Meghan Markle has claimed that Buckingham Palace monitored her conversations with Oprah Winfrey in 2018 when the talk show host was trying to get an interview with her before her wedding to Prince Harry.
Clips from her upcoming interview with the Queen of Talk revealed that Meghan was approached by Oprah even before she married into the royal family. However, Meghan said that Buckingham Palace was monitoring her conversations with Winfrey when they found out that the host wanted her story.
Meghan said that people from the Palace's communications team were in the room when she had phone calls with Winfrey. But now that she's no longer under Palace protocols, she feels finally liberated to be able to talk and speak her mind.
This was part of the reason Meghan couldn't do an interview with anyone. Buckingham Palace had strict rules against talking to the media and the Duchess of Sussex confirmed that she was not allowed to have conversations about her royal life.
But while it looked like Meghan's statements suggested control from Buckingham Palace, a royal expert said that it's part of the infrastructure as a member of the royal family. Katie Nicholl said that since there isn't a "princess manual," the Duchess of Sussex had to be reined in and provided with a support network from the press office. Members of the royal family rarely talk to the press, much less grant exclusive interviews.
Kate Middleton also received the same infrastructure with the Palace's communications team to help her navigate her royal life. Nicholl said that Kate had 10 years to learn to navigate becoming a working royal and to understand "how The Firm worked as an institution."
Meghan, on the other hand, had a whirlwind courtship with Harry. However, Nicholl said that she is a well-educated and well-read woman who could easily understand what she married into.
Meanwhile, additional teaser clips from Meghan's interview with Winfrey also showed the duchess saying that The Firm, referring to the royal family, had been part of "perpetuating falsehoods" about her and Harry. Meghan said that she "lost a lot" by being in the royal family.
Meghan's interview has been compared to Princess Diana's explosive Panorama interview in 1995, which led to her divorce from Prince Charles. Royal experts also said that it could be as damaging as Prince Andrew's interview with BBC in 2019.
The interview will air on March 7 on CBS in the U.S. and on Mar. 8 on ITV in the U.K.
