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CNN Special Reports
A Royal Match: Harry And Meghan. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired May 19, 2018 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:08] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NARRATOR (voice-over): He was the party prince.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was photographed incessantly in one nightclub after another.
CAMEROTA: Who rebelled against royalty.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He decided he might leave the royal family.
CAMEROTA: Haunted by his mother's death.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It destabilized him, caused chaos, fears.
CAMEROTA: He struggled to find his way.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Being royal for Harry was a burden and a curse.
CAMEROTA: She's an American actress. Unlike any royal bride before.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go back a few generations and everything about Meghan Markle disqualifies her from marrying Harry.
CAMEROTA: A modern royal couple who will change history.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The queen made an exception and broke from royal protocol.
CAMEROTA: Redefine royalty.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you see any scenario by which Harry and Meghan overshadow Kate and William?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was my first thought.
CAMEROTA: And modernize the monarchy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The world's view of the British monarchy is probably be determined more by Harry and Meghan than by William and Kate. Certainly by Charles and Camila. That's a very unusual situation.
CAMEROTA: Tonight, a CNN Special Report, "a royal match: Harry and Meghan."
PRINCE HARRY, PRINCE HENRY OF WALES: I never even heard about her until this friend said Meghan Markle. I was like, right, give me a bit of background.
CAMEROTA: It is July 2016 in London when Britain's most eligible bachelor, Prince Harry, is set up on a blind date.
MEGHAN MARKLE, ACTRESS: It was definitely a setup. It was a blind date.
PRINCE HARRY: I was beautifully surprised when I walked into that room and saw her. She was sitting there. I was like, I have to up my game.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Harry ups his game. And they begin a whirlwind romance. Just weeks later, they are vacationing together in Botswana, Africa.
PRINCE HARRY: We camped out together under the stars and spent (INAUDIBLE) for five days out there, which was absolutely fantastic.
CAMEROTA: In the months that follow, they date long distance, meeting up in London and Toronto where Meghan, an actress, is filming her TV show, "Suits."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow. You are pretty.
MARKLE: Good. You hit on me. We can get it out of the way that I'm not interested.
CAMEROTA: The whole time, keeping their relationship a secret.
PENNY JUNOR, PRINCE HARRY'S BIOGRAPHER: When they first met, nobody knew about it. They are such a charismatic couple.
CAMEROTA: Penny Junor wrote a biography about Harry.
JUNOR: They kept this relationship quiet.
CAMEROTA: Which itself is impressive.
JUNOR: It is impressive. I mean, the great fear about Harry finding a wife was always going to be the intrusion of the press because that is what had killed two previous long term relationships.
CAMEROTA: Relationships with actress Cressida Bonus and his first love, Chelsea Davy.
JUNOR: Chelsea had experienced the most horrible treatment. Photographers will be waiting for her. They would call out names, slug, bitch, whore, trying to get a reaction from her. And I guess that she looked at all this and though, do I want this for my life?
ROYA NIKKHAH, ROYAL CORRESPONDENT FOR BRITAIN'S SUNDAY TIMES: Just before he met Meghan, the month before, and we talked about his private life at the time.
CAMEROTA: Harry tells Roya Nikkhah, the royal correspondent for Britain's "Sunday Times" about a, quote "massive paranoia" he feels in finding a girlfriend.
NIKKHAH: I think Harry's great fear was that unless he had enough time to get to know someone, if that relationship prematurely became public, they would be absolutely swamped with media interest and that would change the dynamic of his relationship.
CAMEROTA: And what happened to his mother is never far from his mind.
NIKKHAH: Harry and his brother still feel that the paparazzi and press intrusion were certainly partly responsible for his mother's death, and thought, why would anyone want to put up with this for me?
CAMEROTA: Harry wants to keep his relationship with Meghan private as long as he can. But just four months after that first date the news is out. And the paparazzi pounce once again.
JUNOR: There was a photographer who got inside Meghan's house in Toronto. The paparazzi were camping on her mother's front lawn and following and harassing all members of her family. Anybody, really, who knew her.
CAMEROTA: Despite starring in a TV show, Meghan is relatively unknown. Now the British press wants to know who she is and if she's fit for the royal family.
NIKKHAH: She was a woman who has been married and people are fascinated by the fact that she was divorced. People were fascinated by her background, her acting, a career woman, how would that work, being someone in the royal family? That's not what we have seen before.
[19:05:07] CAMEROTA: They also have not seen someone biracial dating a member of the royal family. And some of the conversation is blatantly racist.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was one newspaper headline saying, "straight out of Compton," suggesting she was from a gang-ridden neighborhood.
CAMEROTA: (INAUDIBLE), she is a journalist recently wrote a book about race, identity, and belonging in Britain.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Harry would be dropping around for tea in gangland, which was clearly racially motivated.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A whole another issue exploded which was the number of rather horrific social media racist comments began to flood in from the darkest, vilest corners of the internet.
CAMEROTA: The royal family responds in unprecedented fashion with Prince Harry's team releasing a statement confronting the quote "abuse and harassment" Meghan is facing.
DICKIE ARBITER, FORMER PALACE PRESS SECRETARY: Very unusual for a statement to come out.
CAMEROTA: No one understands this better than Dickie Arbiter. He was press secretary at the palace for 12 years.
ARBITER: He made the point, this is not a game. It's not a game. It's people's lives. And he was very angry. And it was a sort of back off reminder of what they did to his mother.
CAMEROTA: Why is it that you think that Meghan's upbringing, her race, why did that garner so much attention?
JUNOR: In the past, members of the royal family, princes, would have married princesses. And when Harry's father Prince Charles was looking for a wife, it is also a requirement that a wife should be a virgin and a member of the Church of England.
KATE COYNE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, PEOPLE MAGAZINE: You just go back a few generations in the royal family, and everything that you can say about Meghan Markle disqualifies her from marrying Harry.
CAMEROTA: Kate Coyne is the executive editor of "People" magazine.
COYNE: This is precisely why you had Edward abdicating his throne that he could Mary a divorcee. Elizabeth's sister Margaret was in love with a divorced man and was not allowed to Mary him.
CAMEROTA: Was Charles and Diana's wedding and marriage a wake-up call in some ways (INAUDIBLE) that you can try to have somebody perfect but it has to be chemistry and you have to love the person has to have the freedom to Mary who they want?
JUNOR: I think it was a lesson that they have learned.
CAMEROTA: Harry is desperate for history not to repeat itself. And he is anxious to protect Meghan.
COYNE: Harry's statement was the most romantic thing a member of the royal family has ever done. And I think engagement watch was on from that moment. It was, let's wait for the ring.
CAMEROTA: The ring comes in November 2017.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Prince Harry has announced his wedding engagement to American actress Meghan Markle.
CAMEROTA: And the royal family welcomes Meghan with open arms.
NIKKHAH: The Queen made an exception and broke from royal protocol and invited Meghan to spend Christmas with the royal family and the queen at (INAUDIBLE). That was the first time a royal fiance has ever done that before actually marrying into the royal family.
CAMEROTA: A powerful sign that the monarchy and the queen are modernizing and changing.
NIKKHAH: The royal family now is trying to at least be much more effective with society and the queen wants her grandson to be happy.
CAMEROTA: And that happiness is something Harry has been searching for most of his life.
When we come back, the moment that changes everything.
NIKKHAH: He didn't really deal with what life without her meant. It destabilized him and caused chaos for years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[19:12:30] CAMEROTA (voice-over): September 15th, 1984. Prince Henry Charles Albert David is born.
PAUL BURRELL, PRINCESS DIANA'S BUTLER: Harry came into the world very different to his brother, who is heralded as next in line to the throne of England. But Harry was the spare.
CAMEROTA: Paul Burrell was Princess Diana's butler.
BURELL: So all through Harry's formative years, he always knew that he was second.
JUNOR: He was always referred to as the spare. Just always second best. And I think that had a profound effect on Harry.
CAMEROTA: His childhood is also impacted by his parents' marital troubles.
JUNOR: Harry grew up in a very tricky household. The prince and princess were never happy together in a marriage that had failed before it even began.
BURELL: I remember the times when Diana was shut away and quiet or crying, and the boys would write little messages, please don't cry, mummy, and they would put it under the door.
CAMEROTA: When Charles and Diana divorce, it hits Harry hard. Then one year later, his mother is killed. Harry is just 12 years old.
NIKKHAH: This incredibly loving figure who had given him so much warmth and comfort in what was a very difficult childhood and extraordinary upbringing was suddenly gone.
BURELL: I remember Harry coming back to Kensington palace shortly after the funeral. He ran down the corridor and flung himself into my arms and cried. And his tears wet my shirt through. He was devastated.
CAMEROTA: Harry later admits to ITV he has deep regrets about his final phone call with his mother.
PRINCE HARRY: I can't really necessarily remember what I said but all I do remember is probably, you know, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was. And if I had known that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things I would have said to her. Looking back on it now, it's incredibly hard. I have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life.
CAMEROTA: Guilt and grief he never expresses at the time.
[19:15:00] PRINCE HARRY: I think it was a classic case of don't let yourself think about your mom and the grief and the hurt that comes with it, because it's never going to bring her back and it's only going to make you more sad.
People deal with grief in different ways. And my way of dealing with it was by just basically shutting it out, locking it out.
CAMEROTA: Prince Harry arrives here, at Eton, the prestigious boys' boarding school, the year after his mother's death. And though he moves into the same house as his older brother William, Harry reportedly struggles academically and is miserable.
BURELL: Diana always said she never wanted Harry to go to Eton because he would be compared to his brother's success. And she thought this would be the undoing of Harry's confidence.
ANGELA LEVIN, JOURNALIST: Prince Harry said that he decided that he was going to be a bad boy.
CAMEROTA: Journalist Angela Levin interviewed Harry last year at Kensington palace.
LEVIN: So the reason he didn't do well there was partly his fault, it was deliberate.
CAMEROTA: In 2002, headlines emerge of Harry's drinking and marijuana use. For the first time, Harry is facing the public pressure that comes with his famous family.
Did it seem to Brits that it was more than just typically teenage antics?
JUNOR: You know, teenagers do drink too much, they behave badly, you know. It is all part of the growing-up process. But I personally was worried there was something deeper, a touch of self-medication going on.
CAMEROTA: After graduating from Eton, Harry escapes to Africa during his gap year for humanitarian work.
BURELL: It was an escape from this heavy duty world of royalty, always being watched, always being photographed. He could be very ordinary.
CAMEROTA: He spends two months in (INAUDIBLE) with children in need and others whose parents die from AIDS.
NIKKHAH: He can see that there were holes in their lives. I think absolutely he saw in them something he felt was missing in his life, care, love, and attention, the loss of his mother. CAMEROTA: Harry not only falls in love with the children and the
country. He begins a serious romance with a wealthy girl from southern Africa, Chelsea Davy.
NIKKHAH: She is very free-spirited. Not someone who felt bound by world protocols or tradition. And also shared his love of Africa. And you know, the two of them traveled extensively through Africa together.
CAMEROTA: Chelsea remains a constant in Harry's life for years to come.
NIKKHAH: She also came into his life at a time when he was missing that female figure to support him. And I think Chelsea did that and understood him, and she could understand that he had been through a very difficult time and was still going through a very hard time.
CAMEROTA: A very hard time that Harry struggles to overcome.
When we come back --
LEVIN: Prince Harry got so low that he decided at one point that he might leave the royal family.
CAMEROTA: And then Meghan's Markle struggle with her biracial identity.
COYNE: She has heard the names her mother has been called. And she is well aware that that is happening for one reason only, it's the color of her mom's skin.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[19:22:24] CAMEROTA (voice-over): Meghan Markle grows up a world away from the pomp and circumstance of royal life.
COYNE: You hear that someone grew up in Los Angeles and you think about swimming pools and palm trees and Beverly Hills. And Meghan Markle's childhood in L.A. was not that.
CAMEROTA: Born in 1981, she is the only child of Doria Raglan and Thomas Markle.
COYNE: Meghan's father was a lightning director for number of shows in the Los Angeles area. Most notably married with children. He eventually became the director of photography and that was the sort of behind the scenes, less glamorous side of Hollywood.
CAMEROTA: Meghan recounts spending time on the set with her father on the late show with Craig Ferguson.
MARKLE: I grew up on the set of "Married Children" every day after school for ten years I was there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
MARKLE: I know. It's a very perverse place for a little girl who went to catholic school, no less, to grow up.
COYNE: Meghan certainly had every reason to be dazzled by TV, film, the whole on-camera experience, from a very young age, because she grew up around it.
CHRISTINE KNUDSEN, MEGHAN'S FORMER TEACHER: We all knew she wanted to be an actress.
CAMEROTA: Christine Knudsen is Meghan's former teacher.
KNUDSEN: She was in the musical. She was on the plays. She would sparkled when she got onstage. And I think it was just kind of in her blood. She loved it.
CAMEROTA: Despite two loving parents, Meghan struggles with her biracial identity.
JOSH DUBOFF, SENIOR WRITER, VANITY FAIR: I think she was kind of grappling a little bit with the sense of her identity and trying to understand who she was.
CAMEROTA: Josh Duboff is a senior writer for "Vanity Fair" who has covered Meghan.
DUBOFF: Her father was white. Her mother was black. She says when she would fill out forms there wasn't always a bubble that fit her to fill in. She didn't want to circle the one that was implying that her mother was more important than her father or vice-versa.
CAMEROTA: Meghan's parents go out of their way to make sure she does not feel different, but special.
COYNE: Her dad gave her a sort of Barbie doll family in which there was a black mom Barbie doll and a white dad Ken doll and then a baby Barbie doll in each color. But even that kind of points to how difficult it is to be Meghan at that age, because the children were still either black or white. There was no biracial Barbie baby doll for Meghan.
CAMEROTA: While the Markle household deals with race head-on, years of built-up racial tensions in the country explode right in Meghan's backyard.
[19:25:09] DUBOFF: She was driving I think with her mom and there was debris, she thought it was snowing. And then she realized it was actually the L.A. riots.
CAMEROTA: Riots that erupt when four white police officers are acquitted in the beating of a black man, Rodney King, a moment Meghan says impacts her at a young age. COYNE: It definitely opened Meghan's eyes to the fact that this was a
world that was not always going to treat her fairly, and was not always going to be kind to her or her family.
KNUDSEN: I was teaching here at the time, and I think it destroyed kind of that feeling that L.A. is this wonderful place to live, and you have all these different kinds of people, and we all get along, and then this just kind of smashed that.
CAMEROTA: It's a grim reality for an 11-year-old to face. And one that would always be present.
Meghan witnessed her mother experiencing racism.
COYNE: She has heard the names her mother has been called. And she is well aware that that is happening for one reason only, that is the color of her mom's skin.
CAMEROTA: Meghan's early experiences with discrimination are not isolated to race. While watching TV advertisements for a class project, one commercial stands out to her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Women are fighting greasy pots and pans.
DUBOFF: In the ad they implied that the product was just for women who were going to be at home doing the cleaning.
CAMEROTA: 11-year-old Meghan tells says (INAUDIBLE) what she thinks.
MARKLE: I don't think it is right for kids to grow up thinking these things, that just mom does everything.
COYNE: She was irate because she thought, you know, my dad does dishes, it's not just women who do dishes. Why would it be women across America? And she wrote a letter.
MARKLE: So I was wondering if you would be able to change your commercial to people all over America.
COYNE: And wouldn't you know it, it works.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The gloves are coming off. People are fighting greasy pots and fans with ivory clear.
COYNE: It had to have been such wonderful reinforcement for her at such a young age, that she could make a difference, that she could take a stand and have her voice heard and not be dismissed.
CAMEROTA: When we come back, Prince Harry and the burden of royalty.
NIKKHAH: She really did love him. But being with Harry and the huge circus that came with it was overwhelming for her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She didn't want to be a princess.
JUNOR: I don't think any sane person wants to be a princess. (END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:31:45] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Outrage around the world after Britain's prince Harry shows up at a costume party --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- dressed as a Nazi.
CAMEROTA: That just seems like a moment of extremely bad judgment.
JUNOR: It was a moment of complete and utter thoughtlessness. You know, he was young. He was very troubled and he was drinking far too much. And he was a bit of a loose cannon.
CAMEROTA: At just 20 years old, Harry is earning a reputation as reckless and self-destructive.
ARBITER: He was photographed incessantly after he left school, during his sort of gap year, running out of one nightclub after another.
CAMEROTA: And he has a run-in with the paparazzi that leaves a photographer with a split lip.
JUNOR: For many years it was a real worry about what would happen to Harry because he didn't seem to want to be a royal. He really kicked against it. He wanted to be a normal human being.
CAMEROTA: When Harry arrives at Sandhurst military academy in May 2005, the pressure is on to turn over a new leaf.
BURELL: He's not had that discipline for so many years. People were concerned that Harry wouldn't find his way.
CAMEROTA: Sandhurst is nothing like the lavish royal lifestyle that Harry has become accustomed to. And throughout the 44-week grueling training course, he has treated like every other soldier.
GENERAL LORD RICHARD DANNATT, FORMER CHIEF OF THE BRITISH ARMY: It could be said it kind of knocks a bit out of you.
General Lord Richard Dannatt was chief of the British army.
DANNATT: In the early days, the first five or six weeks when the training is really tough, it encourages people to rely on each other, to help each other.
CAMEROTA: Harry is one of the guys. Yet there are painful reminders he is still a royal. When his unit deploys to Iraq in May 2007, Harry is forced to stay behind.
DANNATT: There had been a number of specific threats, specifically aimed at prince Harry. And it's for that reason that I've decided that the risk to Prince Harry is too great. I think when he was told he couldn't go, it was a really low point for him. PRINCE HARRY: I didn't sort of join the army thinking I was never
going to go on operations. It was very hard. I did think clearly one of the main reasons I'm not allowed to be going is because of the fact of who I am.
CAMEROTA: But months later, a secret deployment to Afghanistan gives Harry a taste of the front lines.
PRINCE HARRY: As far as I'm concerned, I'm out here as a normal JTEC on the ground and not prince Harry. It's very nice to be sort of a normal person, and for once I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get.
DANNATT: It was present much a turning point in his life. But I think he realized the seriousness of life, really rose to the responsibilities.
CAMEROTA: But after ten weeks on the ground, his mission is leaked and Harry is immediately evacuated.
DANNATT: It wouldn't have taken the Taliban or others long to have searched around and perhaps found where he was. So there was a risk to him. But I think also if there was an increased risk to him, there was an increased risk to the other soldiers who were around him. And the only sensible and safe thing to do was to bring him back.
[19:35:02] JUNOR: He was very angry. To use the words of his private secretary, he was boiling mad and he sort of headed for the gutter.
CAMEROTA: What did that look like?
JUNOR: He started drinking very heavily. He was fed up with who he was.
CAMEROTA: Who he was is also causing tension in his relationship with his longtime girlfriend Chelsea Davy.
NIKKHAH: She really wasn't that fussed at all with the trappings that came with Prince Harry.
CAMEROTA: In April of 2011, Harry brings Chelsea here to Westminster abbey for the wedding of his brother, Prince William, and Kate Middleton. There are one million people lining these streets and millions more watching on TV around the world. It's an intense spotlight and Chelsea struggles to cope with.
NIKKHAH: And actually, she was determined that would not be her life. And she wanted a career of her own. And ultimately I think that was one of the things that ended their relationship. She didn't want to live inside the goldfish bowl.
CAMEROTA: Harry does not either. And he is determined to return to the battlefield.
DANNATT: When he came to see me, sort of sat or rather slumped in the chair and said, the trouble is I can't be like a normal young man. But that time in Afghanistan had given him ten weeks to be a normal young man and he desperately wanted to replicate that again. And he accepted, and his private secretary accepted, that probably the only way he could go back was in the anonymity of being inside a helicopter. And he therefore needed to learn how to fly a helicopter.
CAMEROTA: After two years of training Harry not only becomes an apache pilot, he is the top gun on his weapons course.
JUNOR: He got it on his own. It wasn't because he was a prince. He actually had to fight really hard for it. He was one of the very top apache attack helicopter pilots.
CAMEROTA: Harry returns to Afghanistan in September 2012.
NEAL SEXTON, FORMER HARRY'S COMMANDER: He did exceptionally well.
CAMEROTA: Brigadier Neal Sexton was Harry's commander on the ground.
SEXTON: You would go out there with the anticipation of having to use the apache's weapons systems and to bring them to bear without any collateral damage and also to conduct yourself in a way that's safe in the most demanding of environments.
JUNOR: I actually believe that his success on that apache, on those apache aircraft, was the making of Harry. I think Harry, who had spent all his life being second best to his brother, being the spare, suddenly found something that he could do and could do better than anybody else. And that gave him confidence that he had never, ever had before. And he just -- it changed him, I think.
CAMEROTA: When Harry leaves the army after ten years of service, his future is uncertain.
BURELL: I don't think there are any career options for a royal prince. It's easy for William. He's heading towards the throne. I think being royal for Harry was a burden and a curse because he was only the spare. What was his job? What was his way forward?
CAMEROTA: As Harry finds his way, another romance is on the rocks. This time with his girlfriend of two years, Cressida Bonas.
NIKKHAH: She really did love him. But I think the situation of being with Harry and the huge circus that came with it was overwhelming for her.
JUNOR: I think Cressida took one look at what life with Harry would have involved and just turned her back on it.
CAMEROTA: You know, she didn't want to be a princess.
JUNOR: I don't think any sane person wants to be a princess.
BURELL: Who would want to be a royal princess? It's a burden.
CAMEROTA: When we come back, Harry opens up about his royal role.
NIKKHAH: He's living this life he's been born into. It's not his choice.
LEVIN: He decided he might leave the royal family.
CAMEROTA: And then Meghan Markle's big break.
COYNE: She got lucky. She undoubtedly handed in a great audition, a great screen test, and she hit the jackpot.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[19:43:03] CAMEROTA (voice-over): After graduating from Northwestern University, Meghan Markle moves home to Los Angeles. She is eager to chase her acting dreams, but the industry is tough.
COYNE: That is an industry that is built on judging you and tearing you down and rejecting you and making you second-guess your weight and your skin and your hair and your talent and your poise.
HARVEY YOUNG, ACTING PROFESSOR: It's brutal. It's brutal.
CAMEROTA: Harvey Young was Meghan's acting professor in college.
YOUNG: When you leave college, it's a pretty bleak world of just laying bare your soul as part of an audition before a casting agent, and then more often than not being told no.
CAMEROTA: For Meghan, her identity struggle is magnified in Hollywood.
What has she said about how her race impacted her getting jobs?
COYNE: Casting agents weren't always sure what to make of her. Is she going out for a Latino role? Is she somehow made Italian or even Middle Eastern or is she African-American? Is she Caucasian? It felt like at times casting agents threw up their hands and went, never mind.
CAMEROTA: Passed over for big roles, Meghan does get some small parts.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's going on here?
MARKLE: What do you mean?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What I mean is like you are way too cute to be just a FedEx girl.
DUBOFF: She'll have one scene or be there for one moment. I think she was on a bunch of TV shows, "Friends," Beverly Hills 90210. She was famously at "deal or no deal" girl. She had her little moment opening one of the briefcases.
CAMEROTA: She has said that her 20s were brutal.
COYNE: Meghan struggled a lot. To become a successful actress, to be able to make a living, that's like winning a lottery ticket. I mean, the number of forces that have to combine to get you even the smallest scrap of success are so astronomical.
[19:45:05] CAMEROTA: Meghan auditions for ten years. And then at 29, she lands a significant role. Female lead on USA network's legal drama "Suits."
MARKLE: Is this all a joke to you? Because I take my job seriously.
COYNE: She got lucky. She undoubtedly handed in a great audition, a great screen test. She had excellent chemistry with her co-stars. And she hit the jackpot.
CAMEROTA: "Suits" is an instant hit.
COYNE: "Suits" radically changed Meghan's life. First and foremost, she was now making more money than she had ever made before, ever.
CAMEROTA: As the show achieves success, Meghan makes big changes in her life, including ending her two-year marriage to Hollywood producer Trevor Engelson.
COYNE: When they met, she was still largely an aspiring actress. He was an aspiring producer. They were essentially at the same place in their careers. And then "Suits" really took off. And they weren't going in the same direction anymore. She was filming in Toronto. He was in Los Angeles. There were thousands and thousands of miles between them.
CAMEROTA: Determined to use her position for good, Meghan spends her free time advocating for women. During a panel discussion, Meghan recounts how the success of the show emboldened her to stand up for herself.
MARKLE: Every script seemed to begin with, "Rachel enters wearing a towel." I said, no, not doing it. At a certain point you feel empowered enough to just say no.
DUBOFF: She wanted to encourage other women to feel like they could speak up in the same way.
CAMEROTA: And Meghan uses her fame to fight for women's equality across the world. As an ambassador for the nonprofit world vision, Meghan travels to a remote village in Rwanda where young girls walk hours every day to access clean water for their families.
MARKLE: This is the water that she's going through all this work to get.
CAMEROTA: But all that changes when the world vision team builds a new well.
MARKLE: These girls are able to stay in school because they aren't walking hours a day to go and get water. And this clean water source has changed the entire community.
LAURA DEWAR, CHIEF MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, WORLD VISION: She has a sense that if she's been given a platform, if she has some influence, that there's a responsibility she has to use that for good.
CAMEROTA: Laura Dewar is the chief marketing and development officer for world vision. She travels with Meghan to India in January of 2017. They visit local businesswoman Suhani Jalota in Mumbai. For the lack of sanitary products and the stigma around menstruation keeps young girls out of school.
DEWAR: Suhani has created a business where they make maxi pads. They manufacture them, and then she has a team of effectively salespeople that go door to door talking to women about how they handle menstruation.
CAMEROTA: Meghan comes home and writes an essay in "Time" magazine, drawing attention to the barriers to education for girls across India. And she continues to mentor Suhani to this day.
SUHANI JALOTA, FOUNDER, MYNA MAHILA FOUNDATION: She's really more than happy to have a call and just talk about the issues that we might be experiencing or any help we need from her whether it's in terms of fund-raising, in terms of marketing, or any kind of support like that.
DEWAR: This is not a celebrity who floats in, who needs a platform issue to associate with their quote-unquote "brand." This is a woman who has had a desire to help in some way for a very long time promote the faces and stories of women and to begin to elevate them.
CAMEROTA: When we come back, Harry and Meghan, and the future of the monarchy.
Do you see any scenario by which Harry and Meghan overshadow Kate and William?
JUNOR: Oh, yes, I do. It was my first thought. This could be a problem.
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[19:53:07] CAMEROTA (voice-over): Summer 2017. It's been 20 years since Princess Diana's death. And Prince Harry is speaking about it for the first time in a documentary for the BBC.
PRINCE HARRY: When you are that young and something like that happens to you, it's lodged in your heart and head and stays there for a very long time.
CAMEROTA: For nearly two decades Harry says he held back his grief.
NIKKHAH: He didn't really deal with what life without her meant. I think for a very long time. When he did finally confront it, it destabilized him and caused chaos for years.
PRINCE HARRY: I spent a long time of my life with my head buried in the sand, thinking I don't want to be Prince Harry. I don't want this responsibility. I don't want this role. Look what's happened with my mother, why does this have to happen to me?
CAMEROTA: Harry even considered a drastic move.
LEVIN: Prince Harry got so low that he decided at one point that he might leave the royal family.
NIKKHAH: He's living this life he's been born into, it's not his choice. I think he felt at times very cross about that.
CAMEROTA: Did Diana's death affect Harry different than William?
ARBITER: Harry was that much younger. Interestingly enough, last year he admitted for the first time to mental health issues. You can't help about you having a mental health issue in terms of having lost a parent, not being able to grieve in the same way as you or I might be able to do. He wasn't able to do that. So he battled it all up inside him.
CAMEROTA: Now Harry is letting it all out, sharing his struggle as part of his heads together campaign with Prince William and Kate to end the stigma around mental health.
PRINCE HARRY: I never really talked about losing my mum at such young age. I always thought, what's the point of bringing it up? It isn't going to change it. It isn't going to bring her back. And when you start thinking like that, it can be really damaging.
[19:55:02] CAMEROTA: And Harry ultimately chooses a future he hopes would make his mother proud.
PRINCE HARRY: I felt an overwhelming connection to the children I met.
CAMEROTA: Something he shared with the BBC.
PRINCE HARRY: Now all I want to do is try and fill the holes that my mother has left. That's what it's about for us, is trying to make a difference. And in making a difference, making her proud.
CAMEROTA: He spends much of his time working on the charity he created for the children he met in Africa.
NIKKHAH: You look at Harry's work with HIV and AIDS, that was something that his mother, as Harry said, smashed through the stigma of that when she was alive.
CAMEROTA: And he's focused on the Invictus games, an Olympics-style competition he started to give wounded veterans a chance to be defined by more than their injuries.
PRINCE HARRY: It's life changing. It really is life changing for them.
LEVIN: I think he has used his own experience of loss and sadness and the bereavement to help these soldiers. And the bereavement doesn't just mean losing someone. It means losing yourself, I think, too.
JUNOR: He has embraced who he is. It took him a long time to get there. But he now fully understands that being Prince Harry, he can make people's lives better by putting his name to things. He is making a difference.
CAMEROTA: Through it all, Harry has endeared himself to the public, becoming one of the most popular members of the royal family.
JUNOR: Harry is incredibly likeable and he is incredibly genuine. What you see is what you get. He is so natural with people, much more, I think he's the most natural member of the family. He throws out the rule book.
CAMEROTA: And that makes him enormously valuable to the monarchy.
JUNOR: The court the courtiers at Buckingham palace used to say, what are you going to do about Harry? Now they are saying, what are you going to do with Harry? Because Harry is a magic bullet.
CAMEROTA: As Harry helps carrier the monarchy forward, he will continue to do things his own way, like proposing to the woman he loves, not someone British royalty might expect.
JUNOR: I think it's a wonderful coincidence that Harry has fallen in love with somebody who is American, mixed race, divorced, and a career woman. She is very representative of our society today. And I think that makes the monarchy much more user friendly.
CAMEROTA: And in Meghan, Harry has found someone who can copy with the role and is not afraid of the spotlight.
JUNOR: Meghan was utterly enchanting when she appeared for the first time in Nottingham. She behaved as if she had had been doing it all her life.
CAMEROTA: Today Harry and Meghan got married here on the grounds of Windsor castle in St. George's chapel. It was a very traditional wedding for this very modern royal couple.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Meghan and Harry love story is a terrific story. It has unlimited fairy tale appeal.
JUNOR: She does what she feels comes naturally. And Harry is the most relaxed member of the royal family.
CAMEROTA: Do you see any scenario by which Harry and Meghan overshadow Kate and William?
JUNOR: Oh, yes, I do. I mean, this is immediately that was my first thought, you know. That this could be a problem. Because Harry and Meghan are a very compelling couple. They are very charismatic. And very relaxed and easy. The cameras will follow them.
William and Kate are -- there's much more rigidity to them, as possibly there has to be, because he is going to be king.
CAMEROTA: To some who have known the family well, Harry and Meghan will play a critical role in the monarchy's future.
PATRICK JENSON, PRINCESS DIANA'S SECRETARY: The world's view of the British monarchy is probably going to be determined more by Harry and Meghan than by William and Kate, certainly than by Charles and Camilla. That's a very unusual situation.
BURELL: The royal family need Harry to bridge the gap between the people and the monarchy, because without that connection, the royal family wouldn't survive.
CAMEROTA: As he has his whole life, Prince Harry will likely continue to be a star in the royal show. With his irresistible appeal, down to earth charm, and like his mother, a natural ability to connect.
With Meghan by his side, this modern royal couple are on course to redefine Britain's most famous family and change the monarchy forever.
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