Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were asked if they are ‘destroying the royal family’ for their megawatt Netflix documentary by a heckler.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex faced an avalanche of questions last night at the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) gala in New York City.
It was their first public appearance since the trailer for their explosive Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan: A Global Event, dropped.
As they arrived at the Hilton Midtown, someone heckled: ‘Harry, what do you think about destroying the royal family?’
‘Meghan, you destroyed the royal family,’ the person added, according to video footage tweeted by ITV journalist Fred Dimbleby.
Others in the crowd cheered the couple as they stepped out of the car, while another shouted: ‘That’s him, that’s him!’
Members of the press later hurled questions at the couple like ‘are you harming your family, Harry?’ and: ‘Harry, are you putting money before family?’
Another asked: ‘Do you have a message for your family?’
Harry replied, ‘So many questions,’ before being escorted off the blue carpet.
The trailer for the Sussexes’ Netflix show set the tone almost immediately: unflattering honesty about a royal family so often veiled in secrecy.
It will zero in on how Meghan marrying into the royal family became a ‘feeding frenzy’, Harry said in the trailer, and their caustic break from the monarchy.
Meghan added: ‘I realised they’re never gonna protect you.’
In a nod to his mother, Princess Diana, Harry said: ‘I was terrified. I didn’t want history to repeat itself.’
Last night, the couple were handed RFKHR’s top humanitarian award for their activism on racial justice and mental health.
The Ripple of Hope Award is given to leaders who have ‘demonstrated an unwavering commitment to social change and worked to protect and advance equity, justice, and human rights’, according to RFKHR.
The human rights organisation’s president and daughter of Robert F Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, said that Meghan and Harry’s candid conversations about mental illness and racism have been ‘incredibly brave’.
‘They’ve stood up, they’ve talked about racial justice and they’ve talked about mental illness in a way that was incredibly brave,’ she told American outlet Extra yesterday evening.
‘For Meghan to get out there on national television and normalise discussion of mental health, at this point, is incredibly important and very brave.’
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