored.
[female reporter 2] One key question was whether council budget cuts
were in any way to blame.
Grenfell has a very high immigrant population
and is a deprived area of London.
And it is a direct neighbor to Kensington,
one of the richest boroughs in the UK.
The Grenfell fire left so many families displaced,
outside of how many deaths it caused.
And, I remember saying, "Well, can we do something?"
"We need to go down there and do something."
And so, I connected with the women at Al-Manaar,
which is a mosque in Grenfell.
They were living in these hotels and just given meal vouchers for fast food.
I started cooking at age of seven,
for at least 30 to 50 every day.
But after the fire happened, we stayed in the hotel for 19 months.
Eating takeaway, like day and night.
So I walked into the local mosque and I asked if I could use the kitchen to cook.
[indistinct conversation]
[Munira] The whole idea was just to try and feel normal again.
For a few hours, forget that something happened.
The first few months, it was twice a week,
up until…
the Duchess came.
[soft music playing]
[crowd cheering]
When the Duchess came in, you know, we like to kiss.
Three kisses on the cheek and there's about 50 of us there.
She couldn't finish. She was like, "Oh my God, oh my God." [laughing]
She asked if she could help. I was like, "Really?"
She goes, "Yeah." Sleeves up, I gave her apron,
and she washed, like, five kilos basmati rice.
Uh, okay. Mmm.
[Meghan] Over the course of eight or nine months,
I just kept going back and visiting them, and I loved these women so much.
When I watched these women laughing together and grieving together,
I said, "Why can't you do this every day of the week?"
They said, "Well, we don't have the funds for it."
I just looked around, I said, "We should make a cookbook."
[applause]
[Meghan] Thank you for coming for the launch of Together,
to celebrate this and the women of the Hubb Community Kitchen.
Actually, the first speech I made as a member of the royal family
was launching this cookbook.
Working on this project for the past nine months has been
a tremendous labor of love.
[Meghan] We did it on the grounds of Kensington Palace.
And did your mom make these, um…
[Meghan] I feel so proud to live in a city that can have so much diversity.
It's 12 countries represented in this one group of women.
It's pretty outstanding. Thank you.
[audience applause]
[Natalie] Sales, we're doing brilliantly.
We've knocked JK Rowling off the top spot,
and the book's not even out yet.
[Meghan] It just… Just kept growing.
[indistinct conversation]
On behalf of all the ladies, thank you.
[woman] Thank you!
[reporter] If you needed an image of how the Duchess of Sussex
is changing the way the royal family is perceived,
this one would probably do it.
[woman] Thank you! Thank you!
[Afua] She talked about wanting to bring new life to the monarchy,
and more honesty and humanity to those spaces. What's not to like?
[woman] Oi, royalty.
[man] There they are.
Prince Harry and Meghan on the first day of their Australian tour.
[crowd cheering]
They seem to speak so effortlessly for a different generation.
[crowd cheering]
[female presenter] She and Harry are the superstars of the British family.
Yeah, I shook her hand too.
[women squeal]
[Harry] Looking back on it now,
amazed we managed to do what we did.
Well, also even harder when I was pregnant.
[Meghan] One of the things that we connected on really early
is you always had wanted to be a dad.
-[Harry] Mm. -And I'd always wanted to be a mom.
We started journaling right when we found out we were pregnant.
It was just, "Dear baby, we're so excited to meet you one day."
And take little snapshots and stick them in the journal.
"Here's an announcement that went out about you today."
[female presenter] Breaking baby news.
The Duchess of Sussex is pregnant and we now know officially.
[keyboard clicking]
[Meghan] We announced we were pregnant in Australia.
Because we had to.
-You were starting to show. -[Meghan] Yeah.
And then New Zealand started referring to it as the bump.
-As the bump. Le bump. Yeah. -Le bump, yeah.
[female presenter] They'll be busy, which is not easy early in a pregnancy.
They have 76 engagements scheduled.
That was a really rigorous tour to do, pregnant.
[female presenter] A 16-day trip. Australia and New Zealand and Fiji.
Let's hope she hasn't got bad morning sickness.
She's so lovely and just so engaged.
Really all about women's empowerment.
[poignant music playing]
[Harry] Giving 100%, every single person that you meet--
That's their moment.
[male presenter] The Duchess of Sussex arrived hand-in-hand with her husband.
It went so well.
Because when girls are given the right tools to succeed,
they can create incredible futures.
[woman] The work they were doing, the speeches,
the people they were meeting, it seemed to be amazing.
And then I don't understand what happened after that.
I think Australia was a real turning point because they were so popular.
So popular with the public.
[crowd chanting] Meghan!
[woman] The internals at the palace were incredibly threatened by that.
[women squeal in crowd]
[male presenter] Putting aside what I think,
she's becoming a royal rock star.
Bigger, I would argue, as a couple, than William and Kate.
That's probably not a good thing in the long term.
[soft music playing]
The issue is when someone who's marrying in, who should be a supporting,
a supporting act,
is then stealing the limelight, or is doing the job better
than the person who is born to do this.
That upsets people. It shifts the balance.
Because you've been led to believe
that the only way that your charities can succeed
and the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved
is if you're on the front page of those newspapers.
But the media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page.
First time that the penny dropped for her,
M and I spent the night in a room in Buckingham Palace after an event where
every single member of the family had been, including the queen.
[Meghan] The next morning, they'd set up breakfast for Harry and I.
And on the front page of The Telegraph, Meghan.
I went, "Oh my God."
[melancholic music playing]
[Harry] She was like, "But it's not my fault."
And I said, "I know. And my mum felt the same way."
We'd be going round Australia for instance
and you… All you could hear was, "Oh, she's on the other side."
[male interviewer] What do you mean?
Well, they weren't on the right side to wave at me or to touch me.
[male interviewer] They were expressing a preference, even then, for you.
[Princess Diana] Yes.
Now if you're a man, or my husband, a proud man,
you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks.
And you feel low about it.
[male interviewer] But were you flattered by the media attention?
[Diana] No, not particularly.
Because with the media attention came a lot of jealousy.
A great deal of… complicated situations arose because of that.
[tense music playing]
[James] When some people in the institution around the family
started to see that this new couple
could destabilize the power dynamics,
whether actively talked about or not,
the aim was to put them in a box or make them irrelevant.
[Abigail] It was almost like, from the wedding and everything,
I saw that they were building her up
and then there was a shift and they started to tear her down.
[male presenter] The Duchess of Sussex is at war with her sister-in-law.
All of a sudden, these tabloid stories
started to appear,
criticizing Meghan for every little thing.
What's interesting is that you could see side by side, two articles.
One in which Kate was praised, and Meghan was condemned.
-[Harry] You had the bump. -[Meghan] The bump.
[Harry] The avocados.
It's bizarre. And there were maybe like 25 examples.
It's literally the same thing.
It's the off-the-shoulder dress.
It's the same fruit.
-If avocado is a fruit? -Mm-hmm, it is, yeah.
This is how it's covered for her. This is how it's covered for her.
If you don't see the difference and understand
why it's being reported that way, why…
then, I can't help you.
-[Meghan chuckles] -[Harry laughs]
I can't. I'm sorry. I just can't.
At the time, I mean we laughed about it because it's so ridiculous.
But an attack can be preposterous but it's still an attack
and that drip feed of constant attack on someone who is an individual,
a real person, has an impact.
[man] The fairy tale has fractured and one person is copping all the blame.
[male presenter] Meghan seems to be a version of the Antichrist.
[female presenter 1] Is Meghan Markle "Duchess Difficult"?
[female presenter 2] "Duchess Difficult." "Monster Markle."
[James] A lot of the stories had a connotation and a tone
that were incredibly demeaning.
[tense music playing]
So many people expect racism really just to be the N-word.
"None of that's racist." It's like, "You don't understand."
[male presenter] Where is that racism? I haven't seen it.
So the UK's perfect at doing this, right? Nobody wants to be openly racist.
That wouldn't be civilized. That wouldn't be British.
Uh, but it's perfectly fine to kind of dog whistle. Give a nod to it.
She's a diva. She's making people cry.
This kind of angry black woman trope.
It just really came to the fore, uh, really quite suddenly.
Like even the stereotyping and the association to drugs or terrorism…
[Munira] There's a time they put my picture and Meghan's picture,
saying that the mosque is related to ISIS.
Why?
[David] Anger sells.
That hysteria elicits clicks,
which elicits an engagement, which elicits money.
I call it the outrage industrial complex.
And racialized anger is just another step down the same pathway.
[Meghan] I had still been under the delusion
that if it was in a tabloid, no one believed it.
Like, it's a tabloid.
And then we had a walkabout in Liverpool
and there was a group of women, and one of them said to me,
"What you're doing to your father's not right."
It was the first time that I went,
"Oh my God. People actually believe this stuff."
And then my entire center was rocked to its core.
-[melancholic music playing] -[indistinct conversation]
[camera shutters clicking]
[Harry] The lies, that's one thing.
You kind of get used to that when you live within this family.
But what they were doing to her and the effect that it was having on her…
Like, enough. Enough of the pain, enough of the…
The suffering.
[melancholic music continues]
[Harry] No one sees what's happening behind closed doors.
Back in the day, my mum was in the back of the car,
going to engagements in floods of tears.
And then my dad's saying, "Almost there."
And 30 seconds to wipe the tears away, slap on some makeup,
and then the door opens and smile, everything's fine.
And flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash.
[melancholic music resumes]
It was just gloomy. Like she was just kind of disappearing inside herself.
I'd never seen her like that. It was hard. It's very hard to talk about. [chuckles]
Um, I was really scared.
It was like, all of this will stop if I'm not here.
And that was the scariest thing about it. It was such clear thinking.
I remember her telling me that…
That she had wanted to take her own life.
And, um…
And that really broke my heart.
Because I knew…
Well, I knew that it was bad.
But to just constantly be, um,
picked at by these vultures…
Uh, just picking away at her spirit.
That she would actually think of not wanting to be here.
That, uh…
It's… That's not an easy one for a mom to hear.
You know, uh…
And, uh…
[sniffling]
And I can't protect her.
H can't protect her.
She's…
[sniffling]
[melancholic music resumes]
[Harry] I was devastated.
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 had been trained
to worry more about,
what are people gonna think if we don't go to this event?
We're gonna be late.
And looking back on it now, I…
I hate myself for it. [scoffs]
What she needed from me was so much more than I was able to give.
I wanted to go somewhere to get help, but I wasn't allowed to.
They were concerned about how that would look for the institution.
They knew how bad it was.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Harry] They thought, "Why couldn't she deal with it?"
As if to say, "Well, you know, everybody else has dealt with it,
why can't she deal with it?"
But this was different. It was really different.
But actually, if you strip all that away
and say, "Okay fine, it was exactly the same,"
so do we still believe that she should have just sucked it up
like other members of the family?
Or does one think that maybe it's about time that we stopped?
No one would have private conversations with the editors saying, "Enough."
My dad said to me, "Darling boy, you can't take on the media."
"The media will always be the media." I said, "I disagree."
I have 30 years' experience of looking behind the curtain
and seeing how this system works and how it runs.
I mean, just constant briefings about other members of the family,
about favors, inviting the press in.
It's a dirty game.
You know, there's leaking, but there's also planting of stories.
So if the comms team want to be able to remove
a negative story about their principle,
they will trade and give you something about someone else's principle.
So the offices end up working against each other.
It's a kind of a, this weird understanding or acceptance that happens.
And you can always say, "I didn't know about this,"
or, "This would never happen. Are you suggesting that I condone this?"
It's like, "No. But what I am asking is have you done anything to stop it?"
And the answer is no.
[man] Pretend like you know each other, come on.
[all laughing]
[Harry] William and I both saw what happened in our dad's office…
and we made an agreement that we would never let that happen to our office.
[James] Every year, Kensington Palace hosts a Christmas party
for the principles and the staff.
And so we were gearing up for one big party.
and very shortly…
Very shortly before the party,
it became two parties.
[poignant music playing]
That was the point that you realized that these offices are separating.
[female presenter 1] It could be the end of an era for the "Royal Fab Four."
[female presenter 2] The "Fabulous Four" no more?
Meghan and Harry officially cutting ties with William and Kate.
[female presenter 3] The split fueling speculation of further strains
in the once-close relationship between Harry and William,
and growing tensions between their wives.
[wistful music playing]
[Harry] I would far rather get destroyed in the Press
than play along with this game or this business of trading.
[camera shutters click]
[Harry] And to see my brother's office copy the very same thing
that we promised the two of us would never ever do,
that was heartbreaking.
[Meghan] Ready.
-[Harry] Yay! -[Meghan] Yay! Merry Christmas!
[Meghan] We were in this bubble where everything is controlled by them.
I couldn't even text my friends a photo.
"You can't do this, you can't…"
Okay. And you do as you're told,
but your world just becomes more and more like this.
[Abigail] That was a really dark… That was really a dark time.
And I didn't know what to do.
Like, that's the thing is, like, they are in this complex organism
that I don't know anything about, or how to help,
or what to do, and I'm not allowed to say anything.
Like, I was not allowed to say anything.
[sniffling]
Anything that anybody was printing wasn't coming from anybody that knew her.
There's all this untruth.
There's all these lies, and it just seemed to be getting worse.
Abby came to me and said we should do something.
I called one of my closest friends,
who just so happened at the time to be the editor of People magazine.
[wistful music playing]
I said, "We have to turn this narrative around."
You know, it will just be her closest friends
coming together to talk about the person,
who she really is, in the middle of this shit storm.
[Silver] It was born out of just wanting to remind the world
that she's a person and not a headline and…
That she is loved and, and stick up for her.
[Abigail] The story comes out.
Like, "Okay." Like, there was a little bit of an exhale.
[poignant music playing]
[Meghan] My girlfriends surprised me
with a really beautiful baby shower in New York.
They're like, "We're gonna shower her with love,
and shower her baby, and she's gonna survive this."
"We're gonna get through it with her."
This like, really magical time of just, like, us just celebrating her.
It was just so cool and so fun to just, like, try to have an intimate moment.
I don't think I understood that there was no intimate moment that one could have.
[woman in crowd] Jessica!
[indistinct shouting]
[man] Ladies, ladies, come on!
-[woman 1] That turned into a thing… -[woman 2] Criticized the extravagance.
-[woman 3] Ostentatious. [woman 4] The world's biggest stars.
-[woman 5] A show-off moment. -[woman 6] Traveling home in style.
[woman 6] Clooney's private jet. Not too shabby.
[Meghan] It was so wrong.
These independent, strong, successful women
choose to use their own money,
and it's not taxpayer money,
to throw a party for their friend from a place of love.
Why are you taking such a beautiful moment and trying to ruin it?
[Lucy] They knew that they didn't want to bring Archie up
in this frenzy that they lived in.
So then to suddenly have my grandmother go, "There's a house."
"Frogmore Cottage. It's available. Are you interested?""
-"Yes, please." -[Meghan] Yes.
-[wistful music playing] -[dog barking]
It was a place where we had so many memories.
From our courtship, our engagement, our wedding, our walks.
And then where we ended up, you know, having our baby.
-[triumphant music playing] -[woman squeals]
Oyez, oyez.
Buckingham Palace proudly announces the birth of a royal baby boy.
[Whoopi Goldberg] We wanna start off by congratulating
Duchess Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
[female presenter 1] Very happy news. It is a boy!
[Whoopi Goldberg] Just a few hours ago…
Meghan and myself had a baby boy, um, early this morning.
It's been the most amazing experience I could ever have, um, possibly imagined.
One of those babies is gonna pop out looking like me.
[audience laughing]
As a Black man who's just been born to royalty, the Black prince,
Archie has changed the game!
[cannons fire]
[male presenter] Her Royal Highness is the proud and happy mother of a prince.
The whole country knew that the baby would soon be born.
All day on Sunday, people waited outside the palace…
Things have been done in a certain type of way for many years.
[crowd cheering]
[James] The big photo call on the steps as soon as you've given birth.
[crowd cheering]
That's the way that it was expected to go.
And so, in the run-up to Archie's birth,
reporters were constantly phoning like,
"What are the plans? We know that it's close."
[Meghan] There was already, like, the pressure of, like, the picture
with Archie on the steps,
and "are they gonna do that, are they not?"
We are very familiar with this brown door.
[Meghan] But I had been really worried going into that labor
because I'm older and I didn't know if I'd have to have a C-section.
And I had a very long-standing relationship with my doctor.
And that's who I trusted with my pregnancy.
And they said, "Right. But she's at Portland Hospital."
"And the steps are at this hospital."
[poignant music plays]
I said, "Okay, we could do a photo call in front of Portland Hospital."
And they said it's impossible.
"We couldn't barricade these streets off,
and it would create a threat for the emergency room entrance,
because that's where you would have to do this picture."
We said, "Okay, what's the hybrid? Can we give them more time at the castle?"
And everything in turn was like, "Yes. Yes, great. Oh, yes."
At no point did someone go, "Absolutely not."
[camera shutters clicking]
[man] Meghan, tell us what it's like becoming a new mum?
And tell us a little about "Baby Sussex", as we're calling him.
[laughing] Um, it's magic. It's pretty amazing and…
I mean, I have the two best guys in the world, so I'm really happy.
[man] And how are you finding parenting, generally?
[Harry] Yeah, it's great. Parenting is amazing.
It's only been, what, two and a half days, three days.
[Meghan] Yep.
But we're just… We're just so thrilled to have our own little bundle of joy.
He's already got a little bit of facial hair as well. Wonderful.
-Guys, thank you. -Thank you all so much.
-[man] Thanks for your time. -Thank you.
And thank you, everybody, for all the well wishes and the kindness.
It's really… It just means so much.
-Thank you. -Thanks. Bye.
[wistful music playing]
[James] Now, I think, if you ask most average members of society,
they would say, "We would love to be able to see him."
"Take all the time you need. We'll see him when you're ready."
But even though it was just two days after Archie was born,
it turned into a narrative of Harry and Meghan being selfish.
[female presenter 1] A sharp departure from Charles and Diana,
and William and Kate,
all more public with their kids.
[female presenter 2] There has been some controversy,
some comment in the newspapers saying,
"Look, we fund them. We wish to see the baby."
The amount of abuse that we got, especially you, but both of us,
for not wanting to serve our child up on a silver platter, was incredible.
[female presenter] This is an unprecedented slap in the face.
If anyone needed evidence as to why Meghan and Harry
felt it necessary to protect their newborn baby from the media glare,
they couldn't have asked for
a better case to be made
than the way in which the narrative played out after the birth.
Archie's just been born.
Media, social media starts to take on a life of its own.
Someone in the media posting a photograph of a couple with
a chimp.
And at the top it said, "Royal baby leaves hospital."
[tense music playing]
So that was one of the first things that I saw.
It was a metaphor for the way this family were being treated.
That their dignity
and their right to be treated equally
and have their humanity respected and acknowledged
was secondary to a white, patriarchal media establishment.
[female interviewer] Were you aware of the pressure on them
to go pose for the media at that time?
Mm-hmm. I was with her. I mean, I was there. I'd been there a month. Yeah.
Yeah. And that, um…
Well they had already,
you know, just stripped both of them of any kind of privacy.
It was almost like it's not your child, it's the institution's child.
She's saying, "No, this is my baby."
[wistful music playing]
[Doria] I was there when she brought him home from the hospital.
Little tiny little thing. Mm-hmm.
I'd never been a grandmother… I mean… You know, I'm new to being a grandma.
My mom stayed with us for a month solid.
And it was great to have her there.
But then after that, we didn't have someone to help us with Archie.
[Lorren] I had this phone call and they were like,
"Prince Harry and Meghan would like to see you
and speak to you about looking after Archie."
I was like, "Hang on a minute, I need to sit down."
I remember just driving so far. I think I did get a ticket. Actually, yes, I did.
[Meghan laughing]
[Lorren] When I arrived at Frogmore Cottage,
I see this guy, he's tall, he's ginger,
and he's walking barefoot.
And I have gone and bought a new pair of shoes in Clarks.
And suddenly, whatever I thought or felt,
the formality just sort of slid and I felt so at ease.
They were really hands-on parents.
In the morning when he woke up, first thing, mum and dad would come in.
They would be with their baby. She would feed him.
And then after that, I'll take over and normally we'd go for a morning walk.
And she said, "Is it okay if I, like, tie him on my back with a mud cloth
like we do in Zimbabwe?" Yes! Let's do that!
Archie's legs like this. Hugging Lorren like this, fast asleep.
-It's true. -It was brilliant.
She just took care of, not just Archie, but she took care of us.
She definitely took care of me.
Early into the job, we have to prepare for a tour.
I'm like, "What do I pack for a small prince?"
[woman over PA] Please place items in the locker carefully…
[Harry] It's always been a bit of a royal thing
to go on a tour with your child.
The South Africa tour,
Archie being four months old, off we went and we took him with us.
And it was the first time that we traveled as a family for official work.
It was a real strange experience.
[traditional music playing]
[female reporter] Far from traditional start to their royal tour.
Arriving in the Nyanga township known as the murder capital of South Africa.
[male reporter] Symbolic place for the world's
most talked-about mixed-race couple to make their entrance.
-[traditional music playing] -[dancers chant]
You have to see the royal family as diplomats representing the UK.
And so there was, um, great nervousness
about how far Meghan could go
in doing or saying anything that wouldn't cause…
Hello.
…national geopolitical rows between the two countries.
[Meghan] Maya Angelou once said,
"Each time a woman stands up for herself,
without knowing it, possibly without claiming it,
she stands up for all women."
[crowd cheering]
While I'm here, with my husband, as a member of the royal family,
I want you to know that, for me, I am here with you as a mother,
as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of color, and as your sister.
[crowd cheering]
[traditional music playing]
[Meghan] Just from a cultural standpoint,
you do feel connected, you feel welcome, you feel a part of.
And as an African American, that is our lineage.
[presenter 1] Baby Archie all smiles
in his first official appearance on a royal tour.
[presenter 2] Of course, everyone
was looking forward to meeting Archie Mountbatten Windsor.
[lively music playing]
[James] And there were just some perfectly wonderful light moments
that, um, she was just such an enthusiastic new mum.
[woman] It must be exciting to be a mom.
[Meghan] Oh, it's the best.
But it was also the first time that I… I really got to see,
uh, how low she'd got.
[wistful music playing]
[Lorren] It was a lot of pressure on everybody
because the tour was full-on and you're thinking, "Oh my God,
how are you managing this? And yet you can still put a smile on your face."
Because she did have a smile.
-[Meghan] Hi. -[man] Hello.
-How are you? You okay? -I'm good.
-Yes. -Okay.
[Meghan] Tom, the journalist, who was on that trip with us--
[Harry] Yes, the Africa documentary.
[Meghan] This was a royal documentary that the palace was green-lighting.
I guess I just assumed this was just gonna be a…
Like a glossy version of a happy tour.
[Tom] This has been quite a journey, really, one way and another.
Perhaps you could just give us an idea of what the last year's been like.
Um…
[inhales and sighs]
[Meghan] I didn't know what he was gonna ask me.
I hadn't touched up my makeup. I hadn't… I was just fried.
[Tom] I don't know what the impact on your physical and mental health,
of all the pressure that you clearly feel under.
Um…
I would say, look, any woman when they're… especially when they're pregnant,
you're really vulnerable and
you add this on top of just trying to be a new mom
or trying to be a newlywed, it's um…
Yeah, well, I guess… And also thank you for asking,
because not many people have asked if I'm okay. But it's, uh…
It's a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.
[Tom] And the answer is, would it be fair to say, not really okay?
As in it's really been a struggle?
Yes.
[Tom inhales]
[Meghan] And I guess because I was so exhausted,
I was just really grateful
that someone seemed to ask me something like I was a human being.
I mean, in… I guess I just never thought they'd even use it in the documentary.
I remember just saying, "Bye, we'll see you on our flight."
Went and gave Archie a bath.
And then we got in the car,
got on the flight with everybody and…
[poignant music playing]
[Meghan] I had no idea that was gonna be the thing that traveled around the world.
You suddenly go, "Oh, wow, that… What I said was… Has gone…
Like… It's like, yes, it's global.
[tweet sound]
[Meghan] That's, I think, what spawned that hashtag, #WeLoveYouMeghan.
[poignant music continues]
[Meghan] It hit a chord for everyone for something specific to them.
Moms thought, "Oh my God, just like me. No one asked me as a mom if I'm okay."
Someone of color would be like, "No one's asked me if I'm okay
when I'm in a situation like this."
[Harry] I think someone in your position speaking so openly about it
made so many other women feel seen.
[James] People have asked me what the causes were.
My view is it doesn't matter.
I think that when we start down
a path of trying to get someone to justify
why they feel depressed,
that's a dangerous place for us to be.
What you had was someone that was struggling
and she needed more help.
No one in the family speaks that openly.
No one had done, apart from one person.
My mum.
In a space of a year, my whole life changed,
turned upside down.
I never had had a depression in my life.
But then when I analyzed it,
I could see that the changes I've made in the last year
had all caught up with me.
I was at the end of my tether. I was desperate.
Because I am a very strong person
and I know that causes complications in the system that I live in.
From an Institutional perspective, there was something wrong with her,
as opposed to the environment or the system which we were part of.
[soft music playing]
[woman on TV] All this candor has won Harry and Meghan
some sympathy among the British public,
but rumblings from the palace suggest it hasn't gone down quite so well.
[tense music playing]
The fallout was bonkers.
Every single front page in the UK was like
very different to what the general public's reaction was.
When you would expect support from the people closest,
we got the opposite.
[Meghan] There's only so much you can take on your own.
So you end up saying, "Something has to change."
It was a huge turning point.
It's when we started having harder conversations
about what needs to happen for us to be able to continue to make this work.
["You Don't Own Me" by Lesley Gore playing]
♪ You don't own me ♪
♪ I'm not just one of your many toys ♪
♪ You don't own me ♪
♪ Don't say I can't go with other boys ♪
♪ And don't tell me what to do ♪
♪ Don't tell me what to say ♪
♪ And please, when I go out with you ♪
♪ Don't put me on display, 'cause ♪
♪ You don't own me ♪
♪ Don't try to change me in any way ♪
♪ You don't own me ♪
♪ Don't tie me down 'Cause I'd never stay ♪
♪ I don't tell you what to say ♪
♪ I don't tell you what to do ♪
♪ So just let me be myself ♪
♪ That's all I ask of you ♪
♪ I'm young and I love to be young ♪
♪ I'm free and I love to be free ♪
♪ To live my life the way I want ♪
♪ To say and do whatever I please ♪