Getting candid. While promoting Spare, Prince Harry opened up about how he didn’t initially expect the intense U.K. media scrutiny that wife Meghan Markle went through, citing his own privilege.
In a preview of his upcoming interview with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes, which will air on Sunday, January 8, Harry, 38, recalled how his perspective changed since meeting Meghan, 41.
“What Meghan had to go through was similar, in some part, to what [Princess] Kate and what [Queen Consort] Camilla went through — very different circumstances,” he explained in the clip, which was released on Thursday, January 5, referring to the public attention. “But then you add in the race element, which was what the press, British press, jumped on straight away.”
The Duke of Sussex said he was “incredibly naïve” about the situation when he first started dating the former actress. “I had no idea the British press were so bigoted,” he continued. “Hell, I was probably bigoted, before the relationship with Meghan. … I don’t know [if I was bigoted]. Put it this way — I didn’t see what I now see.”
The couple, who tied the knot in 2018, recently addressed the major obstacles they faced while living in the U.K. (Harry and Meghan ultimately moved to California after stepping down as senior members of the royal family in 2020.)
“It’s very different to be a minority but not be treated as a minority right off the bat,” the Suits alum explained in her Netflix docuseries with her husband, Harry & Meghan, which dropped in December 2022. “I’d say now, people are very aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the U.K. But before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ‘Black woman.’ So that talk didn’t happen for me.”
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Frank Augstein/AP/Shutterstock
The Duchess of Sussex recalled how she didn’t originally connect the press scrutiny to her race. “I genuinely didn’t think about it,” she admitted. “At that time, I wasn’t thinking about how race played a part in any of this.”
Meanwhile, Harry called out the royal family’s response to the way Meghan was written about in U.K. publications.
“The direction from the palace was: don’t say anything. But what people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well,” he detailed in the mini series. “So, it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like, ‘My wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?’”
Spare is set to be released on Tuesday, January 10.