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The TV icon sat down with the couple in 2021, shortly after they stepped back from royal life
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- Oprah Winfrey looked back on her 2021 interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
- The TV icon sat down with the couple shortly after they stepped back from their royal roles
- One of the most viral moments from the interview is when Winfrey asked the Duchess of Sussex to clarify, "Were you silent or were you silenced?"
Oprah Winfrey is revisiting her "silent or silenced" moment with Meghan Markle.
The television legend sat down with Prince Harry and Meghan for a bombshell interview in 2021, shortly after they stepped back from royal life and moved their family from the U.K. to Montecito, California. The coastal town — where Harry, 41, and Meghan, 44, are now neighbors with Winfrey, 72 — was the setting for the interview, in which the couple got candid about their reasons for leaving the royal life behind.
“They didn’t know, obviously, anything that I was going to ask them, but I had said to them ahead of time, ‘I’m going to try to cover everything,’ “ Winfrey recalled in a “Scene Selection” career recap video for Vanity Fair that was shared this week.
“This interview took three and a half hours. And as is always the case for me, I want it to be a win-win for you,” she added of sitting down with the couple. “So I was just trying to carefully go through everything that had come up in the past.”
Perhaps the most viral moment from the lengthy interview came when Meghan spoke about being "silent" about her time with the royal family.
“I’ve always valued independence,” the Duchess of Sussex said at the time. “I’ve always been outspoken, especially about women’s rights.”
“I mean, that’s the sad irony of the last four years is, I’ve advocated for so long for women to use their voice,” she continued. “And then, I was silent.”
Winfrey memorably replied, “Were you silent or were you silenced?”
“The latter,” Meghan answered.
In her video for Vanity Fair, Winfrey mimicked the hand gesture she made while asking the pointed question. “I don’t know where the hell that came from,” she admitted with a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve done it since.”
She then reflected on why she asked Meghan to clarify her statement in the moment.
“I wanted to be clear, because was she silenced? Were people telling her not to talk?” she explained. “I said it for clarification, because I didn’t want later to hear, ‘Well, no, it wasn’t that. It really was that I was silenced. They wouldn’t let me talk.’ So it was all for clarification.”
Other bombshell moments in the interview included the couple’s revelation that there had been “concerns and conversations” within the royal family about the birth of their first child, son Prince Archie, and how dark his skin color might be.
Meghan also said that it wasn't her choice that Archie didn't receive a royal title at birth.
“They didn’t want him to be a prince...which would be different from protocol, and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” she shared. “We have, in tandem, 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.”
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Meghan also addressed the headlines about a rumored tiff she had with sister-in-law Kate Middleton prior to her 2018 wedding to Harry. While some tabloids reported that the exchange left Kate in tears, Meghan told Winfrey, “The reverse happened.”
“And I don’t say that to be disparaging to anyone, because it was a really hard week of the wedding, and she was upset about something,” she recalled. “But she owned it, and she apologized, and she brought me flowers and a note apologizing.”
Later, she called Princess Kate a “good person” and lamented headlines that pit the two royal women against one another.
The 2021 interview also hinted at the rift between Prince Harry and his brother, Prince William, that continues to this day.
At the time, the Duke of Sussex said that the two were taking “space” amid the high family tensions. However, more than five years later, the brothers are not in any communication.
“It’s so broken,” an insider recently told PEOPLE about the relationship between King Charles’ sons.
A source who knows both brothers added, “I thought it would have perhaps eased a little bit by now, to be honest. But there has been no movement, especially on William’s side. There is no contact.”
Prince Harry and Meghan have made recent steps, however, to repair their relationship with the King. Their visit to the U.K. earlier this month included a long-awaited reunion between King Charles, 77, Queen Camilla, 79, and Harry’s wife and their children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5.
The gathering at Highgrove House marked the first time that the King had seen his California-based grandchildren in four years, a step forward for Harry and his father, and fresh hope about what the future may hold.
“The relationship is better,” a close source tells PEOPLE.
Read the original article on People
