The Queen will not be watching: Monarch will ‘ignore’ Harry and Meghan Oprah interview ‘circus’

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The Queen will ‘ignore’ the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s explosive Oprah Winfrey interview which has been branded a ‘circus’ by royal courtiers, it has been reported.

Harry and Meghan’s televised conversation with the talk show host, which has fuelled tensions within the monarchy, will air in the US on Sunday night before being broadcast on ITV on Monday.

Palace officials have accused the Sussexes of being ‘at war’ with the royal household – and warn that courtiers ‘will come out swinging’ if they attack specific individuals in the much-anticipated interview.

But the Sunday Times reports the Queen will not watch the programme and is instead focusing on national issues, while the paper said royal courtiers have branded the interview a ‘circus’.

A source close to the Queen told the paper: ‘You will see next week Her Majesty has quite a few things going on. I don’t think anyone should expect Her Majesty to stay up and watch the interview. She won’t.

‘What should Monday really be about? Children going back to school, the effectiveness of the vaccine programme – these are the big issues the royal family wants to focus on, not news about the circus that is Oprah and all things Sussex.’

A senior source claimed that the Sussexes were undermining the monarchy’s work, adding: ‘The mood in the family is: can everyone just shut the hell up and can we just get on with the day job.’ 

Meanwhile, the Sunday Express reported that The Queen’s mind is ‘only on duty and Philip’.

Reports have claimed Meghan could expose insider details of her supposed rift with the Duchess of Cambridge, but an Oprah interview source has insisted Meghan has nothing but ‘kind words’ to say about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. 

They said no rift would be exposed between the two households, once dubbed the ‘Fab Four’, the New York Post reports.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was ‘unlikely’ that he would record the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, which is due to be aired in the early hours of Monday morning, UK time.

Speaking on a visit to a vaccination centre in Brent in north London, the PM told broadcasters: ‘Of course I’m interested in all sorts of stuff in the news around the world.

‘I think it is quite late our time, so I’ll probably miss it.’

Pushed on whether he would record the interview: ‘I think it unlikely. We are focusing on the vaccine rollout and economic recovery.’

In extracts of the Oprah Winfrey interview released over the last few days, Meghan has criticised the constraints she faced as a working royal, and said it was ‘liberating’ to be able to ‘say yes’ to a request for an interview with the US chat show host.

She accused The Firm – as the royal family is sometimes known – of ‘perpetuating falsehoods’ about her and Harry.

The Sunday Times reported royal advisers are ‘prepared to retaliate with fresh disclosures about the couple’s behaviour if the monarchy is attacked.’

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the reports.

Several members of the royal family will appear in their own television special, just hours before Harry and Meghan, on a BBC One programme on Sunday evening.

The Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Countess of Wessex – will appear in the pre-recorded show called A Celebration For Commonwealth Day, which is marked on Monday.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will chat in a video call with Dr Zolelwa Sifumba, from South Africa, an advocate for the rights of healthcare workers on the front line, while the Prince of Wales will pay tribute to the ‘extraordinary determination, courage and creativity’ of the Commonwealth’s people during the Covid crisis in a speech from Westminster Abbey.

It was at Westminster Abbey’s Commonwealth Day service in March last year when the Sussexes were last seen with their family, sitting close to the Queen, Charles, Camilla and William and Kate.

A few months before that they had sent shockwaves through the monarchy by announcing they would be stepping down as working royals.

Buckingham Palace could also question the Duchess of Cambridge in its inquiry into bullying allegations made against Meghan, according to the Sunday Mirror, which claimed aides will name Kate as a witness.

Meghan is facing accusations that she drove out two personal assistants and that staff were ‘humiliated’ on several occasions, with The Sun reporting the probe will focus on the Sussexes’ tour of Australia in 2018.

Past and present employees have been invited to speak in confidence about their experiences of working for the duchess, who responded by saying she was ‘saddened by this latest attack on her character’.

The Duke of Edinburgh, 99, remains at the private King Edward VII’s Hospital in London, where he was moved back to on Friday following a successful procedure on a pre-existing heart condition at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City of London on Wednesday.

The duke, the nation’s longest-serving consort, has spent 19 nights in hospital – his longest ever stay.

The Sussexes have faced calls for the broadcast on Sunday to be postponed out of respect for Philip.   

After a frenzied week dominated by bombshell claims of alleged bullying and fierce denials, Royal officials have signalled their determination not to be dragged into a tawdry tit-for-tat battle with the Sussexes.

While acknowledging that the two-hour interview, to be screened in the US tonight and the UK tomorrow, is likely to include further uncomfortable moments, an insider icily highlighted Britain faced more important issues.

‘On Monday most people in Britain will be thinking about schools going back, getting the vaccine and, at the Palace particularly, looking forward to the Duke of Edinburgh coming out of hospital. This is just a sideshow,’ they said.

The comments will be interpreted by many as a sign that ‘The Firm’ believes Harry and Meghan will in time struggle to attract the kind of attention they received in the UK before they stepped back from their Royal duties a year ago.

Aides described the mood at Buckingham Palace ahead of the interview as ‘calm’, with courtiers said to be maintaining a sense of ‘this, too, will pass’.

One source told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Most of what is said will be lost in the mists of time. History teaches us that only the interviewer wins from these programmes.’

Palace officials have no idea what the couple have said to Ms Winfrey, beyond the pre-released teasers.

‘We haven’t got a clue what they say in the interview,’ said the source. ‘But there is determination not to play their game. There is a very clear sense right from the top that it’s best not to react.’ 

They will, however, have gained a flavour of the interview from the series of clips released during a heavy promotional campaign by the US network CBS. 

It has reportedly paid Ms Winfrey’s production company between £5 million and £6.5 million for the rights to the interview.

In one clip last week, Meghan is seen sitting in the garden of a mansion in California explaining her short experience of Palace life was ‘almost unsurvivable’. 

In another, Harry says that it has been ‘unbelievably tough for the two of us but at least we have each other’.

He adds that he decided to emigrate to the US with Meghan because he feared ‘history repeating itself’ after the death of Diana.

Television insiders predict, however, the worst may be yet to come. One experienced US TV producer said: ‘It’s not like a movie where all the best bits are in the trailer. 

In programmes like this, they keep the real bombshells for the show.’ What is clear, however, is that whatever grenades may be launched, the Palace does not intend to start a war. As one source put it: ‘Only one side seems to be firing.’

It is far from the first time that the Palace will have dealt with an excruciating tell-all interview.

For Prince Charles, it will no doubt stir up painful memories of Diana’s Panorama revelations 25 years ago, in which she spoke of there being ‘three people in this marriage’. 

But aides were keen to point out there is a crucial difference. When Diana sat down with Martin Bashir, she sparked a rift between herself and the Palace. This time, Harry and Meghan’s departure has already happened.

Before the fireworks from California, the British public will see other Royals provide a stark alternative by focusing on efforts to combat coronavirus.

Behind the ‘keep calm and carry on’ message, however, aides say there is genuine concern Harry will live to regret the Oprah interview.

‘I suspect that one day Harry will come to regret it, just as Diana did,’ writes Royal biographer Penny Junor in today’s Mail on Sunday.

It was claimed last week Meghan faced a bullying complaint brought forward by one of her closest advisers during her time at Kensington Palace. 

A spokesman for the Sussexes appeared to blame the Palace for leaking the claims, saying the couple were ‘the victims of a calculated smear campaign’. 

Revenge of the Sussex survivors’ club: The extraordinary inside story of how a fairytale turned into a nightmare of ‘traumatised’ staff – by Royal Editor REBECCA ENGLISH, who saw so much of it herself

By Rebecca English, Royal Editor for the Daily Mail 

It is the one royal group that no one wants to join. Referred to only half-jokingly as the ‘Sussex Survivors’ Club’, its membership is sadly rising.

But its select band of members have one thing in common: all have worked for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and lived to tell the tale.

Joking aside, some even believe they may have a form of post-traumatic stress, defined by doctors as an anxiety disorder caused by distressing or frightening events.

Such experiences, of course, are now widely acknowledged not to be limited to soldiers who have undergone traumatic experiences on the battlefield, but also to people at work.

Even if that work is in a palace.

And today, many former palace staff look back on the moment that Prince Harry introduced to the world his beautiful, intelligent and passionate bride-to-be as the beginning of one of the most traumatic periods in their lives.

Let us be clear: Harry is a complex man but one with a strong sense of natural justice and charity, given to acts of compassion and kindness.

‘He wears his heart on his sleeve and genuinely wants to do good in the world,’ one admirer tells me.

But he is also equally capable, say those who know him well and like him, of behaving ‘like an absolute brat’.

It had been clear for years to anyone he came into contact with that he wasn’t happy working with the palace machinery – or, particularly, the British media (sometimes understandably so).

He was, they say, always capable of self-destructively ‘pressing the nuclear button’ on his royal life.

Meghan, they stress, was simply the catalyst.

But the result was more toxic, more personally harmful, than anyone could ever have imagined.

To begin with, however, the atmosphere at Kensington Palace was heady and exciting.

Here was a glamorous couple, clearly deeply in love. Meghan was the missing piece of the jigsaw that poor, motherless Harry had been searching for all those years.

Famously she once paid for an ice cream stand for her new staff at Kensington Palace, with the event later – surprise! – being breathlessly revealed in People, a ‘pro-Sussex’ American magazine, as the ‘best day of work, ever’.

More than that, they were a couple determined to do good on a world stage – at the same time sprinkling a little stardust on Britain’s ‘fusty’ old Royal Family.

And their small team of loyal staff believed in them – until, that is, the scales fell from their eyes.

Notoriously, within a few weeks of Meghan’s arrival in England and the announcement of the couple’s engagement in November 2017, word was leaking out about the couple’s ‘autocratic’ and ‘difficult’ behaviour.

Occasionally it slipped into print: that Meghan (a claim robustly sourced by the Mail) had refused to wear a hat on her first official engagement with the Queen in Chester, despite being strongly advised it would be appropriate and respectful to do so.

Then came the famous row over which tiara she wanted to wear to the couple’s wedding, resulting in Harry publicly admonishing one of the Queen’s most senior members of staff, Angela Kelly: ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.’

There were also claims that the Duchess of Cambridge had told Meghan she shouldn’t speak to her staff so dismissively and that there was so much friction at a pre-wedding bridesmaid fitting that Kate was left in tears.

The Times has reported that the ‘febrile’ atmosphere within Kensington Palace saw staff, on occasion, weeping. Two say they were bullied by the duchess, a third that they had been ‘humiliated’ by her.

The paper quotes one aide, who was anticipating a confrontation with Meghan, as saying: ‘I can’t stop shaking.’ At first, my sources tell me, Harry tried to keep the peace, gently placating his wife and quietly apologising to staff.

On one occasion described to me by several sources, he even gently admonished Meghan about the way she behaved with palace staff – many of whom work long hours for relatively little money out of pride for the institution – after a particularly explosive encounter.

The details are subject to conjecture (and have become something of a palace legend) but resulted in Harry speaking to one of his close protection officers, who confirmed his fiancee’s behaviour.

But as the weeks went on, the prince became increasingly hostile to his once-loyal aides.

The Times has claimed Harry knew of a complaint made by the couple’s former communications secretary, Jason Knauf, that Meghan had driven two personal assistants out of the household and was undermining the confidence of a third staff member. Harry is said to have had a meeting with Mr Knauf in which he begged him not to pursue it. The Sussexes deny this.

They also describe the allegations as ‘old’, ‘distorted’ and aimed at ‘undermining’ Meghan. It has been suggested by others that staff may have ‘misunderstood’ Meghan’s more direct, American style. But I have personally witnessed more than one member of staff driven to tears by the treatment they were subjected to by the duke and duchess before the couple acrimoniously quit as working royals.

One person sobbed down the phone to me after a particularly harrowing day. They clearly felt emotionally broken and could no longer cope with the pressure they were being subjected to.

Others have indicated to me they were being asked to behave in a manner they did not feel professionally comfortable with, particularly in their dealings with the media. Several aides have also told me that Meghan in particular was very good at ‘drawing’ staff into her confidence, flattering them as if they were the only person in the world she could trust and asking them to help her with various duties.

Often these were things that were far beyond the scope of their normal work – in one case being instructed to make plans for her father Thomas to be flown from his home in Mexico before the wedding and taken to a fully-stocked ‘safe house’ in LA for a few days in order to fool any waiting media.

And then, when things didn’t go to plan, the sun would no longer shine on them. It was made ‘horribly clear’ they were out of favour.

Toxic, hostile, distrustful, poisonous: all words I have heard regularly used over the past few years to describe people’s experiences working in the Sussexes’ household.

The Times reports matters became so bad that Mr Knauf, an experienced PR operator who cut his teeth defending the bank RBS at the height of its financial scandal, decided to put his strongly held concerns in writing.

He made clear in October 2018, little more than six months after the couple married, that he believed the duchess had already driven two members of staff out and another was being targeted.

‘I am very concerned that the duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of [redacted] was totally unacceptable,’ he wrote.

‘The duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying ‘Y’ and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y.’

The Times has chosen not to match incidents to individual names, but the members of staff leaving the Sussexes’ employment were all women and all seasoned professionals. A well-placed source said: ‘[One woman’s] job was highly pressurised and in the end it became too much. She put up with quite a lot. Meghan put a lot of demands on her and it ended up with her in tears.’ One member of staff, a seasoned professional, was initially said to have left on good terms.

But I have since been told that this popular aide was deeply unhappy about her experience working for the duchess and had been ‘desperate’ to get out as long as she could professionally put a brave face on it. Likewise a third member of staff. Mr Knauf makes clear in his email, as reported by The Times, that he was also concerned about the couple’s hugely experienced deputy private secretary, Samantha Cohen. She had worked for the Queen for more than 20 years and was personally persuaded by the monarch to stay on and help the couple navigate their first few years of royal life.

He indicated that she was experiencing extreme stress and said: ‘I questioned if the Household policy on bullying and harassment applies to principals [the term used to refer to a member of the royal family].’

One source tells me wryly, with an eye to Meghan’s much-hyped championing of female empowerment: ‘Note that everyone concerned was a woman.’

Another adds: ‘Sam always made clear that it was like working for a couple of teenagers. They were impossible and pushed her to the limit. She was miserable.’

The Times also makes reference to an incident during the couple’s tour to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga in 2018, which was a particularly difficult one for all concerned, Meghan included. She was, of course, pregnant at the time.

The newspaper reports how Meghan cut short a visit to a market in Fiji because she was concerned about the presence of a UN organisation promoting women, with which she had worked before and made clear she no longer wished to have anything to do with.

At the time officials had suggested that it was because it was humid and the crowd was oppressive in the market.

I was there at the time and witnessed Meghan turn and ‘hiss’ at a member of her entourage, clearly incandescent with rage about something, and demand to leave.

I later saw that same – female – highly distressed member of staff sitting in an official car, with tears running down her face. Our eyes met and she lowered hers, humiliation etched on her features.

At the time I was unable to document anything as I couldn’t conclusively link the two incidents together, despite my suspicions. I have subsequently found out from other sources that my instincts were right.

It should be stressed that lawyers for the duchess said she met other leaders from UN Women later on the tour and denied she left for the reason alleged.

So why has this all come out now, you might ask?

The Times makes clear that these aides have ‘hit back’ before Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey this Sunday.

The newspaper says it was approached by sources because they felt ‘only a partial version had emerged of Meghan’s two years as a working member of the royal family and they wished to tell their side’.

They were also concerned at how such matters were handled by the palace.

One source put it more succinctly to me yesterday. ‘Those concerned are fed up with the sheer hypocrisy of it all. The suggestion that they [the Sussexes] were being bullied and forced out when others were experiencing that very treatment at their hands!’ exclaimed the source.

Another insider told me they believed some staff had even sought psychological therapy over their experiences – something that Harry, who moved the nation when he revealed how he had himself sought professional help to cope with the emotional fall-out over his mother’s death and has long campaigned on mental health issues, should know all about.

‘People have been broken by this, genuinely so. Absolutely traumatised,’ I am told.

Lawyers for the duchess say she wished to fit in and be accepted and had left her life in North America to commit to her new role.

What a sad, sorry mess.

The irony, another source says, is that no one wanted a battle. But the Sussexes have waged this war and enough is enough.

Those aides who have broken the royal omerta say they refuse to sit by and watch Harry and Meghan’s ‘duplicitous’ behaviour, especially when ‘good people and brilliant professionals’ are having their reputations unfairly traduced. One source warns: ‘The royals cannot fight back. ‘Never complain, never explain.’ But they can.’

A spokesman for the Sussexes has told The Times that they are the victims of a ‘calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful information’.

They have said the duchess is ‘saddened by this latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself and is deeply committed to supporting those who have experienced pain and trauma.’ 

That’s service: Queen will praise Commonwealth’s courage against Covid hours before Harry and Meghan’s interview airs in the US, as Charles, Camilla, William, Kate and Sophie pay tribute at Windsor 

By Emily Andrews, Royal Editor for Mail On Sunday

The Queen will praise the fortitude of the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic this evening, just hours before Meghan’s bombshell interview is aired.

In a rare personal message as part of a Commonwealth Day television special, the monarch – supported by five senior Royals – will pay tribute to the way communities and countries united to support each other.

Footage of her walking last week down an avenue of Commonwealth flags in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle, where Harry and Meghan’s wedding reception was held, will also feature.

Dressed in a delphinium blue dress and jacket, she wore her sapphire chrysanthemum brooch in a touching gesture to Prince Philip, who is still in hospital recovering from heart surgery. She wore it in their honeymoon photographs and again for their commemorative wedding anniversary portrait last November.

Prince Charles, filmed giving an address in Westminster Abbey, will also applaud the ‘extraordinary determination, courage and creativity’ of people in the face of ‘heart-breaking suffering’, while the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge praise healthcare workers from around the world.

While the Royals’ appearance in the BBC programme, airing at 5pm today, was planned some time ago, its timing just hours before Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey goes out in North America is undeniably awkward.

The Family’s broadcast was suggested by the Royal Commonwealth Society and Westminster Abbey in early January because they recognised this year’s Commonwealth Day Service would be cancelled due to lockdown.

The Queen then agreed to narrate her annual Commonwealth message, usually printed in the service programme.

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, talking to Clare Balding about children’s literacy, were filmed in Westminster Abbey, while the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, were filmed on video calls talking to medical and charity staff from South Africa, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Australia and Malawi. Harry and Meghan, who handed back their roles as Commonwealth ambassadors, do not feature.

In an extract from the programme, A Celebration for Commonwealth Day, Kate and William chat in a video call with Dr Zolelwa Sifumba, an advocate for the rights of health workers in South Africa.

The Duchess tells the medic: ‘Here in the UK there’s been masses of public recognition of the amazing work the front line are doing and it’s sad, almost, that it’s taken the pandemic for the public to really back and support all those working on the front line.’ The Duke of Cambridge has also been making weekly phone calls to NHS staff up and down the country to thank them for their work.

It was at the Commonwealth Day service last year when the Sussexes were last seen with their family.