‘Next week will be poison’: Palace’s fears after first blast of Meghan and Harry series hit Netflix

The Palace fears that ‘next week will be poison’ after the first three episodes of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix series aired yesterday, leaving royals in a state of sadness with its ‘sly and insidious assault’ on Harry’s family, as concerns are raised that the next release will be even more ‘inflammatory’.

Harry and Meghan were accused last night of wanting to ‘bring down the monarchy’ after their Netflix documentary made another excoriating attack on the Royal Family.

Royal insiders were left particularly upset by the criticism of the late Queen Elizabeth and her Commonwealth legacy, which was dismissed as ‘Empire 2.0’.

The first three episodes of the programme – dubbed ‘Megflix’ by critics and part of a multi-million-dollar deal with the streaming giant – were released yesterday.

The Duchess of Sussex described them as an account of the couple’s ‘love story’, but critics said they were a ‘sly and insidious assault’ on Harry’s family and the institution of the Crown.

One royal source told The Times that ‘next week will be poison’, after the first three episodes focused on the British press and Meghan’s treatment by the media before their engagement, as well as the ‘unconscious bias’ surrounding race.

There were calls last night for the Sussexes to give up their titles if they were ‘so ashamed and disappointed’ about their links to the Royal Family, while the royals themselves were said to be ‘in a state of sadness’ following the release. Many associated with the Royal Household were also deeply upset at the depth of the couple’s ‘shameful and cowardly’ betrayal of the late Queen.

It emerged that the couple had started filming themselves and giving interviews as far back as March 2020, and continued until August this year, just weeks before the Queen’s death. A source said: ‘This was all being filmed while both the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen – Harry’s grandparents – were suffering from serious ill-health and in the last few months of their lives.

‘They even came over to mark Her Majesty’s Jubilee while colluding with the filmmakers, without telling her what they were doing.

‘That’s shameful and cowardly. There are a lot of people who are glad the late Queen is not here to see it.’

Another insider added: ‘It looks as if they want to bring down the monarchy. What else could they hope to achieve by this? It was a sly and insidious attack from start to finish.’

A former royal adviser said that the series is an attack on the Queen’s legacy, as opposed to the late monarch herself.  

A row also broke out between Buckingham Palace and Netflix as to whether the royals were given a right of reply against accusations in the documentary.

The first episode of the six-part series started with a disclaimer which stated that: ‘Members of the Royal Family declined to comment on the content within this series.’ But a senior palace source insisted that no one was contacted.

Yesterday’s tell-all documentary saw Harry accusing the royals of having a ‘huge level of unconscious bias’, with Meghan claiming that the Palace co-operated in the planting of ‘salacious stories’ in the media, which wanted to ‘destroy’ her. Other bombshells included:

• Harry suggests that, unlike other men in his family, he married for love not duty; 
• Meghan describes her first meeting with William and Kate in 2017, suggesting their formality was off-putting to a ‘hugger’ such as herself; 
• The couple – who call each other ‘H’ and ‘M’ in the series – recount Meghan’s first meeting with the late Queen, with the duchess demonstrating a grand mock curtsy and joking about the ‘medieval’ nature of British etiquette;
• Harry claims that his wife being an American actress ‘clouded’ his family’s view of her; 
• The prince says ‘some members’ of the royal family – taken as a reference to William – questioned why Meghan should get ‘special treatment’ different from their own wives; 
• Harry accuses his family of having a ‘huge level of unconscious [racial] bias’; 
• The prince claims he was left by his father to cope with the loss of his mother ‘without much support or help or guidance’ and was ‘literally’ brought up by a ‘second family’ in Africa; 
• The documentary uses footage from Diana’s controversial 1995 BBC Panorama interview, which William insisted should never be aired again – with barely a mention as to the deception with which it was obtained; 
• Interviewees make extraordinary links between the Brexit referendum ahead of Harry and Meghan’s engagement in 2017 and the alleged racism she was subjected to; 
• The couple share dozens of new images, as well as footage, of themselves and their children Archie and Lilibet at home, photographs from their first dates and even footage of Harry proposing which Meghan apparently ‘live-streamed’ to a friend.

The series reveals the couple started to film themselves on their mobile phones throughout the ‘Megxit’ crisis at the suggestion ‘of a friend’, with some footage in the programme dating back to March 2020. Harry is shown recording himself in the VIP lounge at Heathrow after his final public engagements as he prepared to leave the UK for the last time as a senior royal. ‘With all of the misinformation that was going on out there, especially about us and the departure, it seemed like a really sensible idea,’ he claims.

Meghan also alleges that she received so little support from Buckingham Palace that she had to google the words to the UK’s national anthem.

‘There is no class and some person who goes, “Sit like this, cross your legs like this, use this fork, don’t do this, curtsy then, wear this kind of hat.” It doesn’t happen,’ she says. Multiple sources have dismissed this, however, saying she was guided by both the Queen’s trusted deputy private secretary, Samantha Cohen, and her ladies-in-waiting.

But the most galling part, for many current and ex-staff, is the criticism of the late Queen and her passion for the Commonwealth. The group of nations is given the label of ‘Empire 2.0’ by broadcaster Afua Hirsch, while author Kehinde Andrews claims ‘nothing has changed’ from the UK’s colonial past, apart from the Royal Family’s ‘better PR’. 

This description was condemned by sources as ‘appalling and factually inaccurate,’ they told The Telegraph, while another said: ‘Today is a day when you’re reminded that they’re human beings. It’s sad to see it playing out in this way.’ 

There was mounting pressure last night on the Palace – which has so far declined to comment – to publicly condemn Harry and Meghan’s actions.

Conservative MP Bob Seely is leading calls for Harry and Meghan to lose their royal status because the couple are ‘monetising’ their titles with ‘aggressive and unbelievable’ attacks on Britain, as their Netflix show makes attacks on the Queen’s Commonwealth legacy and dubs the UK racist.

Mr Seely told MailOnline he is tabling a Private Members’ Bill that would give the Privy Council power to downgrade their status.

Meghan and Harry used their $100million deal with the streaming giant to launch fresh swipes at the Royal Family and Britain in shows being described as transatlantic ‘TV bombs’ hurled at The Firm. 

As part of their $100million deal with Netflix, the privacy-conscious couple have handed over a trove of pictures and video from their relationship including the moment Harry proposed in 2017 and filming himself in the VIP lounge at Heathrow as he emigrated in March 2020. 

The first three episodes contain a series of barbs that will upset his father King Charles III, including Harry’s claim that there is a ‘huge level of unconscious bias’ in the Royal Family – with reference to Princess Michael of Kent wearing an offensive Blackamoor-style brooch in front of his wife at Buckingham Palace. 

There is also a suggestion that the UK is racist and more obsessed with race than the US, with Meghan declaring that she ‘wasn’t really treated like a black woman’ until she came to Britain.

The show also brands the Queen’s much-loved Commonwealth ‘Empire 2.0’, while other claims are made that ‘nothing has changed’ from the UK’s colonial past, and Brexit supporters are accused of being racist and having ‘horrible views.

To change the royal couple’s status, legislation would amend the 1917 Titles Deprivation Act that was used to remove honours such as peerages from enemies who supported German aggression in the First World War.

The Isle of Wight MP said the couple were ‘monetising’ their titles with ‘aggressive’ and ‘unbelievable’ attacks on the Royal Family and Britain. 

Backbench Bills rarely become law, but Mr Seely said presenting the proposals to the House will be ‘a start’. 

The couple’s bombshell Netflix documentary has been accused of attacking the late Queen’s legacy after branding the Commonwealth ‘Empire 2.0’. 

The association of nations, much-loved by Her Majesty, is given the label by academic Afua Hirsch, while author Kehinde Andrews claims ‘nothing has changed’ from the UK’s colonial past, apart from the Royal Family’s ‘better PR’. 

The commentators suggest this racist legacy made it difficult for Meghan to be both assimilated into the firm and widely accepted and loved by the British public. 

But the comments have been described as ‘deeply offensive’ by some viewers. 

They also discuss Princess Michael of Kent a Blackamoor-style brooch to a pre-Christmas event the Duchess of Sussex attended in 2017. She was forced to apologise. 

Harry said: ‘In this family sometimes your part of the problem rather than part of the solution. And there is a huge level of unconscious bias. The thing with unconscious bias is actually no one’s fault.’

Meghan adds: ‘Obviously now everyone is aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK. Before then. I wasn’t really treated like a black woman’.

Under the so-called ‘Megxit’ deal agreed in 2020, Harry and Meghan are still known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

They kept their ‘HRH’ prefix – His Royal Highness and Her Royal Highness – but said they would no longer ‘actively use’ the titles.

‘If this guy hates the royals so much what is he doing parading and using his titles?’ Mr Seely said. 

‘If Harry and Meghan had integrity and wanted to practise what they preach – if they think the Royal Family is so awful why do they use Royal titles when it benefits them?’ 

Mr Seely added: ‘I do think it is the decent thing for them to do to voluntarily give up their titles. If they don’t I think there are various people trying to put down Bills helping them to do that.’

Separately, Labour’s Raechel Maskell is putting forward similar legislation targeting the Duke of York.

Mr Seely said: ‘The way that Harry and Meghan are going, the idea that you can sit there and monetise your misery, monetise your royal status by attacking the royal family – I’m sorry I think something has got to give.

‘It is just very sad for them that they are parading their deep sense of victimhood when I think actually they are remarkably, remarkably privileged people.

‘Rather than telling people how miserable they are they should be actually helping others.

‘I don’t for one second believe that the Royal family is ”racist”.

‘I think it is highly dishonest and really quite unattractive to claim that. I suspect it is to justify their Netflix deal.

‘They have not got much to say. What they have said they have said before. So they are just saying the same thing in a more aggressive and frankly unbelievable way. I don’t believe a word of it.

‘I think so many people in this country are getting fed up with them and how they use their royal status to make tens of millions of dollars.’

In one segment of the documentary, Harry says the royal family has ‘unconscious bias’, and is ‘part of the problem’ when it comes to racism in Britain. 

Other parts of the show feature left-leaning academics commenting on Britain’s colonial history and calling the late Queen’s Commonwealth ‘Empire 2.0’, and it also accuses Brexit supporters of being racist and having ‘horrible views. 

A senior Tory told MailOnline: ‘Meghan needs to get this massive chip off her shoulder. The world has a problem with racism.

‘Every country has a problem with racism, every single country. The UK is no exception.

‘It is a problem in the UK that is becoming increasingly less. We have Rishi Sunak as PM.

‘It seems to me that she has been walking around, and Harry too, actively looking to interpret things from a racist angle when actually they may well not have been racist.’

‘For Harry to talk about racist Britain, and a racist Royal Family… if they were racist they wouldn’t have allowed him to marry her.

‘He himself went into exile.

They have opted to bow out of royal life… but it is ironic that they are making their money by trashing the very institution they have walked away from. They should try to make their money without involving the Royal Family.

Nigel Farage also joined the criticism, branding Harry and Meghan ‘despicable’ after their bombshell Netflix documentary suggested Brexit contributed to the racism experienced by the Duchess. 

The former UKIP leader, 58, took to social media to give his verdict following the release of the first three of six hour-long episodes, which were dropped by the streaming giant at 8am on Thursday. 

He accused the Sussexes of labelling 52% of Brits ‘bad, racist people’, after one of the episodes said it created a ‘perfect storm for jingoism and nationalism’ and gave people with ‘really horrible views more strength and confidence’. 

Downing Street also pushed back against the efforts to show’s efforts to link Brexit to racism. 

Asked about Prince Harry’s comments about the EU referendum, the Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said: ‘I haven’t put those specific points to the Prime Minister but the British people made a decision, a democratic decision, which the Government has enacted based on taking control of things like our borders and our laws, which again, we have delivered.’ 

Tory MP Michael Fabricant also weighed in, accusing the Sussexes of recycling the ‘ignorant trope’ that all Brexiteers ‘are racists’.

Mr Farage said: ‘Well perhaps no great surprise that Harry and Meghan choose to use Brexit as one of the causes of the terrible racism that was put against them.

‘They draw on extreme left-wing historians, they draw on fake news headlines from The Guardian and elsewhere and what they’re really saying is that 52% of Prince Harry’s country of birth are  bad, racist people.’

He said the series was, in the short term, all about ‘making money’, ‘dissing the Royal Family and the United Kingdom’, adding: ‘And in the long term, giving a political platform on which Meghan can launch her career in the USA.’ 

He said the couple are ‘nothing short of despicable’ over their ‘behaviour’ towards the Royal Family.  

Tory MP Michael Fabricant told MailOnline: ‘It is a common and ignorant trope that people who voted for Brexit did so out of racism.

‘Most did so because they believed in the importance of sovereignty for our 1,000-year-old nation.

‘You would have thought Prince Harry would have had some sense of history, but I guess not. Instead he chooses to make ill-informed comments based on his own prejudices rather than any basis of facts.’

It comes after the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary yesterday unleashed a series of incendiary claims labelling Britain a ‘racist’ country.

Lengthy segments are also given to academics Afua Hirsch and David Olusoga who say British tradition is ‘filled with racist imagery’ while discussing the country’s colonial legacy – and call anti-immigration sentiment in the UK a ‘cipher for race’.

The accusations are levelled across the first three hour-long episodes of Harry & Meghan, which dropped at 8am on Thursday. 

The Commonwealth, much-loved by the late Queen, is branded ‘Empire 2.0’ by Ms Hirsch, while author Kehinde Andrews claims ‘nothing has changed’ from the UK’s colonial past, apart from the Royal Family’s ‘better PR’. 

The commentators suggest this racist legacy made it difficult for Meghan to be both assimilated into the firm and widely accepted and loved by the British public. 

Even the UK’s departure from the EU is dragged into the fray, as Harry says the series is not ‘just about our story’, adding: ‘This has always been much bigger than us’, amid the back drop of a Brexit protest followed by former-PM Boris Johnson vowing to ‘take back control of this country.’ 

The visuals point to racism being a key factor behind the Brexit vote and suggest the wider political climate was hostile to Meghan becoming a royal. 

 The debate around Brexit is revisited at the end of episode two. Mr Olusoga says that the ‘fairy tale’ of Harry and Meghan was ’embedding itself in a nation that is having a pretty toxic debate about the European Union.’

He adds that ‘immigration was at the absolute centre’ of that debate, and that ‘immigration is very often in this country a cipher for race’.

A series of clips then shows British people making racist comments.

Harry then says: ‘So the EU commissioned a report in 2016, exactly the same time that our relationship became public. It warned that if the government wasn’t going to do something, or if the media aren’t going to sort themselves out, that a culture war that had already existed was going to become huge and become a real problem.’

Former Palace spokesman James Holt adds: ‘It was a perfect storm that gave credence to jingoism and nationalism and gave people with really horrible views of the world a little bit more strength and confidence to say what they wanted to say and do what they wanted to do.’ 

Asked about Prince Harry’s comments about the EU referendum, the Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said yesterday: ‘I haven’t put those specific points to the Prime Minister but the British people made a decision, a democratic decision, which the Government has enacted based on taking control of things like our borders and our laws, which again, we have delivered.’ 

In the same episode, Meghan tells interviewers she felt a shift in treatment after moving to the UK. 

‘At that time, I wasn’t thinking about how race played a part in any of this,’ she said. ‘I genuinely didn’t think about it.

‘It’s very different to be a minority but not be treated as a minority right off the bat…I’d say now, people are very aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK. 

‘But before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ”black woman.” So that talk didn’t happen for me.’

In the third episode, the Sussexes chart their relationship with the media from the announcement of their engagement in 2017 right up until the day before their wedding in May 2018. 

It touches on Britain’s ‘racist past’ and various scandals to have hit the firm in recent years – including Princess Michael of Kent’s ‘Blackamoor-style’ brooch and Harry’s Nazi uniform furore. 

Experts, authors and friends – including Meghan’s mother Doria and Serena Williams – are called upon to comment on how Britain’s history, the press and expectations from royal fans impacted the couple. 

In the opening segment, Meghan claims ‘we’ve never been allowed to tell our story… until now’.

Mr Olusoga, author of Black and British, then tells interviewers: ‘Who dreamed that Britain would have a black princess? Who could have conceived that? It was the conclusion to a history that was so improbable, as to be astonishing.’ 

He and fellow author Afua Hirsch give a brief history lesson on Britain’s role in the Atlantic Slave trade and how it ‘fuelled’ the British empire, which was ‘financed by kings and queens right up until its abolishment’ in the early 1800s. 

Ms Hirsch said Britain is often described of having its ‘own deep south’ that was ‘just as brutal’ as the US’s and that ‘actually enslaved more Africans’ than the Americans did, but that that deep south was the Caribbean. 

But ‘it was out of sight and out of mind,’ she said, adding that the first slave voyage was ‘personally financed’ by Queen Elizabeth I and continued to be financed by kings and queens until abolishment. 

According to Mr Olusoga, the fact that slave owners were then compensated to the tune of £20million ‘for their human property’ is often ‘left out’ of history lessons, which he said is ‘just another way in which our memory of British slavery has been airbrushed out of Britain’s story.’ 

James Holt, former Palace spokesman, tells producers he was ‘oblivious’ to the legacy of Britain’s links to the slave trade, claiming his teachers focused on the UK’s colonial power and ‘just how important the country used to be globally.’ 

Linking back to Harry and Meghan’s engagement, Mr Olusoga says he felt it could have shown the Royal Family had ‘caught up with the rest of Britain.’ 

Then recalling her first Christmas at Sandringham, Meghan said she found it ‘amazing’ as she was ‘with a big family like I always wanted.’ 

But things went awry when reports emerged that the Princess Michael of Kent wore a ‘Blackamoor-style’ brooch to the Queen’s annual Christmas lunch  – which was widely viewed as ‘racist’. 

Harry then says: ‘In this family, sometimes you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. There is a huge level of unconscious bias.

‘The thing with unconscious bias, it is actually no one’s fault. But once it has been pointed out, or identified within yourself you then need to make it right.

‘It is education. It is awareness. It is a constant work in progress for everybody, including me.’

Harry then spoke about when he wore a Nazi uniform to a private party in 2005.

He said: ‘It was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right.’

The episode later reverts back to Britain’s colonial past as it gives a brief description of the founding of the Commonwealth. 

Author Robert Hazell says the British monarchy is unique in that it is an ‘international monarchy’ as the King is the head of state in countries around the world. 

The commonwealth is described as one the great ‘justifications’ for the continuation of the monarchy, but author Kehinde Andrews says nothing has changed since colonisation, only that the royal family uses ‘better PR’.

Britain played a ‘very strategic’ role in awarding former colonies independence, author Ms Hirsch tells viewers, ‘in a way that protected its commercial and capitalist interests.’ 

She said it created a ‘privileged club of formerly colonised nations called the Commonwealth’, which she said is still described as a ‘club of friends who share common values’. 

She adds: ‘I find that language really problematic, I sometimes call the Commonwealth Empire 2.0, because that is what it is.’ 

Mr Andrews then adds: ‘They’ve not changed a thing they’ve just got better PR. If you look at the black people in the Commonwealth the conditions are almost just as bad as they were 50 years ago or 100 years ago.’ 

Ms Hirsch says the former colonies’ wealth was ‘extracted’ and that this is the root of the poverty plaguing some of the communities today. 

She adds: ‘Those in Britain who extracted that wealth continue to be inter-generationally wealthy, those from whom it was extracted continue to be inter-generationally poor. It is a very clear economic relationship.

‘And yet the current narrative in Britain is that it’s all history and there’s no point looking back. It’s incredibly painful for the very many millions of British people who have a different memory of empire in their personal background.’  

‘And yet here was a woman who just looked like most of the people in the Commonwealth,’ author Mr Olusoga added, ‘Meghan represented something… there was a hope that maybe this was a way of having these difficult conversations that had been pushed away so many times.’ 

The episode then tells the story of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and shows Harry speaking at a memorial to him, 26 days before his and Meghan’s wedding.

Ms Hirsch said the black community ‘really appreciated’ his speech, saying his and Meghan’s attendance was ‘really significant’. 

She added: ‘It represented a direct attempt to speak to the pain many people still feel as a result of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

‘And that was really welcomed by many black communities in Britain. I always perceived Prince Harry as just another senior royal, a little bit racist, very ignorant. 

‘But I have watched him on this journey and seen that he has really embraced the education that is required for someone like him to transform himself into an anti-racist.’