MOSCOW: Over 17 million people watched the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Sputnik quoted The New York Times report citing preliminary figures from Nielsen’s TV ratings scale.
The Sunday interview drew 16.9 million viewers on CBS in the first hour and 17.3 in the second. The audience was about twice the size of the viewership for the prime-time ratings winner in a given week, The New York Times said on Monday.
Meghan Markle, the wife of Prince Harry, told Oprah Winfrey on Sunday that she was silenced after joining the royal family and did not receive the support she had expected.
“It was only once we were married and everything started to really worsen that I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family,” Meghan told Oprah.
Markle said that ahead of her son Archie’s birth on May 6, 2019, there were royal family discussions: “the conversation of ‘he won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title’ and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Harry and Meghan revealed during the Sunday Oprah interview that the second child they were expecting was going to be a girl.
Prince Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties last year and moved to the United States with their son. In February of this year, they informed Queen Elizabeth II that they would not return as working members of the UK royal family. Prince Harry said that the mental health impact of the “toxic” UK press played a part in the decision.
On Sunday, Prince Harry told Oprah that he and his wife Meghan did everything they could to stay in the royal family and said that he feels “really let down” by his father, Prince Charles. Harry said his relationship with Prince Charles has been complicated since the royal rift and described his father, Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William, as “trapped” in their roles, unable to leave.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, commenting on the Oprah interview on Facebook, that it only confirmed that the British media manipulates public opinion in the interests of the royal family. – Bernama
