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“I wanted to be clear because, ‘Was she silenced? Were people telling her not to talk?’ That’s why I said that.”
The Gist
- Oprah Winfrey looked back at some of her most memorable career moments for Vanity Fair on July 21.
- One of the key moments was her 2021 interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
- “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,’” she recalled.
Oprah Winfrey looked back at some of her most memorable career moments for Vanity Fair on July 21—one of which was her explosive 2021 interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The lengthy discussion was the first major sitdown for Harry and Meghan after they made the shocking decision to step back from their senior duties as royals and move to California.
“This had been postponed probably three times,” she recalled, “because this was 2021 [and] I was still in my crazy, ‘I can’t leave the house’ period, so I didn’t leave the house for 322 days.”
The 72-year-old media mogul continued, “By the time we finally sat down, I think they were both ready. 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 noted that the interview took “three and a half hours,” which was later cut down to two hours when it aired on CBS on March 7, 2021.
“And as is always the case for me, [I said], ‘I want it to be a win-win for you.’ So I was just trying to carefully go through everything that had come up in the past.”
Winfrey also reflected on the interview’s viral moment, when she asked Markle, “Were you silent or were you silenced?” Referring to her hand motion as she asked the question, Winfrey said, “I don’t think I’ve done it since. I don’t know where the hell that came from.”
She then added, “I wanted to be clear because, ‘Was she silenced? Were people telling her not to talk?’ That’s why I said that. 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.”
Meghan and Harry opened up about their difficult experience within the royal family, along with their extensive, ongoing battle with U.K. tabloids, and the rifts caused within Harry’s family.
The Emmy-winning host—who lives near the couple in Montecito, California—also served as inspiration for Markle’s lifestyle brand, As Ever.
Markle shared the brief story in 2025 when she sat down with Jamie Kern Lima, the founder of IT Cosmetics, for her podcast “Confessions of a Female Founder.”
“Oprah, who I know as a mentor and friend to you—same for me—she was the one that said, ‘There are tons of things you could put your name on. But for you and how you like to show up for people, once you figure out how to encapsulate your essence, then you’ll know,’” she said.
Read the original article on InStyle
