Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has revealed that friends warned her against marrying Prince Harry because of the attacks she would face from the UK’s tabloid press.
The Duchess, who married the Duke of Sussex in May 2018, described the last year as “hard” and said she never thought life would be “easy” in the British royal family but thought she would be treated fairly.
“When I first met my now husband, my friends were really happy because I was so happy. But my British friends said to me: ‘I’m sure he’s great. But you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life,’” she said in an interview documentary for ITV called Harry & Meghan: An African Journey.
She said she told her friends: “What are you talking about. That doesn’t make any sense. I’m not in the tabloids.”
The former actress said as an American, she “didn’t get it”.
The interview in southern Africa took place earlier this month when the couple announced that Meghan was taking legal action against a tabloid newspaper over the publication of a letter she had sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.
Harry accused certain sections of the British press of carrying out a "ruthless" campaign against Meghan. He is also suing the publishers of Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper and the Daily Mirror over allegations of phone-hacking.
Harry warned of the past repeating itself, comparing the couple’s treatment by the press to that of his mother Princess Diana, who died in a car crash while being pursued by the paparazzi in 1997.
"Everything that she [Diana] went through and what happened to her is incredibly raw every single day and that is not being me being paranoid. That is just me not wanting a repeat of the past," Harry said.
"Part of this job ... means putting on a brave face and turning a cheek to a lot of this stuff," he said. "All we need to do is focus on being real, and focus on being the people that we are and standing up for what we believe in.
“I will not be bullied into playing a game that killed my mum,” he said.
Harry addressed reports of a rift between himself and his brother Prince William, saying “inevitably stuff happens”.
Earlier this year, Harry and Meghan split from the charity they shared with William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.
"We will always be brothers,” Harry said. “We are certainly on different paths at the moment, but I will always be there for him as I know he will always be there for me.”
"As brothers you have good days you have bad days" he added.
