The tabloids are the villain in the first three episodes of ‘Harry & Meghan’ on Netflix

Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for the docuseries “Harry and Meghan” on Netflix.

Viewers who binged the first three episodes of “Harry & Meghan” on Thursday morning expecting a takedown of members of the Royal Family will have to wait to see what next Thursday’s episodes bring.

The villain in the first half of the series — described as “a first-hand account of Harry and Meghan’s story” — is the tabloid media in the U.K., although the British monarchy as an institution, along with British society as a whole, comes in for criticism for wilful blindness on the subject of racism.

It seems clear the series is meant to give a detailed and definitive explanation of why the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fled their royal duties and settled in California (after a brief stopover in Canada). It begins with self-taken video of Harry, looking slightly shell-shocked in the Windsor Suite of Heathrow Airport in March 2020, just after he and Meghan had completed their last royal engagements. He says, “It’s really hard to look back on it now and go ‘What on earth happened?’ Like, ‘How did we end up here?’”

He continues to say that “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” and that it’s “my duty to uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”

“Unfortunately in not standing for something they are destroying us,” Meghan says in her own self-shot video, taken on Vancouver Island, without any explanation of who “they” are, although one can guess.

“This is so much bigger than us,” continues Harry against footage of white Britons marching and saying they want to take back control of their country. “No one knows the full truth. We know the full truth. The institution knows the full truth and the media knows the full truth ’cause they’ve been in on it. And I think anybody else in my situation would have done exactly the same thing.”

The video diaries — made at the suggestion of a friend to counteract the misinformation out there, Harry says — are supplemented by interviews with the couple that were completed in August (thus mere weeks before Queen Elizabeth II died), and interviews with friends, royal experts and other observers.

Members of the Royal Family declined to comment on the series.

The series is part love story — documenting what looks to be a deep and durable relationship — and part history lesson: of the Royal Family’s fraught relations with the media as well as the monarchy’s complicity in colonialism.

The love story starts in July 2016 when Meghan was in London on a break from her TV show “Suits” as part of a girls’ trip meant to celebrate her singlehood. Harry spotted a Snapchat video of her on a friend’s Instagram — with a dog-ear filter, no less — and wanted to meet her. She consented to exchange numbers after she checked out Harry’s private Instagram account with its “beautiful photography” and evidence of his interest in Africa.

He was half an hour late for their first date and walked into 76 Dean Street, part of the private club Soho House, a very apologetic “hot, sweaty red ball of mess,” which Meghan described as “so sweet.”

There was one more date before she left London, but both were already smitten, as evidenced by the testimony of their friends and a photo they took that night, both broadly smiling, Meghan snuggled up against Harry.

They maintained a secret long-distance relationship until August when they had their third date, spending five days and nights together in a tent in Botswana, where Harry was doing conservation work.

“We had to get to know each other before the rest of the world and before the media joined in,” says Harry.

“Thankfully we really liked each other,” Meghan says.

They managed to keep the relationship quiet until October 2016 when Harry got word from a communications secretary that the story was about to be leaked by a tabloid.

Harry had some inkling of what was coming next.

The series draws explicit parallels between Harry’s and Meghan’s experience and the experiences of his mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in August 1997 after being chased by paparazzi.

Harry says that although he recalls a childhood filled with laughter, happiness and adventure, he doesn’t have many early memories of his mom aside from her “cheeky laugh … The majority of my memories are of being swarmed by paparazzi.”

As described in the series by commentators like author and royal expert Robert Hazell and James Holt, a former royal spokesperson, the monarchy has a sort of Faustian bargain with the tabloid media: they need to stay popular to survive, which means being seen, which means granting press access.

But Harry says it’s a bargain that’s never worked, one his mother felt compelled to talk about in her famous “Panorama” interview.

“My mom was harassed throughout her life with my dad,” he says. “But after they separated, the harassment went to new levels.” He learned, he says, “the pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution … I remember thinking, ‘How can I ever find someone who is willing and capable to be able to withstand all the baggage that comes with being with me?’”

Given how the story turned out, the answer might be that he actually didn’t, but the series hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

The second and third episodes deal with the paparazzi’s harassment of anyone connected to Meghan — even in seemingly chill Toronto, where trailers for the “Suits” cast and crew had to be fenced to keep intruders out — as well as damage inflicted by people who would otherwise seem like allies, namely Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, and half-sister, Samantha Markle.

“She had a father before this and now she doesn’t have a father,” says Harry of the break with Thomas just before the wedding.

Of course, it’s his family that everyone watching will be most interested in.

These first episodes start to nibble around the edges of the family’s involvement in Harry’s and Meghan’s flight.

Harry says the family was surprised that “the ginger could land such a beautiful woman and such an intelligent woman. But that I was dating an American actress clouded their judgment in the beginning.”

When the tabloid harassment began, the couple was advised to say nothing.

“As far as a lot of the family was concerned, everything she was being put through they had been put through as well … ‘Why should your girlfriend be treated any differently?’ The difference here is the race element,” Harry says.

Meghan, who is biracial, says at first she believed what she was being told, that things would get better.

“But truth be told, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how good I was, no matter what I did they were still gonna find a way to destroy me.”

Among the points the docuseries makes via its expert voices is that slavery was funded by the monarchy right up until its abolition and that the much vaunted Commonwealth could be seen as a kind of “empire 2.0,” a way of giving former colonies their independence while maintaining financial advantages for Britain’s elite.

“In this family,” Harry says, “sometimes, you know, you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution. And there is a huge level of unconscious bias. The thing with unconscious bias is it’s actually no one’s fault, but once it’s been pointed out or identified within yourself, you then need to make it right.”

One suspects the couple will have a lot more to say on that topic when episodes 4 to 6 are released on Dec. 15.

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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