Oprah Winfrey is revisiting one of the most high-profile moments of her career: her landmark 2021 sit-down interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Reflecting on the explosive conversation in a career recap video for Vanity Fair, Winfrey looked back at the logistics of the three-and-a-half-hour interview. She noted that the couple had no prior knowledge of her specific questions, though she had warned them she intended to cover everything.:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(959x0:961x2):format(webp)/PHOTOPrinceHarry-Meghan-Oprah1-3b59d851af884e95a74807615d4f23e8.jpg)
Recalling the viral exchange where Meghan spoke about her time with the royal family and stated, “And then, I was silent,” prompting Winfrey to famously counter, “Were you silent or were you silenced?”—the TV icon admitted with a laugh, “I don’t know where the hell that came from. I don’t think I’ve done it since.”
She explained that her pointed follow-up was strictly editorial: “I wanted to be clear, because was she silenced? Were people telling her not to talk? 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.’”
The reflection comes amid a period of shifting dynamics for the royal family. Prince Harry and Meghan recently traveled to the U.K., where they partook in a private, highly significant family reunion at Highgrove House with King Charles and Queen Camilla—marking the first time the monarch has seen Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, in four years. While the meeting with the King marked a step toward healing family ties, tensions and a deep-seated estrangement remain between Prince Harry and Prince William