‘Harry & Meghan’: Prince Charles was the villain on Oprah and Prince William is the bad guy on Netflix …and where’s Jessica Mulroney?

“This is a great love story,” says Prince Harry. “She sacrificed everything that she ever knew, the freedom she had, to join me in my world. And then pretty soon after that, I end up sacrificing everything that I know to join her in her world.”

Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are sharing their story with the world, or rather everyone who has a subscription to Netflix, where their six-part series “Harry & Meghan” just premiered. “We pay, you pose,” is how the series explains the relationship between the British media and the royal family. In this series, it’s Netflix that is paying, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex who are hawking their story, creating a slickly curated view of their lives for a generation that has grown of age while letting it all hang out on social media. “An orchestrated reality show” is how Meghan describes their engagement interview on the BBC, ignoring that she’s living in one herself, on Netflix.

“We know the full truth,” declares Harry. “The institution knows the full truth, and the media knows 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.”

“H” and “M,” as they call each other, are determined to entrench their narrative of how they struggled against royal institutions, the media and societal racism in Britain before breaking away to the freedom of California as the unimpeachable history.

The result is both groundbreaking and yet familiar to those who watched their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, listened to Meghan’s podcast series on Spotify, or read feature articles about the couple in New York or Variety. Indeed, the teasers and trailers tempted more than the series delivered, though there are certainly dramatic accusations. “There was a real kind of war against Meghan,” says Jenny Afia, their lawyer. “And I’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas.” But no proof was forthcoming.

Once again, they portray themselves as gallant heroes, surrounded by enemies. While Prince Charles was very much the villain of the Oprah interview for cutting off his personal funding of the Sussexes’ lifestyle, it’s William who is the bad guy on Netflix, including screaming at Harry during the family summit in early 2020 to determine the Sussexes’ future.

What’s good

The story of how they met and fell in love is engrossing, as no detail is too small not to be included. “It was a blind date” was how they described meeting during their engagement interview in 2017. The full story is that he was scanning Instagram when he noticed a photo of her with a dog-ears filter. “I was like, who is that?” he recounts. (Yes, the series shows that image)

“Once upon a time, there was a girl from L.A. Some people called her an actress. And there was a guy from London. Some people called him a prince. All those people didn’t fully get it. Because this is the love story of a boy and a girl who are meant to be together,” says Meghan, reading from the speech she gave at their wedding reception.

The images are deeply personal: Harry and Meghan kissing in their kitchen; a pregnant Meghan with son Archie on her rounded tummy; even a grainy image of Harry’s proposal on bended knee; photos of baby Lilibet Diana enjoying her first Christmas, and the family being carefree in California.

What’s askew

It’s perhaps the most fact-checked series on Netflix. And it can be economical with the facts. As the Queen famously said, “Recollections may vary.”

One issue is the return of the irritatingly anonymous “they” that plagued the Oprah interview, without specifying whether it’s the royal family, their staff, the media or British society itself: “No matter how hard I tried, no matter how good I was, no matter what I did, they were still going to find a way to destroy me,” says Meghan. Or Harry’s “If you speak truth to power, that’s how they respond.”

While sometimes the couple attack those they perceive as enemies head on – the British tabloids are thoroughly bashed – other barbs are more subtle. When Meghan talks about meeting Kate for the first time, she says, “I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger. I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits. I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside.” While those words aren’t technically directed at her sister-in-law, they are overlaid by a photo of a relaxed, smiling Meghan, wearing a casual top and Blue Jays hat, and then stiff, silent images of William and Kate at grand ceremonial event in an embassy.

While Harry talks lovingly of his late mother, Diana, there are noticeably few warm mentions of his father, Charles or brother, even though they were once very close. Instead, Harry talks glowingly about the time he spent during his early adulthood in Lesotho, and his friendship with Prince Seeiso, saying it “gave me the space and the freedom to breathe, to live and to grow” and how he kept returning to Africa, where he’s “got a second family out there, a group of friends that literally brought me up.” While the documentary uses images from 2010 of Harry and Prince Seeiso riding in the Lesotho countryside, they don’t include similar riding shots taken the very next day of Harry with William, who was also there.

What’s missing

Two big names are airbrushed out of their story: Jessica Mulroney, Meghan’s BFF in Toronto –there are hundreds of images of the two hanging out together – whose three children were in the royal wedding party and who served as Meghan’s unofficial stylist during her time as a working royal; and Trevor Engelson, Meghan’s first husband – they dated for seven years before marrying in 2011 and divorcing in 2014.

There are also unanswered questions:

If the royal family, royal staff and/or the media were plotting against them, then why didn’t the full story of Meghan’s alleged bullying of her staff not break in the Times until March 2021, a year after the Sussexes left full-time royal life? (And given how litigious they are over any perceived inaccuracies in the media, why hasn’t she sued the Times and its royal correspondent, Valentine Low?)

And given their disdain for the royal family, why did their original plan to “carve out a progressive new role within this institution” involve staying as working royals while having commercial projects on the side and why do they still use their royal titles at speaking engagements and in commercial endeavours, such as Harry’s role as chief impact officer at BetterUp?

What’s next

Executives at Penguin Random House, who paid a reported US$20 million to the Sussexes, now have the holiday season to finalize a marketing strategy aimed at those still interested in paying $47 for Harry’s memoir, due in January. There are hints of a major PR campaign, including even more interviews, to help sales of Spare and its promise of “raw, unflinching honesty.”

It’s also unclear what Harry and Meghan do after this burst of attention. While talking about mental health issues, the Invictus Games and their other charitable causes may be of interest to the Sussexes, their commercial partners know what the public really wants: their experience as royals.

Harry, who so didn’t want the media around for Archie’s birth that the media wasn’t notified until after Meghan and Archie were home from the hospital, allowed Netflix to air intimate and deeply personal images of his family. At the same time as viewers watched those scenes of bucolic idyll, William and Kate released their Christmas card photo showing their family of five walking on a country path.

Walter Bagehot famously stated of the monarchy, “Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.” Knowing that theirs is a lifelong public commitment, William rations glimpses of his young family. At the same time, Harry has flung open the doors of his family life to the world in this Netflix series. Though the brothers are estranged, they share one goal in common: to control the narrative to their story.

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