From death threats to meet-cutes, Netflix's new documentary series "Harry & Meghan"
shattered our notions about their private world. Here are the most shocking reveals.
Before the first note of music plays for the introduction, from the beginning of the series,
it's clear that Harry and Meghan Markle knew that they were filming for, well, something. While the
pair announced their decision to step back from royal duties in January 2020, the series begins
with intimate, behind-the-scenes footage shot on cell phones from March 2020, only two months
later. Minutes into the series, Meghan is shown in Vancouver Island, where the two initially
decamped. Harry begins by talking about the safety concerns they were feeling at that time.
"I'm genuinely concerned for the safety of my family."
Harry clarifies that the, quote, "level of hate" is the biggest reason the two were driven away
from Britain, further reflecting on the media scrutiny they faced way back in early 2020.
In one sweet scene, Meghan and Harry are asked to watch an old clip of Markle being
interviewed for a Canadian show. She's asked what song she likes right now and offers Nina
Simone's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free." After that, she says that Olivia
Pope is her favorite character on TV. Then, the interviewer asks her a truly special question:
"Prince William or Prince Harry?"
"I don't know. Harry? Harry, sure."
In the series, the now-married couple laugh as Markle asks when the interview happened,
and they find out it was filmed in October 2015 — just under a year
before the two first met. It's a good thing Meghan didn't choose William!
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry met in 2016, and Markle shares that only months before that first
meeting, she was planning to focus on being single, and intentionally wasn't looking for a
relationship at all, let alone one that would lead to marriage and children. Her show "Suits" had
just been renewed, and Markle wanted to spend the time with her close friends and focus on herself.
"So I was like, 'This is it. We're gonna travel. Come on, girls. Let's go."
As fate would have it, other things were in the works for her.
As Harry shares, the two were set up via Instagram. The first photo he ever saw of
Meghan was of her wearing a dog filter. The photo was shared by a mutual friend,
so Markle in turn asked to see what his personal Instagram feed looked like.
Things kicked off from there, as Markle was already in London to attend Wimbledon. Their
first date happened within days, when they met for drinks. They hit it off so
well that they had dinner together the next night. And the rest, of course, is history.
"Talk about a plot twist."
It's well known at this point that Harry and Meghan Markle have faced an enormous amount
of interest and pressure from the media around the world, particularly the media
in the United Kingdom. The pair have been open about struggling in the face of this interest,
and especially struggling when it comes to their personal lives. In one early
scene in the second episode of the series, Harry reveals that while the paparazzi was
a "physical" experience when his mom was alive, most of the harassment he and Markle
face now happens online via intense social media harassment that Harry calls a feeding frenzy..
"Because it is basically the hunter versus the prey."
It's clear in the episode that Harry remains bothered by the attention the couple receives.
And although the online vitriol is a regular occurrence, they had their share of frightening
physical situations, too. While in New York in 2021, the pair are pursued by a lone photographer,
but Harry is seen constantly checking over his shoulder to gauge where the photographer is at
all times while Markle holds his hand and attempts to reassure him of their safety.
By now, many royal followers and even those who casually consume royal news know that Meghan
Markle has dealt with a lot of racist press coverage since her relationship with Harry
was announced. Markle, who is biracial, admits in the docu-series that her race
wasn't something she was directly confronted with until her relationship with Harry became public.
During interviews in the second episode of the series, her mother, Doria Ragland,
admits to wishing that she'd had more conversations with Markle about what
she was going to face as an adult and how she could be treated as a Black woman in the world.
"In hindsight, absolutely I would like to go back
and have that kind of real conversation about how the world sees you."
But by Markle's own admission, it didn't seem necessary to have those conversations at the time.
The racist coverage also surprised Harry,
who clearly was just as unprepared for the focus on Markle's race. He says that
the royal family's official position was to say nothing; as Harry puts it,
"And I said the difference here is the race element."
Intense attention from the media began when Meghan Markle was still living in Toronto,
Canada, and working on her show "Suits." In the series, Markle explains that she repeatedly
approached Toronto police to describe her situation — she regularly had men living
in their cars outside her home, hoping to get photos of her — and was told nothing could be
done because of her relationship with Harry, until the situation got even more serious.
"And then I got a death threat and then things changed because I needed to have security."
From that point, everything changed. NBC hired Steve Davies to protect Markle. Davies describes
the nature of what it is to be relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi and the number of
changes that had to take place in Markle's life simply to get her to and from work on time. As
she shares, there was a coordinated assault on Markle's freedom put in place by photographers
and reporters, who used radios to tell one another when and where Markle was traveling.
No one should have to sacrifice their security and mental well-being just because they are in
the public eye. Even so, it's one thing for Meghan Markle to be pursued by photographers — she was in
a relationship with Prince Harry, after all. However, many people can likely agree that
it's quite another thing for Markle's childhood friends and her family to be
worried about their own safety because of their close ties to the Duchess of Sussex.
As Markle's friend Lindsay Jill Roth explains in episode three of the series,
while she and Markle's friends know they might be contacted,
the actual length to which the media went to track down those friends was shocking.
"There were journalists outside my apartment building, there were people trailing us in London.
It was intense."
Markle's mother, Doria Ragland, summed up the situation bluntly.
"I felt unsafe a lot. I can't just go walk my dogs. I can't just go to work.
There was always someone there waiting for me."