Did Piers Morgan Lie About Harry and Meghan's Oprah Interview? Yes

 Everyone else is talking about it, so I thought I should too. I'm going to go through Piers Morgan's list of "17 Lies" he claims Meghan and Harry told in the interview and see if any of them hold water.

Before we start, you should be aware of the Royal Rota, that is, journalists who have access to the Royal family. This arrangement is used to massage stories in the media. For example, by burying stories about Prince Andrew (the alleged paedophile, who paid someone he claimed never to have met £12 million) with stories about Meghan and Harry (who sometimes eat avocados or fly in planes). Meghan and Harry haven't been giving interviews or interacting with the media nearly as much as headlines would like to have you think. If you see articles about them pop up on your facebook or twitter dashboard, 99% will have a headline that implies Meghan or Harry have done or said something, but the actual article turns out to be a "Royal expert's" opinion. By the way, there are absolutely no qualifications to be a Royal Expert. You could be one if you like. You just have to have an opinion on the Royal Family.

You should also be aware of Piers Morgan's history with Meghan Markle. He's not part of the Royal Rota. He is a stalker harassing a woman he's obsessed with. That is my opinion, but I don't see how anyone with eyes or half a brain could think otherwise. Morgan was a fan of Markle when she worked on Suits, they struck up a conversation over twitter, he allegedly met with her for a drink, and then she never spoke to or about him ever again while he has repeatedly attacked her in the media. 

For those of you who are women, or who are friends with women...if a woman told you a man had been friendly with her on twitter, they'd met for a drink, and now she never, ever wanted to see or speak to or about him again, while he constantly wanted to talk about and insult her, what would you think had happened? 

Laquesha Bailey has some interesting statistics on the subject. For example, between November 2019, when Prince Andrew was accused of sexually abusing an underage girl, and May 2021, when Bailey wrote her article, Piers Morgan managed to write 4 columns about Prince Andrew and 21 columns about Meghan. He tweeted about Andrew 31 times and about Meghan Markle 446 times. Those are some weird priorities.

So, onto Morgan's claims of 17 lies. Morgan presents each 'lie' in his own words and then refutes it, so we have two things to establish. Firstly, did Meghan Markle say the thing Morgan says she said? And, secondly, was the thing she actually said true? The Sun - and a few others - have published full written transcripts of the interview, which is what I'm using to check what was actually said.

1: Morgan claims Meghan said she and Harry were married 3 days prior to their Royal wedding.

What did Meghan say?

Meghan says she and Harry "got married" three days prior to their official wedding. They "called the archbishop", said they wanted their union to be between them, and they framed the vows from that ceremony.

The meaning I would take from this is that Meghan and Harry consider that exchange of vows to be their true wedding, their real union, and the start of the marriage. That seems very fair to me. The Royal Wedding wasn't for them, it was for the public.

What Morgan claims is that Meghan and Harry are claiming to have had a legal wedding ceremony three days before their public wedding. Does anybody really think they got the wedding they wanted with all the pomp and circumstance around it?

The Archbishop of Canterbury says that the private exchange of vows was not a legal wedding ceremony.

So did Meghan and Harry lie? I can't say they did. They never claimed it was a legal ceremony. They were very clear that there were no witnesses, which are required for a legal ceremony, as everybody knows. They said they wanted their union to be "between us." They had a private union. It wasn't a legal ceremony. They never claimed it was. Piers Morgan has misunderstood. I suspect he has misunderstood on purpose.

Imagine if you were chatting with a friend, and she says, "You know that huge ceremony that my in-laws paied for? We actually did a little private exchange of vows with the priest three days before, just the three of us. That's when our marriage began. We have those vows framed in our room."

...and, puzzled, you reply; "Is that legal? With no witnesses?"

And she says, "Oh, no. It was just our own personal union."

I think we would all understand that conversation. Our friend isn't saying that she was legally married on that day. She gave us all the information to work that out when she told us there were no witnesses present - why would she do that if she were trying to fool anyone? She's telling us about the different between the ceremony they had for the public and the one they had in private, because the entire interview is about the difference between public and private presentations of their lives.

Those people accusing Meghan of lying, including Morgan, are intentionally (or accidentally) misunderstanding her words.

2. Archie Wasn't Allowed to be a Prince

Morgan claims that Meghan claimed "the Royal Family refused Archie's birthright [sic] to be a prince" after discussing how dark his skin would be.

This is the part of the interview where Meghan talks about Archie's title.

Meghan isn't talking about the title. She's talking about the fact that not having a title means Archie won't have security, that he won't be protected from the public, despite the hatred that the media, including Morgan, has whipped up around them. That's the important part.  Morghan's focused on the line "they were saying they didn't want him to be a prince or a princess - not knowing what the gender would be, which would be different from protocol - and that he wasn't going to receive security."

Morgan's claim is that Meghan lied because "according to royal protocol, Archie can only receive a title when Prince Charles takes the throne." But, in the interview, long before Piers Morgan wrote his article, Meghan says this.

She makes it clear that she knows Archie will only receive a title when Charles ascends the throne. That's the convention that she's talking about being changed to exclude Archie. 

Again, Morgan has either purposefully misunderstood what she's said and ignored part of the interview to claim she lied, or he's somehow accidentally misunderstood what she's talking about.

The other part of this claim is that Meghan said she suspected this change might have to do with Archie being mixed race. She did say that.

I've seen people online talk about how discussing what a mixed race baby will look like isn't inherently bad or racist. It's not, I agree. There are both racist and non-racist ways to talk about what mixed race children will look like (speaking as a mixed race person). You know which is which from the tone, from what you know about the people speaking, and from the context of the conversation. We don't have that information, but Meghan and Harry did, and they found the conversation racist. 

I need to explain something here. A lot of people, mostly white people, think racism only "counts" if they're thinking mean thoughts or actively trying to lynch someone. That's not what racism is. You can be racist in a nice way. You can be accidentally or unintentionally racist. In those scenarios, just say "Sorry, my bad, I didn't know how it would come across" and then everyone moves on.

So, I don't think whoever brought this up was thinking "Yuck, black people" or planning a future lynching. I do think they were repeatedly bringing up the question of Archie's skin tone with the assumption that it would be a problem if he were too dark. That is racist.

I say "repeatedly" because I've seen people claim to have found a contradiction in the interview. Meghan says this conversation happened while she was pregnant (see above), but Harry seems to say it happened earlier.

Guess what? This conversation probably happened more than once.

Harry wasn't in the room earlier. At this point in the conversation, he's being asked about the start of his and Meghan's relationship, so when Oprah brings up that conversation, he thinks about his family's concerns about her race when they first started dating. That doesn't mean it didn't come up again when she was pregnant.

If they were lying, I think Harry would have been prepared for the question. If they'd made up a story together, then Harry would be repeating what Meghan said earlier. But he's speaking naturally, within the conversation, and when he's reminded about that, he brings up a slightly different memory because of the context.

3. Morgan claims Meghan says she "Never looked Harry up Online."

Morgan's first claim is that Meghan says she "never looked [my] husband up online." I cannot find any quote like that within the interview transcript.

His second claim is that Meghan said she "didn't do any research into the monarchy." This is what Meghan said.

Morgan states that the authors of Finding Freedom say Meghan googled Harry before their first date. I don't know if that's true, but she never said she didn't.

Morgan also claims Meghan knew Princess Eugenie, Harry's cousin, for several years before she met him. Again, she never said she didn't. She said she didn't research what marrying into the family would mean. 

In fact, Meghan herself says she knew Eugenie before she knew Harry, in this interview.

...so again Piers Morgan is either intentionally lying or just not paying attention.

Finally, Piers Morgan says an "old school friend" of Meghan's, Ninaki Priddy said that Meghan was fascinated by "both the Royal Family and Princess Diana."

Ninaki Priddy is a real person, and she was Meghan's Maid of Honour at her first wedding, and there are multiple pictures of them as children together, so we're probably safe to assume they were friends. In the article I've linked there, Priddy makes it clear she was firmly on the side of Engelson, Meghan's ex-husband, after their divorce. That happens when people get divorced. It doesn't mean that Meghan or Engleson  are good or bad people, it means that Priddy heard only Engelson's side of the story and remained friends with him. In the second article linked, she says "Trevor is my family now. We're still friends."

She also says this in that second article.

Owning a book about Princess Diana or wanting to visit London, or even taking a picture outside of Buckingham palace doesn't mean you did any research about what marrying into the family would be like. It doesn't mean she knew Diana did a Panorama interview. It doesn't mean they talked about the Royal family at home - notice that Priddy can't quote any conversations she had with Meghan or her family about the Royal family - or that Meghan's family followed the Royal family. And lots of people liked The Princess Diaries - how many of them do you think googled what it would mean to marry Prince Harry? I'm sure some did, but the percentage who didn't is definitely high enough that Meghan could be amongst them. None of this contradicts anything Meghan said in the interview. 

It's not like Meghan even denies liking movies about princesses. She compares herself to The Little Mermaid later in the interview.

Piers Morgan has misquoted Meghan and Priddy to claim they contradict one another. They don't.

It is clear that Priddy no longer likes Meghan and that she blames her for ending her marriage to Engelson. That is what it is. I think it would be hard to find anyone who doesn't have someone who doesn't like them after a break-up.

4. Morgan claims Meghan said she hadn't seen her sister Samantha for almost twenty years.

I can't find any reference to Meghan's half-sister Samantha in the Oprah interview.

All I can find is one article where an "anonymous source" who claims to be a "friend" of Meghan's says this:

So Meghan never said this in the first place. An anonymous source - who could be literally anyone - said it. 

Also, nothing in the quote even says the anonymous source knows Meghan. I've never met Meghan Markle and I could go and make the exact same comment on Twitter or Facebook right now, as a totally random member of the public, and no one would think I had inside information, they'd just think I was confidently stating an opinion as fact.

Meghan never said this. Piers Morgan has attributed the words of a random person to Meghan Markle.

5. Morgan claims Meghan agreed when Harry said TV Streaming was "Never part of the plan"

The claim here is that "Meghan agreed when Harry said working with TV companies, such as streaming giant Netflix, was not part of the plan when they first planned a move to the US." Apparently, this is false because "It has since been revealed the couple started speaking to Quibi video streaming in early 2019."

The article has no source for that information.

Here is what Meghan said in the Oprah interview.

They said they didn't have a plan, but deals with streaming services like Netflix and Spotify were suggested in the first quarter of 2020.

Firstly, Quibi launched in April of 2020, so obviously Meghan and Harry could not have been in talks with them in 2019. However, they were founded as NewTV in 2018 and changed their name before launch, so maybe that's what's being referred to?

I did find an article that referred to Katzenberger meeting with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The article frames this as if it contradicts Harry and Meghan "not having a plan for streaming" but that's ridiculous. A company came to them with ideas and they rejected them. That's not "having a plan." That's the exact opposite. They rejected the idea of working with a streaming company. That doesn't contradict someone suggesting it them later, in different circumstances, and them going for the idea then.

It's like if you were walking down the street and someone called, "Hey, want to buy a sandwich?". You're not hungry, so you say "no" and move on. Later, someone calls "Hey, want to buy a hot dog?". It's lunchtime, and you're hungry now, so you say "Yes." Someone offering you a sandwich in the morning isn't "proof" you were planning to buy a hot dog a lunchtime.

Piers Morgan doesn't know what he's talking about or is intentionally lying. The Daily Mail are either purposefully putting together bits of information to imply they mean the opposite of what they do, or they are incompetent when it comes to reading and writing. I can't say anything about their motives except for my own opinion, but this claim isn't true and anyone with half a brain could see that if they cared to look.

6. Morgan claimed Meghan said her passport was taken from her and this means she wasn't able to travel.

This is what Meghan said.

Morgan claims this is contradicted by the fact that Meghan travelled, but Meghan never said she couldn't travel. She said she had to hand over her passport. If she wanted to travel, she had to run her travel arrangements past the Royal family who would either allow it or veto it. They would know exactly where she was going, and this information was then given to paparazzi.

Piers Morgan has accidentally or intentionally misunderstood what Markle said.

7. Morgan claims Markle wasn't silenced because she did Royal interviews.

This is so fucking stupid I can't believe I have to type it.

Meghan said she couldn't speak freely about what was happening to her. Doing Royal-approved interviews, an engagement interview, or breaking down when Tom Bradby asks if she's okay doesn't mean she could speak freely. She never said she wasn't allowed to do Royal engagements or say Royalty-approved things. She said she couldn't share the things she was sharing in the interview, which she had, in fact, not shared prior to the interview.

I'm surprised Piers Morgan, of all people, got confused by this. He claimed to have been "cancelled" after he quit his job when a coworker called him out for his obsession and stalking of Meghan Markle. If quitting his job and whinging to all the papers means he was silenced, how can he not realise that Meghan Markle being unable to talk about her problems means she was silenced? He thought he was silenced when he was able to freely say whatever he wanted.

Piers Morgan is either intentionally lying or doesn't know what simple words mean. Again, this is my opinion, but I really can't see any alternative.

8. Morgan claims "Meghan claimed the Mail on Sunday withheld a story on her father Thomas Markle setting up fake pap pics for a month"

The story is, this wasn't true because they were working on it for several weeks and published it after they got the final CCTV footage.

Firstly, Meghan didn't say anything about the Mail on Sunday or paparazzi photos of her father in the Oprah interview. I think this is the article they're talking about, but I can't find any quotes from Markle about it or it being held back or anything like that.

I can't find any evidence of Meghan saying anything of the kind, certainly not in the Oprah interview. 

9. Morgan claims Meghan said the press created drama over Thomas Markle

"But Thomas says he spoke to the press because Meghan cut him off just days before her wedding."

See 8. The Daily Mail itself reported on Thomas Markle faking his preparations for the wedding. Thomas Markle was lying.

Piers Morgan either freely believed Thomas Markle's lies despite knowing why he shouldn't, or he didn't believe them and said it anyway.

I'm bored of writing about this nonsense now. I'll come back and check the last 8 later. They're all just as fucking stupid and I'm ashamed to think that so many British people have fallen for this shit.