Can the Royal Family Withstand Oprah’s Scrutiny?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan and Harry, the Duchess and Duke of Sussex, was riveting celebrity television, but it may also be a significant turning point in the history of the British royal family. Revelations about racism and about Meghan’s struggles with mental health are already reshaping public perception of the powerful institution. The interview also touched on racism and mental health, issues that are familiar to many families. “In the future, we will look to this interview as a real touchstone marking the change of who it is we see as authorities of their own experience,” says Doreen St. Félix. In conversation with St. Félix and the eminent historian Simon Schama, the author of a three-volume history of Britain, David Remnick discusses how the interview plays into culture wars in the U.K. and in American.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:13.0	All week long we've been talking about the interview, capital I, the interview, Megan Markle, and Prince Harry, sitting down with Oprah Winfrey.
0:22.7	That interview turned out to be something maybe weightier than we had any reason to expect,
0:27.8	and we're still talking about it today, because this drama in the House of Windsor
0:32.2	grappled with everything, from mental health issues to racism to the most enduring institution in the
0:38.8	United Kingdom. So I called up two wonderful writers who have engaged with these questions to talk
0:44.4	about it. The historian Simon Shammell, who will join us in a moment, and staff writer Doreen
0:49.5	St. Felix. Doreen, so I've got to admit that we were texting a little bit during that interview,
0:56.5	and I thought the headline was going to be, you know, Kate made me cry or something like that.
1:02.8	I had no idea that this interview was going to be as dramatic and in some way as important as it
1:10.4	turned out to be.
1:11.2	What were you expecting and what did we get?
1:13.7	I mean, I think I was expecting.
1:15.8	I think we all had in our mind the very infamous interview that Princess Diana did with Martin Bashir, I think maybe 26 years ago, which was certainly an airing of grievances, but it was still wrapped up in the
1:30.2	sense that, you know, Diana couldn't say everything that was on her mind, possibly. And I think
1:37.3	for me, what was the most striking part of the interview was not even so much Markle's revelations.
1:46.2	You know, as a black woman in America, I wasn't really surprised to hear the treatment that she described. I think it was more so Harry, because Harry,
1:53.0	we were watching, you know, he was so protective of his wife. He had his hand on her hand for the
1:58.8	entirety of the interview. And he seemed like he was in a kind of
2:02.5	personal crisis. He wasn't as open as Markle, but in some ways that made him all the more revealing.
2:08.9	You know, there were answers that he didn't want to necessarily provide to Oprah. And I think
	...

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