New York Times reporting
by Mark Landler
A year after Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in a fairy-tale wedding, she said in an extraordinary interview broadcast on Sunday night, her life as a member of the British royal family had become so emotionally desolate that she contemplated suicide.
At another point, members of the family told Harry and Meghan, a biracial former actress from the United States, that they did not want the couple’s unborn child, Archie, to be a prince or princess and expressed concerns about how dark the color of the baby’s skin would be.
An emotional but self-possessed 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. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.”
Meghan, 39, made the disclosures in an eagerly anticipated, and at times incendiary, interview on CBS with Oprah Winfrey that aired in the United States in prime time. In describing a royal life that began as a fairy tale but quickly turned cruel, her blunt answers raised the combustible issues of race and privilege in the most rarefied echelon of British society.
Meghan said that while her husband was deeply concerned about her emotional fragility — gripping her hand tightly at public events — her efforts to seek medical help were rebuffed by palace officials, who worried about the effect on the monarchy. She described herself as sort of a prisoner in Kensington Palace.
“I couldn’t just call an Uber to the palace,” she said.
Meghan did not say which family member had raised questions about her baby’s skin color, nor did she fully explain why the royal family had not automatically planned to confer a royal title, which would have provided security for the child. But the lack of detail did not rob the moment of its power: Her reference to her child’s skin tone provoked a stunned “what?” from Winfrey.
Harry and Meghan also disclosed that their second child, due this summer, will be a girl.
c.2021 The New York Times Company
