Oprah Scores Big (Again) with Exclusive Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Interview

By Paul Arnold | March 8, 2021

No matter what your personal opinion of Oprah Winfrey might be, she scored big on Sunday night with her exclusive interview of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Yup, Winfrey showed she still has it as an interviewer, regardless of some less-than-respectable business ventures (look up her ‘O’ network results) over the past years. The two hour interview was a major ‘get’, even though it did slip out that she will be doing a production deal with Harry & Meghan’s new production company (can you say quid pro quo?).

Oprah knew Markel before her relationship started with Harry and was, of course, invited to their wedding, so the couple trusted her to help them tell their story, which overall she did well.

Oprah threw some softballs at the former royal couple, but all-in-all was a solid interviewer, effectively using some tight editing to reveal her shock at some of the revelations, particularly those claiming racially-biased and made-up media coverage from the English press (are we shocked by that?), the concern within the royal family about their childrens’ skin color, and the machine that runs the Crown’s affairs giving her the cold shoulder when it came to defending her against the purported lies in the press.

Overall, the interview was provocative and fast-moving, stretching to two hours, although containing more commercial time than this reporter thought was legal. The candor displayed by Harry regarding the fracture of his family relationships, particularly the fact that his father and future-king Charles stopped taking his calls, was emotional. Meghan’s revelations that the situation got so bad that she had ongoing ideations of suicide, only to be told that getting help would make the Crown look bad were quite stunning, as well.

Even the graphics favored Oprah; if you noticed, the ‘CBS Presents’ graphic was minuscule, while the ‘Oprah’ logo was dominant. My sources say that CBS paid up to $9 million for the rights to air the show, which enjoyed 17.1 million viewers according to the ‘overnights’. Oprah even got to throw her buddy Gale King (and CBS’s floundering morning show) a huge bone, by announcing at the show’s end there would be even more tidbits on CBS This Morning on Monday.

So score one for Oprah. As they say, “The rich get richer…”