Harry and Meghan: What else did they reveal in interview with Oprah?

(AFP/REUTERS) - In an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey on Sunday (March 7), Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle spoke candidly about life as royals and the fallout after they stepped down in March 2020 and started a new life in California.

Here's a look at the other issues they spoke about.

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan were wed in secret three days before the official ceremony, she revealed.

The couple exchanged vows in private before Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby ahead of the televised spectacle on May 19, 2018, at Britain's Windsor Castle.

"No one knows that. But we called the archbishop, and we just said, 'Look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world, but we want our union between us."

She said of the official wedding day: "It was like having an out-of-body experience... I think we were both really aware, even in advance of that, this wasn't our day, this was the day that was planned for the world."

Oprah Winfrey's interview of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan has echoes of the infamous interview his mother Diana gave to the BBC in 1995, in which she admitted to cheating on his father, Prince Charles, with army officer James Hewitt.

This was the interview that led to the divorce of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

"My biggest concern was history repeating itself," Harry told Winfrey, referring to the death of his mother in a high-speed automobile crash in Paris in 1997 as her driver tried to escape paparazzi who were chasing them.

Meghan slammed as "character assassination" the incendiary tabloid claim that she had made sister-in-law Kate Middleton cry - saying the reverse was true.

Meghan called the claim - pored over at length by the gossip press - "a turning point" in her relations with the royal family. "Everyone in the institution knew it wasn't true."

She added: "The reverse happened."

Kate "was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised," Meghan said.

"A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something pertaining - yes, the issue was correct - about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings."

Meghan called the incident "the beginning of a real character assassination".

She said: "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."

Prince Harry said his father Prince Charles has stopped taking his calls. He denied blindsiding his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, saying he had too much respect for her.

"I had three conversations with my grandmother, and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls. And then he said, 'Can you put this all in writing?'"

Asked why Charles had stopped taking his calls, Harry said: "By that point I took matters into my own hands, it was like, I needed to do this for my family. This is not a surprise to anybody. It's really sad that it's got to this point, but I've got to do something for my own mental health, my wife's and for Archie's as well."

Meghan revealed that she and Prince Harry are expecting a girl. Her baby bump was visible in the interview and she is due in summer.

Their first child, Archie, was born on May 6, 2019, and she had a miscarriage in July last year, which she wrote about in a candid article in The New York Times last November.

Harry said in the Oprah interview: "To have a boy then a girl - what more can you ask for?"

The couple also said they won't have any more children: "Two is it."

When Winfrey asked Harry about his relationship with his father since the couple's move to the United States, he got emotional.

"There's a lot to work through there, you know?" he said. "I feel really let down, because he's been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like."

He added that Charles - the heir to the throne - and Harry's older brother William were "trapped" by the conventions of the monarchy, but vowed that he would "always love" his father.

"My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don't get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that."

Prince Harry said that he and his wife Meghan Markle had done their utmost to stay in the royal family.

"I'm sad that what's happened has happened, but I know, and I'm comfortable in knowing that we did everything that we could to make it work," he told Oprah Winfrey.

"Oh my God, we just did everything we could to protect them," Meghan added.

Harry and Meghan announced in January 2020 that they were stepping back from royal duties. Buckingham Palace announced earlier this month that the couple had permanently quit.