Oprah Winfrey has been criticised for failing to ‘challenge’ Meghan Markle’s claim that she was ‘silenced’ by the Royal Family after the broadcaster revisited their infamous 2021 interview.
Rewatching the sit-down in a video for Vanity Fair yesterday, Oprah seemingly defended how the conversation went, saying ‘it was all for clarification.’
Royal fans on X have hit back at the veteran broadcaster for ‘backpedalling’ and trying to ‘distance’ herself from the interview with Prince Harry and Meghan, and several people asked why she didn’t question any of the Sussexes’ allegations at the time.
The sit-down sent shockwaves around the world when it was aired on March 7, 2021, after the Duchess of Sussex claimed there had been ‘concerns’ within the Palace about the colour of their son Archie, while accusing The Firm of ‘perpetuating falsehoods about us’.
She highlighted the ‘sad irony’ of being ‘silent’ during her time as a royal, considering ‘I’ve always been outspoken about women’s rights‘, when Oprah asked Meghan: ‘Were you silent or were you silenced?’
‘The latter,’ the duchess replied, explaining how ‘everyone in my world was given a very clear directive, from the moment the world knew Harry and I were dating, to say “No comment”‘.
Five years later, Oprah told Vanity Fair she asked Meghan that because ‘I wanted to be clear’.
‘I wanted to be clear because…was she silenced? Were people telling her not to talk? That’s why I said that,’ the billionaire media mogul explained.
Oprah Winfrey has been criticised for failing to ‘challenge’ Meghan Markle’s claim that she was ‘silenced’ by the Royal Family after the broadcaster revisited their infamous 2021 interview
‘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.”
‘So it was all for clarification.’
Assertions that Meghan never researched the Royal Family before marrying Prince Harry or that the couple were secretly wed three days before their royal wedding at St George’s Chapel in Windsor have already been contested.
Some X users felt Oprah looked ‘uncomfortable’ watching the interview with Harry and Meghan back for Vanity Fair, while others said her comments about the ‘silent or silenced’ question amounted to ‘meaningless word salad’.
Others felt the explanation was too little too late, after the veteran broadcaster did not ask the Sussexes any tough questions during the three-and-a-half-hour sit-down that was filmed in Montecito.
One person suggested: ‘She sounds so defensive, like she’s gotten a lot of flak for her “journalism” in that so-called interview.’
‘It is a bad look when Oprah has to clear this up now after so many years,’ another person wrote, while a third asked why Oprah did not ask for ‘clarification’ about things like ‘getting married before the wedding’.
The broadcaster rewatched the clips as part of Vanity Fair’s Scene Selection show, which looked at her career highlights.
The interview with Harry and Meghan – fresh off the heels of their resignations as senior royals – rocked The Firm when it aired on American network CBS in 2021.
It firmly cemented Oprah – who attended their wedding in 2018 – as an ally of the Sussexes amid their rift with King Charles and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
‘I support them 1,000 per cent,’ she had said of the pair’s move away from the UK and distancing from royal duties in the schism dubbed ‘Megxit’.
It is thought that Meghan and Oprah were introduced through CBS and met when Oprah found herself in London.
The presenter said she previously asked for an interview with Meghan, but her request was declined with the duchess apparently telling her it was ‘not the right time’.
The ‘right time’ would eventually be March 2021, one year after Harry and Meghan quit the Royal Family and moved to Montecito.
During the interview, which featured a number of brazen claims about their lives as senior royals, a pregnant Meghan told the American TV host: ‘I’ve always been outspoken, especially about women’s rights, and that’s the sad irony of the last four years, I’ve advocated for so long for women to use their voice.
‘And then I was silent,’ she continued, as Oprah fired back: ‘Were you silent or were you silenced?’
In the wake of the interview being aired, the Daily Mail fact-checked Meghan and Harry’s sensational claims, including the fact that the duchess was ‘silenced’ by the institution.
On the day they announced their engagement, Meghan and Harry gave a lengthy interview to the BBC’s Mishal Husain, although the duchess reportedly complained afterwards that the journalist had not been ‘warm enough’.
On their tour of South Africa, they granted interviews to ITN’s Tom Bradby, when Meghan memorably told him: ‘Not many people have asked if I’m OK.’
Royal insiders have stressed that it was very much the case that Harry and Meghan themselves ‘called the shots’ when it came to publicity, deciding which charities to support, which engagements to go on, and which media to grant interviews to.
One of the duchess’s former friends, Ninaki Priddy, has also previously challenged the assertion that Meghan ‘never looked up my husband online’ before she married Prince Harry.
Ninaki, who was Meghan’s maid of honour at her first wedding to Trevor Engelson, said the Suits star was ‘always fascinated by the Royal Family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0’.
The mother of Suzy Ardakani, one of the duchess’s high school friends, has described how she taped Diana’s wedding and would watch it with her daughter and Meghan years later.
Oprah’s interview with Vanity Fair comes days after Buckingham Palace confirmed King Charles and Queen Camilla held a private meeting with his estranged son and daughter-in-law as well as their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, at Highgrove House.
The gathering was particularly significant because it marked the first time that Meghan, Archie and Lilibet had seen the 77-year-old monarch – who is still undergoing treatment for cancer – in person since 2022.
He last saw Harry, 41, in September 2025, but was forced to publicly slap him down after Harry’s PR team falsely briefed that he had accepted an invitation to stay at Buckingham Palace during his visit to the UK earlier this month.
Harry was visiting the UK to mark the one-year countdown to his Invictus Games 2027 in Birmingham, while Meghan, Archie, and Lilibet slipped into Britain unnoticed from their holiday home in Europe.
Buckingham Palace refused to discuss any further details of what was described as a ‘private family occasion’ in a statement.
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