After an exhausting, nearly three-hour debut of the first half of the Harry & Meghan docuseries on Netflix Thursday (Dec. 8), what have we learned? The media’s bad. Everyone is racist. But oh, look at our wonderful love story! The supposed bombshell release was more of a fizzle as the episodes were reminiscent of a Harlequin romance novel rather than a tell-all about the royal family. Supposedly, that will happen next week, though. What is supposed to be a story about Harry and Meghan told from their perspectives seemed more about what Sparkle Markle had to suffer being a woman of color and how racist the world is than anything else – once you got away from their wonderful romance, that is.
The series opened up with a reminder splashed across the screen from the network that, “This is a first-hand account of Harry & Meghan’s story, told with never before seen personal archive.” After some teasing images and sound clips to get your interest, the camera focused on Meghan, who imparted: “The past six years of my life, books are written about our story from people I don’t know. Doesn’t it make more sense to hear our story from us?”
As predicted, Princess Diana and the way the press hounded her took up a good portion of the show. Harry said she had been taken advantage of because she was someone who made decisions from the heart, “and I am my mother’s son.” Later, Harry said, “My mum did such a good job in trying to protect us. She took it upon herself to basically confront these people.” He repeatedly expressed how he did not want the same thing that happened to his mother to happen to his family today.
Harry and Meghan Fails
Despite the “romance of the decade” vibe they tried to portray, the docuseries had it’s fair share of blaming the UK’s racist attitudes. In one image, they show Princess Michael of Kent wearing a Blackamoor-style brooch, which was deemed offensive.
The jabs continued, more at the country than the royal family, suggesting the UK was more racist than the US. Meghan chimed in to say, “Obviously now everyone is aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK. Before then, I wasn’t really treated like a black woman.” Which, frankly, is a direct contradiction to remarks made elsewhere in the series, when she said as a mixed-race person she never felt like she belonged anywhere.
The UK, according to the show, hasn’t changed much since the colonial days. Showing images of Brexit and people fighting for tighter immigration laws, the show calls out the Commonwealth as “Empire 2.0.” Harry did bring up the family in relation to racism, claiming:
“In this family sometimes you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution. And there is a huge level of unconscious bias. The thing with unconscious bias is actually no one’s fault.”
Meghan and Harry (Photo by Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images)
Hours after the documentary debuted, Samantha Markle, Meghan’s older half-sister, told the press her thoughts and revelations of the show. “It is so much rhetoric at this point,” she explained to Channel Seven’s Sunrise on Friday, “and so many lies have been thrown out there, debunked, and yet still there is this repeated need to push this narrative.”
Others came forward with complaints as well. Just as Liberty Nation previously reported, some of the pictures and videos were misleading. Sunrise reporter Sarah Greenhalgh said, “And even though they do criticise mostly the British press, it should be pointed out that many of the worst examples – some of the worst headlines or soundbites – are actually from the American outlets.”
The couple who demands media privacy earned a cool $100 million in the deal with Netflix for their story. While blasting reporters and journalists for being so intrusive, Harry and Meghan are quick to take the money and run with the narrative. We will have to wait until next week for the last installment of the series to see if any of the hype about revealing secrets will come true. Some have said that there isn’t much left to tell and that this is just another opportunity to bash the royal family – of course, the $100 million doesn’t hurt either. Tune in next week to see if the docuseries ends up being a smash or a crash.
