Queen Elizabeth In Special TV Appearance Hours Before Meghan Markle's Oprah Winfrey Interview
Queen Elizabeth is going to appear on TV with Prince Charles, Prince William and Kate Middleton just hours before Meghan Markle's interview with Oprah Winfrey airs. Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, and Sophie, the Countess of Wessex are also joining Her Majesty.
According to reports, the Queen and the royal family are going to be part of the Commonwealth Day service broadcast on BBC. Since they can't do this annual celebration in-person due to the COVID-19 restrictions on mass gathering, the Queen and the rest of the royals will appear in pre-recorded messages instead.
Coincidentally, however, the airing of the Commonwealth Day service is happening on Mar. 7, which is also the day of the broadcast of Meghan's interview with Winfrey. This special will be running on U.S. television via CBS at 8:00 p.m., which means it will be 1:00 a.m. in the U.K. It's unclear, however, if a British broadcast network has been picked to run the said interview.
The Commonwealth Day service has been in the works since January 2021. According to People, the date for the televised event was settled three weeks ago.
Meghan, on the other hand, filmed her interview with Winfrey last week. Reports cited that there will be some re-editing done since the sit down apparently happened before Queen Elizabeth announced that Harry and Meghan will not be returning as working royals and will have to give up their royal patronages and military roles.
Sources said that Winfrey and the Sussexes did not discuss their royal roles during the interview. What they did talk about was Meghan's estrangement from her father, Thomas Markle, and how their life has been under public pressure. According to Winfrey's best friend, journalist Gayle King, Meghan and Harry, who also briefly appears in the interview, did not hold back in answering the questions and asked anything she wanted.
It was apparently this interview that further pushed the Queen's resolve as the monarch to tell her grandson that they cannot be "half-in, half-out" as working royals and still have a commercial or media venture. Sources said that the royals found out about the Sussex pair's plan to speak to Winfrey on Twitter as they allegedly did not inform Queen Elizabeth beforehand.
Insiders said that Meghan and Harry's interview would likely become as controversial as Princess Diana's tell-all in 1995, which led to her divorce from Prince Charles and Prince Andrew's shocking BBC sit-down, which led to his resignation from his royal roles.