Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, says being the subject of online vitriol and threats had a tangible impact on her life.
“I think for people to really understand, when you plant a seed that is so hateful, what it can grow into,” the former Meghan Markle said on the fifth episode of the Netflix documentary series “Harry & Meghan.”
“Just a couple of days ago, I was going through the manual for our security team at home, and on one of the pages that I happened to flip to, it was about online monitoring. And they’re like, ‘If you see a tweet like this, please report it to the head of security immediately.’ And it just said, ‘Meghan just needs to die. Someone needs to kill her. Maybe it should be me.’ And I was just like, ‘OK.’ That’s what’s actually out in the world because of people creating hate.”
Meghan and husband Prince Harry are parents of two kids, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1. She became emotional explaining how her thoughts focus on whether the family is in danger.
“I’m a mom. That’s my real life,” she said. “That’s the piece when you see it and you go, ‘You are making people want to kill me. It’s not just a tabloid. It’s not just some story. You are making me scared.’ Right?
“And that night, to be up and down in the middle of the night, looking down my hallway, like, ‘Are we safe? Are the doors locked? Is security on?’ That’s real. ‘Are my babies safe?’ And you’ve created it for what? Because you’re bored or because it sells your papers or it makes you feel better about your own life? It’s real, what you’re doing. And that’s the piece I don’t think people fully understand.”
In the last episode of the series, Harry suggests that his wife had a miscarriage because of stress she endured after the Daily Mail published a story that included parts of a letter she wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle. Meghan won a lawsuit against the company that owns the Daily Mail in 2021.
“I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the (Daily) Mail did. I watched the whole thing,” Harry said.
“Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course we don’t,” he added. “But bearing in mind the stress that that caused, the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say from what I saw that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her.”
Harry also said in the fifth episode of “Harry & Meghan” that his brother, Prince William, yelled at him during a family meeting that ultimately led to the royal family releasing a joint statement from Harry and William denying claims William had bullied his brother and his wife out of the family. Harry said he was not involved in writing that statement.
“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” Harry said.
The second volume of “Harry & Meghan” is now streaming on Netflix. Buckingham Palace has declined to comment on the series. The couple’s Archewell Productions is one of three production companies involved in the project.