Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s hotly-anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey could deal a major blow to the British monarchy — far worse than Prince Andrew’s disastrous sit-down amid the Jeffrey Epstein saga, royal experts say.
Author Pauline Maclaran said she believes that Prince Andrew’s infamous interview about his friendship with the late convicted pedophile Epstein would pale in comparison to the upcoming duke and duchess’s CBS special.
“I think it’s a bigger danger than the Prince Andrew car-crash interview,” Maclaran told The Associated Press of the Oprah sit-down.
“I think that Meghan is going to get a lot of sympathy, particularly from American audiences, about her position being untenable,” Maclaran said.
Maclaran, author of “Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture,” said the CBS interview would threaten the stature of “The Firm,” a k a the Palace, by “tarnishing the royal mystique” and making the blue bloods look just like regular celebrities.
The royals rarely grant interviews, and when they do, the questions are usually hyper-focused on specific issues. More free-ranging interviews have often gone badly, like Andrew’s train-wreck sit-down with the BBC in 2019, in which he failed to apologize for being buddies with Epstein or show empathy for the financier’s victims. Andrew gave up his royal duties soon after the interview.
But now that they’re officially post-Megxit and living in California, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex don’t seem to have anything to lose by giving the TV chat.
In a clip of the Oprah interview released Friday, Markle, 39, said that she was finally “ready to talk” after allegedly being muzzled by royal aides.
“As an adult who lived a really independent life to then go into this construct that is different than I think what people imagine it to be, it’s really liberating to be able to have the right and the privilege in some ways to be able to say yes,” to the interview, Markle explained.
Other pre-released clips have shown that the duchess will accuse the royal family of “perpetuating falsehoods” against her and 34-year-old Harry.
The couple claimed that they were victims of a “smear campaign” by the royals after a UK newspaper published allegations Markle had bullied palace staffers and that Queen Elizabeth ordered an investigation into the accusations.
Regardless of what else is said in the interview, Penny Junor, who has written several books about the royals, predicted that things will get nasty on all sides.
“It’s just such a mess,” she said. “I don’t think there are going to be any winners in it.”
With Post Wires