Prince Harry Talks Queen Elizabeth & The Firm With Oprah

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle told their story about not being able to make their own choices within the Royal Family when they spoke with Oprah Winfrey. However, new footage from the interview, which was released on March 8, revealed that this extended to all members of the Royal Family — even Queen Elizabeth! Harry told a story about The Queen allegedly being ‘controlled’ by senior advisors in The Firm.

In January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan announced plans to step back as senior members of the Royal family. In this exclusive clip, they tell @Oprah they were then invited to spend time with his grandmother, the Queen, but the plans abruptly changed citing she's "busy all week." pic.twitter.com/dLhq0SAgfN

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 8, 2021

Harry explained that weeks before he and Meghan publicly announced that they would be stepping down from their senior royal duties, he wrote about their intentions in a letter to his family. Harry and Meghan were in Canada when the letter was delivered, but said that The Queen invited them to her home for dinner upon their return so they could discuss the situation. They also claimed that she even invited them to spend the night.

However, when the couple did arrive back in the United Kingdom, they found out the plans had changed. “I got a message from my private secretary, cutting and pasting a message from the Queen’s private secretary, saying The Queen is busy all week, do not come up here,” Harry explained. “So I rang her that night and said I was thinking about coming anyway, but I hear you’re busy. And she said, there’s something in my diary I didn’t know I had. I said, what about the rest of the week? She said that’s busy now, as well. I didn’t want to push because I knew what was going on.”

Oprah was pretty baffled by this, and flat-out asked, “Doesn’t The Queen get to do what The Queen wants to do?” The simple answer is….no. “When you’re head of the firm, there are people around you that give you advice,” Harry said. “And what has also made me really sad is that some of that advice has been really bad.”

meghan markle prince harry oprah winfrey — Meghan Markle and Prince Harry talk with Oprah in a tell-all interview. (Joe Pugliese/Harpo/AP/Shutterstock)

During the interview, Meghan opened up about not receiving support from the Royal Family when she was facing public backlash throughout her relationship with Harry. She said that the Institution knew there were false stories being spread about her in the media, but didn’t do anything about it. Things got so bad, that Meghan began having suicidal thoughts, and admittedly “did not want to be alive anymore.” However, when she reached out to the Institution to try and get help, they would not give it to her, she said. When Harry and Meghan realized they would not get the support they needed from his family, they made the difficult decision to leave royal life behind and move to America.