How Meghan Markle’s Tell-All Compares to Princess Diana’s 1995 Interview

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How Meghan Markle's Tell-All Compares to Princess Diana's 1995 Interview

Not holding back. Meghan Markle and the late Princess Diana both gave powerful looks at their times as members of the British royal family — and their revelations were eerily similar. Diana married Prince Charles, heir apparent to the throne, in July 1981 and quickly transformed into an international icon. Amid reports of infidelity, the parents of Prince William and Prince Harry announced their separation in December 1992, three years before the "people's princess" sat down for a televised interview with BBC's Martin Bashir. "No one sat me down with a piece of paper and said, 'This is what is expected of you,'" Diana recalled of her introduction to life as a royal. "But there again, I'm lucky enough in the fact that I have found my role, and I'm very conscious of it, and I love being with people. ... To me, it was quite a normal thing to do." The now-iconic interview touched on Diana's battles with depression and bulimia, a habit that developed as her marriage hit a rough patch. "I felt compelled to perform," she admitted. "I was compelled to go out and do my engagements and not let people down and support them and love them. In a way, by being out in public, they supported me ... and it carried me through." The Princess of Wales finalized her divorce from Charles in August 1996, one year before she was tragically killed in a car crash in Paris. Her sons have honored her memory in countless ways over the years, and when it came to his and Meghan's own struggles within the palace, Harry's biggest fear was "history repeating itself." [jwplayer 4gBOGQsZ-l3ahXupL] Though their stories aren't exactly the same, Meghan and Diana faced similar scrutiny from the British tabloids, who put their every move under a microscope. Both women even admitted to feeling a lack of support from the institution of the royal family. "I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren't willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband," Meghan revealed during her no-holds-barred CBS interview with her husband, which aired in March 2021 after their step back from their royal roles was made permanent. "I continued to say to people, 'I know there's an obsession with how things look, but has anyone talked about how it feels? Because right now, I could not feel lonelier.'" The Suits alum and her husband initially announced their royal exit in January 2020. The move came as a shock to people around the globe but was ultimately made to preserve the pair's mental health after a "constant barrage" of toxicity. When asked how he thought his mother would feel about how the decision came to be, Harry knew she would have been supportive. "I think she would feel very angry with how this has panned out and very sad," he admitted during the sit-down. "But ... all she'd ever want is for us to be happy." Scroll down for a closer look at the similarities between the two bombshell interviews. [podcast_block]

Credit: YouTube

How Meghan Markle's Tell-All Compares to Princess Diana's 1995 Interview

Not holding back. Meghan Markle and the late Princess Diana both gave powerful looks at their times as members of the British royal family — and their revelations were eerily similar. Diana married Prince Charles, heir apparent to the throne, in July 1981 and quickly transformed into an international icon. Amid reports of infidelity, the parents of Prince William and Prince Harry announced their separation in December 1992, three years before the "people's princess" sat down for a televised interview with BBC's Martin Bashir. "No one sat me down with a piece of paper and said, 'This is what is expected of you,'" Diana recalled of her introduction to life as a royal. "But there again, I'm lucky enough in the fact that I have found my role, and I'm very conscious of it, and I love being with people. ... To me, it was quite a normal thing to do." The now-iconic interview touched on Diana's battles with depression and bulimia, a habit that developed as her marriage hit a rough patch. "I felt compelled to perform," she admitted. "I was compelled to go out and do my engagements and not let people down and support them and love them. In a way, by being out in public, they supported me ... and it carried me through." The Princess of Wales finalized her divorce from Charles in August 1996, one year before she was tragically killed in a car crash in Paris. Her sons have honored her memory in countless ways over the years, and when it came to his and Meghan's own struggles within the palace, Harry's biggest fear was "history repeating itself." [jwplayer 4gBOGQsZ-l3ahXupL] Though their stories aren't exactly the same, Meghan and Diana faced similar scrutiny from the British tabloids, who put their every move under a microscope. Both women even admitted to feeling a lack of support from the institution of the royal family. "I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren't willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband," Meghan revealed during her no-holds-barred CBS interview with her husband, which aired in March 2021 after their step back from their royal roles was made permanent. "I continued to say to people, 'I know there's an obsession with how things look, but has anyone talked about how it feels? Because right now, I could not feel lonelier.'" The Suits alum and her husband initially announced their royal exit in January 2020. The move came as a shock to people around the globe but was ultimately made to preserve the pair's mental health after a "constant barrage" of toxicity. When asked how he thought his mother would feel about how the decision came to be, Harry knew she would have been supportive. "I think she would feel very angry with how this has panned out and very sad," he admitted during the sit-down. "But ... all she'd ever want is for us to be happy." Scroll down for a closer look at the similarities between the two bombshell interviews. [podcast_block]

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Were They Prepared?

Diana was only 19 when she got engaged to Charles in 1981 — and was admittedly "daunted" by the idea of royal life. "At the age of 19, you always think you're prepared for everything, and you think you have the knowledge of what's coming ahead," she told Bashir in 1995, noting that she assumed she would have support from her in-laws.

Meghan, for her part, went into her role "naively" and didn't do much digging before stepping into the royal spotlight. "I didn't grow up knowing much about the royal family. It wasn't something that was part of [the] conversation at home, it wasn't something that we followed," she said in March 2021. "I didn't research about what that would mean. I've never looked up my husband online. I just didn't feel the need to because everything that I needed to know, he was sharing with me. ... I didn't fully understand what the job was, what does it mean to be a working royal? I think there was no way to understand what the day-to-day was going to be like."

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Feeling Abandoned

After she and Charles tied the knot in 1981, Diana quickly realized that there wasn't a guidebook for adjusting to life inside the palace. "No one sat me down with a piece of paper and said: 'This is what is expected of you,'" she recalled during her BBC interview. "But there again, I'm lucky enough in the fact that I have found my role ... It was isolating, but it was also a situation where you couldn't indulge in feeling sorry for yourself: you had to either sink or swim. And you had to learn that very fast."

Similarly, Meghan was forced to adapt in an instant. "Unlike what you see in the movies, there's no class on how to speak, how to cross your legs, how to be royal," she admitted, remembering that she learned to curtsy en route to her first meeting with the queen and taught herself the British national anthem the night before an official engagement. Later on, Meghan said her only regret was "believing them when they said I would be protected."

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Difficult Pregnancies

Diana "hadn't been very well throughout" her first pregnancy before William was born in June 1982 and later experienced "post-natal depression" after giving birth. "That in itself was a bit of a difficult time," she revealed, claiming that feeling that way was "very much" out of character for her. "You'd wake up in the morning feeling you didn't want to get out of bed, you felt misunderstood, and just very, very low in yourself."

For her part, Meghan pointed out that she was "haunted" by the memory of attending a January 2019 event at Royal Albert Hall with Harry while she was pregnant with their son, Archie. "I wasn't seeing it, but it's almost worse when you feel it through the expression of my mom or my friends, or them calling me crying, just, like, 'Meg, they're not protecting you,'" she said in March 2021, remembering that she "just didn't want to be alive anymore." 

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Mental Health Battles

In an attempt to "cope with the pressures" of royal life, Diana began to intentionally injure herself while dealing with her bouts of depression. "Maybe I was the first person ever to be in this family who ever had a depression or was ever openly tearful," she recalled, noting that she felt a great deal of support from members of the public, but less so from other royal family members. She also battled bulimia, binging and purging food as an escape from the problems in her personal life. "I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals," she remembered. "When no one listens to you, or you feel no one's listening to you, all sorts of things start to happen."

During her emotional sit-down, Meghan revealed that she had dealt with "very clear" and "methodical" thoughts of suicide — but was turned down by The Firm when she asked for help. "I said that I've never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere," she recalled. "I was told that I couldn't [and] that it wouldn't be good for the institution. ... I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because they said, 'My heart goes out to you, because I see how bad it is, but there's nothing we can do to protect you.'"

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Being a 'Problem'

Following her separation from the Prince of Wales, Diana noticed that people around the palace began to treat her differently. "I was a problem, I was a liability," she told the BBC in 1995, claiming that trips abroad were being canceled and meetings put on hold.

Meghan, for her part, sent the British press into such a frenzy whenever she went out that she was advised by The Firm to lay low. After being told that she was "everywhere" at one point, Meghan recalled that she had only "left the house twice in four months." In an unaired clip from the interview, she remembered being told by advisers to be "50 percent less" than her full self.

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Unwanted Media Attention

"I seemed to be on the front of a newspaper every single day," Diana told Bashir, remembering that the media placed a lot of "pressure" on her marriage to Charles. "It took a long time to understand why people were so interested in me, but I assumed it was because my husband had done a lot of wonderful work leading up to our marriage and our relationship. ... Here was a fairy [tale] that everybody wanted to work."

After taking her relationship with Harry public in 2016, Meghan was placed under a major microscope — and felt targeted by the U.K. tabloids because of her race. While other members of the royal family were protected by the institution when faced with bad press, Meghan didn't have that same privilege. "And if a member of this family will comfortably say, 'We've all had to deal with things that are rude.' Rude and racist are not the same," she said. "And equally, you've also had a press team that goes on the record to defend you, especially when they know some things are not true. And that didn't happen for us."

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Shaking Up the Monarchy

"I don't think many people will want me to be Queen. Actually, when I say many people, I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I'm a non-starter," Diana said, admitting that people within The Firm viewed her as "a threat" to royal tradition. "I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it's the strength that causes the confusion and the fear. ... Once or twice I've heard people say to me that, you know, 'Diana's out to destroy the monarchy,' which has bewildered me, because why would I want to destroy something that is my children's future?"

When the Sussexes announced their royal exit in January 2020, Meghan was portrayed as the calculated mastermind behind the decision. "Can you imagine how little sense that makes?" she said in March 2021. "I left my career, my life ... and our plan was to do this forever. I mean, I wrote letters to his family when I got there saying, 'I'm dedicated to this. I'm here for you. Use me as you'd like.'"

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Stepping Away

By late 1993, Diana had "decided to withdraw from public life" amid "intolerable" pressure and "cruel" narratives about her separation. "My job, my work was being affected. I wanted to give 110 percent to my work, and I could only give 50," she recalled. "I thought the only way to do it was to stand up and make a speech and extract myself before I started disappointing and not carrying out my work. It was my decision to make that speech because I owed it to the public to say that, you know, 'Thank you. I'm disappearing for a bit, but I'll come back.'"

Meghan and her husband initially stepped back from their senior royal duties in January 2020. Though their exit was made permanent one year later, ditching the royal family was never their intention. "We only wanted to have the same type of role that exists. ... We were saying, 'OK, if this isn't working for everyone, we're in a lot of pain, you can't provide us with the help that we need, we can just take a step back. We can do it in a commonwealth country,'" she told CBS. "We suggested New Zealand, South Africa."

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Finding Their Voices

When asked why she felt like it was the right time to speak up and share her side of the story, Diana told BBC that she hoped to lead by example. "Maybe people [will] have a better understanding," she explained. "Maybe there's a lot of women out there who suffer on the same level but in a different environment, who are unable to stand up for themselves because their self-esteem is cut into two."

For Meghan, there was a huge sense of relief that came with telling her truth. "As an adult who lived a really independent life to then go into this construct that is different than I think what people expect it to be, it's really liberating to be able to have the right and the privilege in some ways to be able to say, 'Yes, I'm ready to talk,'" she said.

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Making a Difference

"I'd like to be an ambassador for this country," Diana said when asked about her future following her split from Charles. "I've been in a privileged position for 15 years. I've got tremendous knowledge about people and how to communicate. I've learned that, I've got it, and I want to use it."

Looking forward to life after her royal tenure, Meghan said that she hoped she and Harry can continue to be pillars of positive change through their Archewell foundation and other initiatives. "This is what we're doing, right? We're still doing it. We're still going to always do the work," the Tig creator said.