Ahead of the release of Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary, there’s a lot of jitters. But at least the first three episodes are not yet a personal settlement with the British royal family. But that doesn’t make the series any less explosive.
The preliminary whirlwind around the Netflix documentation, in which Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan want to unpack “the whole truth” about their life in and with the British royal family, could hardly have been bigger. Harry’s brother William or his father Charles would tremble before the revelations, it said. Or: After the Queen’s death, some sequences were redid with a hot needle. And, of course, the trailers also caused quite a stir, as they seem to accept some inaccuracies all too generously for sensationalism.
The start of the documentary was repeatedly delayed. But now she is here. At least the first three of a total of six episodes. The missing episodes should be added on Thursday in a week.
Overall, the work traces a chronology that should extend from the time the British prince and the US actress met to the present day. Episode three stops on the eve of the couple’s supposed dream wedding on May 19, 2018 at Windsor Castle. But even before that, the chronological sequence of events is repeatedly interrupted with forward and backward references to events surrounding the lives of the two protagonists. There is then a jump back into the childhood days of Harry and Meghan as well as fast forward to the present, from whose perspective “the whole truth” is then ultimately unraveled.
Sometimes this is confusing. And as in the trailers, one can criticize at one point or another that there has been some tricking in terms of dramaturgy. Then, for example, if it is to be proven that Meghan was exposed to racist hostilities immediately after her relationship with Harry was revealed in October 2016 – with tweets that only became apparent weeks later.
Broken down to the essentials, three central motifs of the documentation can be filtered out. First, it’s a bit like an extended therapy session with Harry. The early accidental death of his mother, so much is clear, he still hasn’t completely got over. And, this also becomes clear: Harry sees himself like no other in the tradition of Princess Diana. “My mum made most, if not all, of her decisions with her heart – and I’m her son,” you can hear him say, for example. But decisions of the heart are not the domain of the British royal family, where etiquette reigns supreme.
More than anything else, the constant flashbulbs destroyed his mother’s life for Harry. And not only hers: Even at a young age, he and his brother could not escape the photographers who were always lurking everywhere. “It was never fair,” Harry accuses the paparazzi, who never got enough and continued to follow the family’s every step, even after extended photo ops. Diana’s death didn’t change that – on the contrary. “Britain saw us as their own children,” he recalls, grieving the loss of his mother while still having to function non-stop in his role as royal. “From then on, what happened to our mother happened to us, too,” he continues.
After all, the older he gets, the more he gets targeted by the paparazzi and the gossip press. “Not every story was wrong. But a lot was exaggerated and repeatedly rehashed,” Harry complains about his own experiences before he later begins the documentary on the general settlement with the media. “It’s all about control. This family can be exploited by us. Their trauma is our story and we control the narrative,” he says from the perspective of the powerful tabloids in Great Britain.
At this point, Meghan becomes a kind of Diana 2.0 for Harry. “I saw and experienced a lot of the suffering of the women who married into this institution,” he draws a direct line from her to his mother, to say it openly elsewhere: “In many ways, Meghan is so similar to my mum.” Ultimately, he concludes from all this, the only thing left for him to do was break away from the royal family and flee England: “I understand that there are many people who do not agree with what and how I did it . But I knew I had to do everything I could to protect my family, especially after what happened to my mum. It can’t happen again.”
Second, the documentary highlights the inner workings of the relationship between the prince and the actress. The tale of “Megxit”, which she initiated in particular, should be cleared up, the couple presented as an equal entity and the Duchess’s scratched image polished up. “The bubble in the bubble in which he grew up” burst before he even knew his future wife, Harry assures. The experience of getting to know each other was, in turn, an experience of pure infatuation on both sides, the documentary clears up all the bad rumors that she deliberately fished for him. Last but not least, the two connect their hearts for charity – one bigger than the other.
Former elementary school teachers, girlfriends or Meghan’s ex-colleagues on the set of the series “Suits” naturally only have good things to say about the 41-year-old. This is not surprising, since the Netflix documentary is expressly designed to tell Harry and Meghan “our version of the story”. “The Royal Family has refused to comment on the content of the series,” it says at the very beginning of the first episode. But even palace employees, who then complained in alarming frequency about the alleged airs and graces of the American, do not have a say. The topic remains – at least in the first three episodes of the documentary – left out and thus certainly a gateway for all critics of the Duchess.
After all, the series addresses Meghan’s difficult relationship with her family. However, she doesn’t talk to her father Thomas or her half-sister Samantha, who is only too happy to publicly taunt her, but only about them. For this, Samantha’s daughter Ashleigh, who maintains a friendly relationship with her half-aunt, can say what she thinks (good) about Meghan and (bad) about her mother.
In short – and that leads to the third central point of the series: Harry and Meghan are far from any self-criticism. Their version is a version where they are the victims. Victims of their royal role, victims of the media – and victims of racism. The accusation that the couple had already made in their interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey, and thus triggered perhaps the greatest murmur from the audience, is also the focal point of the Netflix documentary. However, once again without naming the horse and rider against whom the allegation in the circle of senior royals is personally directed.
“My family at the time felt like what Meg was going through, everyone else was going through. It was almost like an initiation. Some were like, ‘My wife went through that too, why should your friend have special treatment and be protected from it ?’ I said, ‘The difference is, this is about race,'” Harry vaguely laments the lack of support for Meghan from his family. Elsewhere, a well-known scandal involving Princess Michael of Kent at Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace in 2017 is discussed. The wife of one of the Queen’s cousins ??appeared at the meal with a so-called “Blackamoore” brooch – a racist relic of slave and colonial times. In addition, however, contrary to what many might have suspected or even hoped for, no names are mentioned in the first episodes of the documentary.
Which doesn’t mean that the Netflix production isn’t already explosive. Instead of getting personal, Harry and Meghan put the ax on the entire monarchy with her. In any case, Queen Elizabeth II would certainly not have been amused to see her persistent commitment to the Commonwealth contrasted with explanations of the history of slavery in the former colonies. The Prince and Duchess pull out the big cutlery to show just how institutionalized racism is in the British royal family. And not only there: The xenophobic climate in British society is also discussed – also and especially in the course of Brexit, which coincided with Meghan’s arrival in the royal family.
“The argument for the monarchy is always the Commonwealth.” Harry and Meghan prefer to let an expert speak this sentence in their documentary as well as this one: “If you look closely, you say there is a family that was chosen by God to speak about this country and about other countries around the world To rule the world, that’s going to be a difficult discussion. For this institution to survive, it needs to modernize.” In a historical proseminar one would hardly reap contradiction for these statements. However, the fact that the Prince and Princess of Sussex nonchalantly let them flow into their “whole truth” is definitely explosive. The advertising drum for the following three episodes should be sufficiently stirred.
