The first instalment of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s docuseries has been released, with the couple dropping major bombshells about life in the royal family.
The first half of the series has largely revolved around the beginning of the couple’s relationship and Meghan joining the royal family, while also touching on the first few dramatic encounters with paparazzi.
Here’s the biggest revelations from the series so far.
Meghan meeting the royal family
Meghan spoke of the first time she met Prince William and Kate Middleton, sharing how she didn’t realise the level of formality the royal family carried outside of official engagements.
She said, “Even when Will and Kate came over and I met her for the first time, I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot.”
“I’m a hugger I’ve always been a hugger. I didn’t know that could be jarring for a lot of Brits.”
“I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality out on the outside, carried through on on the inside.
“That there is a forward facing way of being then you close the door and you go phew, great we can relax now.”
“But that formality continues on both sides and that was surprising to me.”
Meghan and Harry also shared details of Meghan’s first meeting with the late Queen Elizabeth, with Harry admitting the situation was “weird”.
He said, “(Meghan) had no idea what it all consisted of, so it was a bit of a shock to the system for her,” he said.
“How do you explain (to people) to bow to your grandma? And that they’ll need to curtsy? Especially to an American – it’s weird.”
Meghan described the “surreal” and unexpected moment she realised she’d be meeting the monarch, and that it had been sprung on her at the last minute by her then-boyfriend.
“We were in the car and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch and he goes, ‘Oh, my grandmother’s here – she’s going to be there after church’,” she recalled.
“And I remember in the car driving up, he says, ‘you know how to curtsy right?’ And I thought it was a joke.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she admitted.
Harry’s warning to Meghan about the paparazzi
During the early days of Harry and Meghan’s relationship, Meghan was still living in Canada and working as an actress when she encountered a pack of “9 or 10” paparazzi as she left a florist.
“They were all sort of blocking the cars, going, ‘Hey, how you doing, Meghan?’, and I said ‘Oh, thanks, stay warm guys,’” the Duchess of Sussex recalled.
The next day, she’d gotten a very strict instruction from her new boyfriend to ignore paparazzi from then on.
“I remember (Harry) saying the next day, ‘You can’t talk to them’,” Meghan said.
“And I was like, ‘I’m just trying to be pleasant, I don’t know what to do, I’ve never dealt with this before’, and he said, ‘Yes, but the UK media is saying you love it. You’re smiling. You love it.”
Harry then likened the treatment of Meghan by the paparazzi to how Princess Diana was also treated, making him very concerned for his wife.
“The majority of my memories are of her [Diana] being swarmed by paparazzi,” he says.
Harry made several comparisons with his wife and Diana, saying “To see another woman in my life go through this feeding frenzy.. That’s hard. It is really the hunter vs the prey”.
The couple felt they had to lie in their engagement interview
When the couple got engaged in 2017, they had a sit-down interview on the BBC to discuss their milestone, which the Sussexes have now revealed was completely “rehearsed”.
Meghan called the interview an “orchestrated reality show”, saying they “weren’t allowed” to tell their true story when faced with questions about their relationship.
Earlier on in the docuseries, they shared how they first began talking on Instagram before meeting for their first date, but were forced to change their story for the BBC chat.
The second and final instalment of the docuseries will air on December 15th.
Image credits: Netflix
This article first appeared on OverSixty.