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It’s no exaggeration to say that THAT interview is THE talk of Los Angeles.
On leafy Larchmont Boulevard, in the middle of the Duchess of Sussex’s hometown, two friends greeted each other outside a coffee shop with a breathless: “Did you see Meghan Markle?”
The Oprah, Meghan and Harry drama is one that America has tuned into in a big way.
Television viewing figures in the United States suggest that 17 million people watched the two hour special, well short of the 62 million who watched Oprah’s reunion with Michael Jackson in 1993 but, in today’s fractured media ecosystem, an impressive prime-time audience.
And even those who didn’t see caught up on everything that was revealed and alleged, and the accusation of racism in the royal family has hit a nerve in America.
“I think there are a lot of things that people suspect about the royal family, but no one comes out and says,” Lucy Roberts said. “Having said that, it’s a lot ‘he said, she said’, but I really like Meghan and I tend to believe she’s telling the truth.”
It was a family theme. A young woman, dressed in blue Christmas pajamas and waiting to pick up her Starbucks orders, said, “I’ve been on Team Meghan from the start.”
Public support here has at least fallen in the way of former Royals and there is real anger and bitterness towards the institution they so publicly criticized.
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Mandela’s granddaughter reacts to Meghan’s claims
Three years ago, Veronica Hendrex and her sister Roxanne Washington gathered a dozen friends around the television in the early hours to watch Harry and Meghan marry.
The sisters, armed again with champagne and snacks, were left with a very different, if familiar, feeling after watching Oprah’s interview.
Veronica said she is “disappointed” by the Royals’ treatment of Meghan, which is the “fairy tale we all thought turned out not to be.”
“I think I naively thought they would hug her because that was Harry’s choice, but you have this race cape that is still a problem. That is the reality of being a person of color.”
Roxanne added: “I was hoping that they would have evolved, that they would be different, but it seems that behind the scenes they weren’t ready for Meghan.”
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‘Royals shown for what they are’
To be sure, the interview has involved many more Americans in the real-life soap opera of the royal family, something that for many has been a distant quirk until now. The presence of one of their own in the drama has helped.
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‘The Queen and Prince Philip are not behind Archie’s comments’
But not everyone. Outside the Larchmont Village newsstand, a woman stopped to give her opinion: “We are in the middle of a pandemic and all over the world people are dying and they are worried if they will still be paid by the Royal Family? in perspective, right? “
