Duchess of Sussex feels 'liberated' since quitting royal duties

Meghan says she can now speak for herself in new clip from Oprah Winfrey interview

The Duchess of Sussex said it feels “liberating” to make her own decisions and speak for herself since she and Prince Harry quit as senior working royals.

The duchess revealed that the royal family had previously prevented her from speaking to Oprah Winfrey in an interview ahead of her wedding in 2018.

In the latest clip from the couple's interview with Winfrey, she is asked why she decided to give the interview now.

Winfrey describes how she asked the duchess for an interview in February or March 2018, before the May wedding, but the talk show host was turned down.

"I remember that conversation very well," the duchess said.

"I wasn’t even allowed to have that conversation with you personally, right? There had to be people sitting there."

Winfrey agreed: “There were other people in the room when I was having that conversation. You turned me down nicely and said perhaps there will be another time. What is right about this time?"

The duchess, 39, replied: "Well, so many things. That we’re on the other side of a lot of life experience that’s happened and also that we have the ability to make our own choices.

"In a way that I could not have said yes to you then, it was not my choice to make."

She suggested that she found it difficult to adapt to the royal family’s strict protocols.

"So as an adult who had lived an independent life, to then go into this construct that is different than I think what people imagine it to be,” she said.

"It's really liberating to be able to have the right and the privilege in some ways to be able to say yes, I’m ready to talk, to be able to make a choice on your own and to be able to speak for yourself.”

The clip is the third to be released by US network CBS ahead of the two-hour interview which will be broadcast in the US on Sunday and in the UK on Monday night.

The teaser was released an hour before the UK's High Court ordered The Mail on Sunday to publish a front-page statement about the duchess's legal victory against the newspaper last month.

The duchess won her copyright claim over a letter she sent her estranged father ahead of her wedding, with a judge ruling that she "had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private".

Amid an ongoing row between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the royal family, Buckingham Palace said on Friday that Prince Philip had again moved hospitals after a successful procedure for a heart condition.

The Duke of Edinburgh, 99, was transferred from St Bartholomew's Hospital to the private King Edward VII Hospital in central London, where he was initially admitted as a precaution more than two weeks ago.

His stay in hospital deprives Queen Elizabeth II of his trusted advice at a tense time for the family.

In another clip released on Thursday, the Duchess of Sussex accused Buckingham Palace of "perpetuating falsehoods" about her and Prince Harry.

The interview was filmed before former aides accused her of bullying during her time as a working royal.