Over the course of their comprehensive, headline-making interview with Oprah, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry unpacked the reasoning behind their decision to step back from their duties as senior royals in January 2020.
In an additional unaired clip—exclusive to OprahMag.com—Meghan opened up about the invasions of privacy she experienced after dating, and then marrying, Prince Harry. The couple eventually took legal action against these breaches, ultimately winning a privacy case against the The Mail on Sunday, the publication that published a letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, in 2021.
While speaking to Meghan, Oprah posed a question many have asked in response to Meghan and Harry’s requests for privacy: While dating a royal, shouldn’t there be an expectation that you’re going to lose a certain degree of privacy? In the clip below, Meghan responded: “I think everyone has a basic right to privacy. Basic. We’re not talking about anything that anybody else wouldn’t expect.”
She went on to illustrate her definition of a “basic right to privacy” by using an example grounded in daily life.
“If you’re at work and you have a photograph of your child on your desk, and your coworker says, ‘Oh, my gosh, your kid’s so cute. That’s fantastic! Can I see your phone so I can see all the pictures of your child?’ You go, ‘No. This is the picture I’m comfortable sharing with you,'” Meghan said.
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Meghan went on to add to the analogy to show the lengths that photographers went to invade her own privacy. “And then if they double down and say, ‘No, but you already showed me that one. So you have to show me everything. You know what, I’m just gonna hire someone to sit in front of your house, or hide in the bushes and take pictures into your backyard, because you’ve lost your right to privacy…because you shared one image with me,'” she said.
Ultimately, Meghan said, she and Harry were not asking for complete privacy, nor were they cordoning themselves from their roles as public figures, as some have claimed. “They’ve created a false narrative. I’ve never talked about privacy,” Meghan said.
Instead, she said, the couple was just asking to share the “parts of their lives” they were “comfortable” with giving the public access to—just like the rest of us.
“There’s no one who’s on Instagram or social media that would say, ‘Because I shared this one picture, that entitles you to have my entire camera roll. Go ahead and look through it.’ No one would want that. So it’s about boundaries. And it’s about respect.”
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