Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, have taken aim at “unconscious bias” inside the royal family and defended their decision to quit the institution, as their highly anticipated Netflix documentary series threatens to deepen the split between the couple and Buckingham Palace.
The first three episodes of the project, titled “Harry & Meghan,” were released on Thursday after months of speculation that the couple would star in a tell-all series.
They detail the pair’s initial romance and Meghan’s first exposure to the structures and demands of royal life, as well as Harry’s childhood, the pervasive nature of Britain’s tabloid media and the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
And Harry accuses the royal family of “unconscious bias” that blinded them to the struggles he and Meghan experienced in the years and months leading up to their dramatic departure.
Buckingham and Kensington Palaces will likely be braced for the fallout from the series, after sustained tensions between Harry and his father, King Charles, and brother, Prince William.
“It’s really hard to look back on it now and go, what on earth happened? Like how did we end up here?,” Harry said in a video diary shown in the first episode, recorded shortly after the pair finished their final royal duties in March 2020.
He said he became “genuinely concerned for the safety of my family,” attacking the intrusion of the media, which he has frequently lamented in recent years.
Harry took aim at the media within the first few minutes of the show. “No one knows that full truth. We know the full truth, the institution knows the full truth, and the media knows the full truth because they’ve been in on it,” Harry said. He said he considers it his “duty” to “uncover this exploitation and bribery that happens within our media.”