Buckingham Palace prepares for Prince Harry gaslighting claims in part 2 of Netflix docuseries
By Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN
Are you ready for round two? The final three episodes of the eagerly awaited Netflix docuseries from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are releasing on Thursday.
Netflix split the six-part series into two volumes, with the first installment uploaded to its online platform last week at 3 a.m ET.
Speculation a series was in the works had been rampant for months and when it finally landed on Netflix, the project ended up becoming the platform’s biggest documentary debut ever.
The series was touted by the streamer as a “global event” and was teased in punchy trailers as a tell-all of Prince Harry and Meghan’s departure from the royal front lines in 2020.
The initial episodes were a deep dive into the pair individually, how they got together and the demands each faced as a royal. However, there were few real bombshells or direct revelations about individual family members. Instead, the first episode presented a couple under attack from a relentless media and featured an ensemble of experts and friends to support their position.
Buckingham Palace was braced for possible explosive recollections, as was the case when the couple sat down with Oprah Winfrey last year, but in the end there was little to really respond to — perhaps a few awkward moments but nothing truly embarrassing or damaging.
However, these next three episodes may be a harder watch for the Windsor clan. Signaling what lies ahead, trailers released this week will undoubtedly have raised some red flags within the royal household.
In a clip released Wednesday, to a background of menacing music, Jenny Afia, a lawyer for the Sussexes, says “there was a real war against Meghan.”
“I’ve certainly seen evidence that there was negative briefing from the palace against Harry and Meghan to suit other people’s agendas,” she adds.
A friend of the couple then claims unfavorable stories about the pair were leaked to the press, in an effort to bury stories about other members of the royal family.
Meghan adds: “You would just see it play out. A story about someone in the family would pop up for a minute, and they’d go ‘we gotta make that go away.’ But there’s real estate on a website homepage, there is real estate there on a newspaper front cover, and something has to be filled in there about someone royal.”
Meghan previously said she felt like she’d been “fed to the wolves,” in a trailer released earlier this week. Elsewhere in that clip, Harry hit out at “institutional gaslighting” and appeared to accuse the palace of being comfortable with protecting Prince William but not his own family.
“They were happy to lie to protect my brother. They were never willing to tell the truth to protect us,” he says.
No members of the royal family have commented on the series so far, with the palace last week saying it would not comment on the show as it was released.
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