After Harry and Meghans tell-all interview, royal family carries on

LONDON — It is as if a bombshell royal interview had never happened.

Prince Charles offered smiles during a visit to a vaccine clinic on Tuesday.

Kensington Palace released a video of Kate, wife Prince William, speaking with the youngest solo female to row the Atlantic for International Women’s Day.

The royal family social media account posted a message signed by Queen Elizabeth II to the Commonwealth.

Buckingham Palace is silent, and British royals are carrying on with their day jobs two days after Prince Harry and Meghan’s tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey.

But while publicly ignored by the palace, which rarely makes statements on media reports and has not commented on the Oprah interview, the couple's claims of racism on the part of insiders, as well as Meghan's comments about suicidal thoughts, have absorbed the nation. Nearly every national newspaper splashed the interview across the front pages, and largely knocked off any other news, including the return of millions of children to school on Monday.

“Palace in crisis following devastating racism claim,” reads the Guardian.

“What have they done,” wrote the Daily Mail tabloid.

“Worst royal crisis in 85 years,” said the Daily Mirror tabloid.

The tabloids also didn’t hold back in their coverage of the interview inside the papers, with The Sun devoting 16 pages plus a 12-page pull out to the news, while the Daily Mail’s first 25 pages covered it.

Harry has long been critical of the U.K. press and said in a clip of the interview released Monday that the “U.K. press is bigoted, specifically the tabloids.”

The Society of Editors, a trade organization which promotes press freedom, strongly pushed back on his comments.

“It is not acceptable for the duke and duchess to make such claims without providing any supporting evidence,” said executive director of the Society of Editors Ian Murray in a statement released Monday. “If it is simply the case the Sussexes feel that the press by questioning their actions and commenting on their roles when working as royals funded by the taxpayer were being racist then they are mistaken.”

Image: Britain's Prince Charles visited a vaccine clinic in London on Tuesday.
Britain's Prince Charles visited a vaccine clinic in London on Tuesday.Ian Vogler / Reuters
The crisis has also drawn in U.S. politicians, including President Joe Biden’s press secretary who was asked about the interview on Monday.

“For anyone to come forward and speak about their own struggles with mental health and tell their own personal story, that takes courage,” press secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing. “That's certainly something the president believes.”

U.S. Climate Change Envoy John Kerry was also asked about the interview claims on the BBC on Monday.

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“I think that we have a strength in our relationship that is much, much bigger than an interview or a moment in a family, and I think it’s important to put that family and the relationship that we have between our countries in its proper perspective,” said Kerry, who also complimented Charles’ work on climate change.

In the U.K., the monarch is the head of state. The queen and other members of the royal family have spent much of the pandemic thanking health care workers, and more recently, promoting the Covid-19 vaccine program.

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Despite the monarchy’s official role, senior government figures declined to get drawn into commenting on the personal allegations.

“I’ve spent a long time now not commenting on royal family matters and I don’t intend to depart from that today,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a press conference on Monday.

Britain's morning shows also covered the interview, and caused drama on the set of Good Morning Britain, with co-host Piers Morgan, who often speaks negatively of Meghan, storming off Tuesday morning. His co-presenter brought up Morgan’s former personal relationship with Meghan and said “yet you continue to trash her.”

The show later interviewed Meghan's father, Thomas Markle, who said he has not spoken to Meghan or Harry since her wedding. He said that it “really did upset” him to watch his estranged daughter speak about her suicidal thoughts during her time with the royal family.

While the Winfrey interview aired on Sunday in the U.S., viewers in the U.K. were only able to watch it in full on Monday evening. Short clips and the more surprising content from the interview made its way around social media and the press on Monday, with newspaper websites running live blogs detailing the allegations made in the interview and the local reaction.

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Attitudes to the couple in the U.S. and U.K. seem to differ, with 47 percent of U.K. respondents to a YouGov poll released Monday saying that Harry and Meghan’s interview was inappropriate, compared to 21 percent who said it was. In the U.S., the nearly reverse was true: 44 percent said the couple's interview was appropriate, while 20 percent said it wasn't.

When it came to sympathy for the couple, 56 percent said they had none or not much, compared to 29 percent who said they had a lot or a fair amount, according to a separate YouGov poll released on Monday.