Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on Sunday, March 7, and she revealed a lot.
The Duchess of Sussex disclosed during her interview with Oprah Winfrey that the royal family expressed concerns about Baby Archie’s skin color.
Meghan revealed that “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born” were brought up to her husband ahead of her son’s birth.
Meghan claimed the Royal Family did not want her son to be a prince or offer him security.
Asked why by Winfrey, she said it had to do with how dark his skin might be when he’s born.
Winfrey asked if her son being “too brown” would be a problem, to which Meghan replied: “If that is the assumption you are making, that is a pretty safe one”.
Oprah was shocked and asked Meghan who raised these questions but she refused to say because it would be “very damaging to them”.
Meghan added: “That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations the family had with him, and I think it was really hard to be able to see those as compartmentalised conversations.”
Harry also said it “hurt” that his family did not speak out against articles “with colonial undertones” written about his wife.
Meghan Markle said she considered suicide while in the royal family and she had asked officials at Buckingham Palace for medical help but was told it would damage the institution.
Meghan said of her suicidal thoughts: “I was ashamed to have to admit it to Harry. I knew that if I didn’t say it, I would do it.”
Meghan admitted to Oprah that she would have committed suicide and since the royal family won’t help her, she turned to a friend of Princess Diana’s for help.
She said she struggled with her mental health due to the intense pressures of being in the Royal Family, and that she had suicidal thoughts.
“I just didn’t want to be alive any more,” she said.
“And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember, I remember how [Harry] just cradled me and I was… I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that I’ve never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere. And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”
She said Harry was there for her and constantly held her tightly whenever they were in the public to reassure her.
Meghan also revealed she is “haunted” by a photograph of herself at a red carpet event at the Royal Albert Hall in January 2019, which the couple attended just after she had the conversation with Harry.
“A friend said, ‘I know you don’t look at pictures, but oh my god, you guys look so great’, and sent it to me,” the duchess said. “I zoomed in and what I saw was the truth of what that moment was, because right before we had to leave for that, I had just had that conversation with Harry that morning.”
Meghan said Harry suggested she did not attend the event, but that she did not want to be left alone.
“And we went. And that picture, if you zoom in, what I see is how tightly his knuckles are gripped around me. You can see the whites of our knuckles because we are smiling and doing our job, but we are both just trying to hold on.
“Every time those lights went down in that royal box, I was just weeping.
“[Harry] was gripping my hand and it was, ‘Okay an intermission’s coming, the lights are about to come on, everyone’s looking at us again’ … and you had to just be ‘on’ again.
“You have no idea what’s going on for someone behind closed doors. You’ve no idea. Even the people that smile the biggest smiles and shine the brightest lights, it seems.” (LIB)