The controversial British pundit has torn shreds out of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for their new “tell-all” documentary series on Netflix, pointing out how some of the trailers deliberately mislead viewers.
Criticising the royal couple is one of Piers Morgan’s pet fixations, and naturally, he’s worked himself up into a lather after seeing the first trailer and first episodes of Harry & Meghan, the six-part series the couple have appeared in to tell “their side of the story” about their dramatic rift with the British royal family.
Morgan’s invective of the couple over the years has been relentless, and one is tempted to discount anything he says about the pair – but Morgan rightfully points out that some elements of the trailer are deliberately misleading.
“They’ve just put a lot of whoppers into their trailers… That’s before we even get to the main event,” Morgan said during an episode of his new TalkTV show, Piers Morgan Uncensored.
WATCH Piers Morgan’s criticism of Harry & Meghan below.
For example, an image used in the trailer of a pack of paparazzi, which is framed as if they were some of the paparazzi that hounded Meghan and Harry, was actually from the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in 2011 – five years before the couple met, Morgan points out. That’s just one of many discrepancies.
He also criticises a line from the trailer where Meghan says “when the stakes are this high, doesn’t it make more sense to hear our story from us,” responding:
“What do you mean ‘when the stakes are this high’? Who do you think you are – other than a latte-munching imbecile, living in luxury in California while the rest of the world is in a cost-of-living crisis, moaning and whining about an institution which gave you the titles on which you now trade millions of dollars?”
Piers Morgan
We’re no fans of Piers Morgan but it’s hard to disagree with him. While no doubt Harry and particularly Meghan were done dirty by the royal family, their repeated attempts to ‘set the record straight’ in very high-profile, commercial fashion – all the while demanding privacy – is hard to wrap one’s head around.
We also tend to agree with him in his criticism of Meghan’s “high stakes” comment. All in all, the series feels more than a little tone-deaf. God, agreeing with Piers Morgan? We didn’t have that on our list of predictions for 2022…
Morgan isn’t the only critic of the new documentary series, either.
The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan – who is no fan of Piers Morgan, having levelled criticism at him many times over the years – has described the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan as “so sickening I almost brought up my breakfast” and suggests that it brings nothing new to the table, the audience left with “exactly the same story we always knew, told in the way we would expect to hear it from the people who are telling it.”
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The Independent’s Jessie Thompson has also described the series as “intimate [and] self-aggrandizing”, while questioning some of the claims Meghan made about navigating royal protocol as rather hard to believe. After watching the first three episodes ourselves, we’d tend to agree.
Our verdict? It’s a shame that the show’s producers have taken such liberties with the imagery they’ve used, as they serve to undermine any valid points the Sussexes may have made in the show. They poison the well; it’s hard to 100% believe them when such deception is at foot.
Are the Sussexes really to blame for that? Hard to say. During a Variety interview, Meghan made a big point of saying that allowing director Liz Garbus to create the series meant that it “may not be the way we would have told [our story]… But that’s not why we’re telling it. We’re trusting our story to someone else, and that means it will go through their lens…”
Yet the original director attached to the project, Garrett Bradley, was given the flick due to “differences of opinion” with the couple… So it’s hard to tell just how much creative control/oversight the Sussexes’ camp had over the production.
Harry & Meghan is to be released in two volumes comprising six hour-long episodes. The first three episodes are currently available on Netflix, with the second volume arriving on the platform on December 15th.
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