The idea that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way is demolished by the second volume of the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary. Shouting matches, toxic in-laws, an imperturbable grandparent sitting in silence as the insults fly over their head: these are scenes many Netflix subscribers may recognise from their own lived experience; they are also the grisly meat of Harry & Meghan, the final three episodes of which have now arrived on the streamer.
“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and have my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and take it all in,” says Harry, recalling the showdown at Sandringham, the queen’s private Norfolk residence, at which he revealed to “the Firm”, in January 2020, that he and Meghan were stepping back from their royal duties to begin anew in North America.
Things got worse. Hours after the meeting, Harry says, Buckingham Palace put out a statement in his name – and without his permission – in which he denied being “bullied” by William.
This, he continues, explains the frostiness between the family at the funeral of Prince Philip, 15 months later. “So neither, none of us really wanted to talk about it at my grandfather’s funeral, but we did,” he said. “And, you know, I have had to make peace with the fact we’re probably never going to get genuine accountability or a genuine apology.”
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Netflix will in the end conclude it got its money’s worth from Harry and Meghan, with whom it struck a deal worth an estimated $100 million, or about €95 million. Because if “Volume I”, whose three episodes arrived last week, felt like raking over the oldest of coals, in Volume II the couple delve unflinchingly into the circumstances surrounding their departure from Planet Windsor. Is it good television? That depends on your feelings about royalty, celebrity and the circus around the Sussexes. In terms of raw, headline-generating punch, though, the back end is where this hyped documentary delivers.
Harry doesn’t hold back. Meghan’s high profile led to jealousy within the palace, he says. “The issue is, when someone who’s marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight or is doing the job better than the person who was born to do this, that upsets people.
“It shifts the balance, because you’ve been led to believe the only way that your charities can succeed, the only way that your reputation can be grown or improved, is if you’re in the front page of those papers. But the media are the ones who choose who to put on the front page.”
He goes further, saying that fallout from the publication of private letters between Markle and her estranged father, Thomas, could have contributed to the end of a pregnancy. “I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did. I watched the whole thing. Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course we don’t.
“But bearing in mind the stress that caused, the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy – how many weeks in she was – I can say, from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her.”
A curious aspect of Volume II is the use of a map in which Ireland is shown as part of the United Kingdom. For a documentary that puts such an emphasis on the toxic legacy of British imperialism, it’s a bit rich to restore to the UK the borders it maintained at the height of empire. The Sussexes were ultimately a plaything of the tabloid press. Perhaps this story and its deeper sociological context – what it says about Britain and the world – are just a game to Netflix, too. If it can’t even accurately portray where the UK starts and finishes, what else might it have got wrong?
