Stereotyping caused a “bit of a barrier” to the Prince and Princess of Wales welcoming Meghan, despite Prince Harry having high hopes that the four of them would get along.
Prince Harry shared his recollection with ITV’s Tom Bradby in the first of four prime-time shows about his controversial memoir Spare, to be launched on Tuesday.
Bradby said the impression was that the Duke of Sussex's brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate did not get on “almost from the get-go” with Meghan, to which Prince Harry replied: “Yeah, fair.”
“[There were] lots of different reasons … I had put a lot of hope in the idea that it’d be Prince William and Kate and me and whoever.
“I thought the four of us would bring me and William closer together. We could go out and do work together, which I did a lot as the third wheel to them, which was fun at times but also, I guess, slightly awkward at times as well.
“I don’t think they were ever expecting me to get … into a relationship with someone like Meghan who had a very successful career.”
The Princess of Wales is celebrating her 41st birthday on Monday, a day before her brother-in-law’s bombshell memoir goes on sale.
Her birthday comes after intimate details about Harry's life and family, including claims about his sister-in-law, emerged in the book.
They include an “awkward moment” when his wife asked Kate to borrow some lip gloss ahead of their Royal Foundation Forum appearance in 2018.
“Kate, taken aback, went into her handbag and reluctantly pulled out a small tube,” Harry writes.
“Meg squeezed some on to her finger and applied it to her lips. Kate grimaced.”
The duke wrote that the four “should've been able to laugh” about the moment but the press “sensed” it was “something bigger” and so Kate was “on edge” that she was now “going to be compared to, and forced to compete with, Meg”.
Before meeting Prince Harry, Meghan starred in US legal drama series Suits, in which she played paralegal-turned-lawyer Rachel Zane.
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, through the years — in pictures
Harry laughed when he was told that the Prince and Princess of Wales were Suits “fans”.
“Who would’ve thought? I never knew that,” he said.
Prince Harry suggested there was a lot of “stereotyping” about his wife that even he was “guilty of” at the beginning.
“The fact that I had that in the back of my mind, and some of the things that my brother and sister-in-law, some of the way that they were acting or behaving definitely felt to me as though unfortunately that stereotyping was causing a bit of a barrier to them really sort of introducing or welcoming her in,” he said.
When asked what exactly he meant by stereotyping, Harry said: “American actress, divorced, biracial.
“There’s all different parts to that and what that can mean but if you are, like a lot of my family do, if you are reading the press, the British tabloids at the same time as living the life, then there is a tendency where you could actually end up living in the tabloid bubble rather than the actual reality."
Anticipation builds ahead of the release of Prince Harry's book — in pictures
Prince Harry said the idea of himself, his wife and the Prince and Princess of Wales being the “fab four” was “something the British press created” and it “creates competition”.
“The idea of the four of us being together was always a hope for me,” he said.
“Before it was Meghan, whoever it was going to be, I always hoped that the four of us would get on.
“But very quickly it became Meghan versus Kate.
“And that, when it plays out so publicly, you can’t hide from that, right? Especially when within my family you have the newspapers laid out pretty much in every single palace and house that is around.”
Prince Harry said his brother “raised some concerns” about his marriage to Meghan before their wedding in May 2018.
“He never tried to dissuade me from marrying Meghan, but he aired some concerns very early, and said ‘this is going to be really hard for you’ and I still to this day don’t truly understand which part of what he was talking about,” he said.
“Maybe he predicted what the British press’s reaction was going to be.”
Harry: The Interview is available to view on ITVX.
