The hotly anticipated “Harry & Meghan” Netflix docuseries is finally here amid bombshell claims of “bribery,” “exploitation” and an “orchestrated reality show.”
The six-part series is a look behind the curtain into the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s life together, examining everything from their early courtship, to the controversies, Harry blasting the media for racism, to their unprecedented step back from the royal family and their new life in California.
Directed by Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee Liz Garbus, the series includes revealing interviews with the couple — famously re-crowned Princess Pinocchio & Prince Hypocrite by The Post columnist Piers Morgan this week — as well as their family and friends who haven’t previously spoken out.
Here are the biggest reveals you need to know from the first three episodes, now streaming on Netflix:
They actually met on Instagram
It’s been reported that the couple met through mutual friends — but Prince Harry reveals that he first saw a goofy snapchat dog filter of Markle while he was scrolling through Instagram. When a mutual friend then reached out to Markle, they called him “Prince Haz.”
Markle shared, “I said, who is that?” After exchanging phone numbers, they met for a date, and Prince Harry was half an hour late because of traffic. “I was panicking, I was freaking out, I was sweating,” he said. Meanwhile, she revealed that she was unimpressed by his tardiness. “I didn’t know him. I was like, ‘This I’m not doing … a guy with so much of an ego that [he thinks] any girl would sit around for half an hour for you?”
The couple also revealed that Prince Harry had a real list of qualities he was looking for in a woman, but when prompted to share, he said, “let’s not go there.”
Harry had to learn some things about Meghan from the press
After news broke about their romance, Markle said she was followed by paparazzi to the set of “Suits,” while she was filming. “They paid certain neighbors to put a livestream camera into my backyard…It was scary. My face was everywhere, tabloids had taken over everything,” she said.
But, because the couple was still in the “getting to know each other” phase of their relationship while headlines were flying about Markle, Harry revealed, “There were things that were said, and things that were written [in the press], that I had to go to her to ask.”
Meghan wasn’t treated like a “black woman” until moving to the UK
After news broke about their relationship, both she and Prince Harry were caught off guard about the headlines targeting her race, since she hadn’t been treated like “a black woman” in her life until that point, she said. Prince Harry revealed that he was frustrated by the lack of understanding from the palace.
“The direction from the palace was, ‘Don’t say anything,” he said. “As far as the family was concerned, everything she was put through, they were put through as well. Like, ‘My wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently, why should you get special treatment?’ And I said, ‘The difference here is the race element.’”
Later in the docuseries, Harry said, “My children are mixed race, and I’m really proud of that…what’s most important for the two of us is that we don’t repeat the same mistakes that perhaps our parents made.”
Markle was “surprised” by how “formal” Will and Kate were
In the second episode of the docuseries, Markle talks about her initial ignorance about how to act around the royal family, such as not knowing how to curtsey when she met the Queen. She also shared that, “When Will and Kate came over for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and was barefoot. I have always been a hugger, I didn’t realize that’s jarring for a lot of Brits. I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside…You close the door and you’re like, ‘Okay you can relax now!’ But, that formality carried through on both sides. That was surprising to me.”
Harry’s Nazi gaffe made him “so ashamed”
Prince Harry infamously wore a Nazi uniform to a party in 2005. He addresses the scandal in the doc as “Probably one of the biggest mistakes in my life. I felt so ashamed afterwards All I wanted to do was make it right,” he said. He said afterwards, he spoke to the chief rabbi in London, and a Holocaust survivor in Berlin. “I could’ve just ignored it and probably made the same mistakes over and over again in my life. But I learned from that.”
Harry blames himself for Thomas Markle falling out
Shortly before their wedding, Markle’s father Thomas shocked Markle and her mother by doing photo ops for the paparazzi, which ultimately led to a falling out. “I was absolutely stunned that Tom would become part of this circus,” Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, says, while Markle said that she found out that he father was not coming to her wedding through a tabloid, because he wouldn’t take her calls. “It’s incredibly sad what happened,” says Harry. “She had a father before this, and now she doesn’t have a father. If Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad.”
“Harry & Meghan” will have three more episodes hitting Netflix on Dec. 15.
