“I think Harry seems genuine, while Meghan is too Hollywood,” says Amanda Bailey, 34, of Albany, New York. “I always had that impression, but the Netflix show made it much clearer.”
Howard Stern: Not a fan.Credit:ninevms
Skylar Baker-Jordan, an American commentator who spent a few years working in London, believes that the difference in transatlantic perception can be explained by the contrasting class system and social mobility of the US and the UK.
In the documentary, Meghan revisits her Los Angeles elementary school and reads a note she left in her principal’s yearbook as a child, vowing to make sure everyone knew about the school when she was “rich and famous.” In the fifth episode, she recounts how a member of the plane’s crew on their flight back to Canada from the UK, after completing her last official royal engagement in 2020, thanked her for her service.
“For the British, that would be arrogance,” says Baker-Jordan. “To Americans, it reads as ambition, and ambition is encouraged in this country. Meghan is, in many ways, the epitome of the American dream. She was a middle-class daughter of a single mother who attended one of the most prestigious universities in the country, Northwestern, and made it big, first on television and then…working with the United Nations to advocate for women’s rights. . She then meets and falls in love with a prince.”
Nowhere is this transatlantic difference in interpretations more apparent than in Meghan’s description of her first curtsy at Buckingham Palace. It has been interpreted by many in the UK as a mockery of the Queen and by extension the Establishment. Meanwhile, American viewers said The Telegraph instead, they saw a humiliated young woman.
“It is a delightful anecdote of a California Yankee at Queen Elizabeth’s court. A self-deprecating story from an American clearly out of place,” says Baker-Jordan.
“I felt in that moment that I could imagine his position and that made me feel a lot of respect for what he did,” adds Cooper.
After Oprah’s interview of the Sussexes in March 2021, some mainstream American media framed the couple’s departure in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement that started in America.
Last week, the New York society honored the Duke and Duchess at the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation gala, where they were presented with the Ripple of Hope Award for their work on racial justice, as well as mental health. and other social impact actions through its Archewell Foundation.
The sixth episode of the series revealed how megastar Beyoncé contacted Meghan and sent her a text saying she was “selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.”
Charging
However, there are others in America who have grown tired of the pairing. Caroline Russo, 52, said her affection for Diana, Prince Harry’s late mother, had made her largely sympathetic to both at first, but that changed recently. “There’s a false naivety that you see with Meghan in the documentary,” she says. “All of this by pretending he didn’t know what she was signing up for, that he didn’t know anything about how the royal family operates.
“If Meghan really wanted freedom, she would reject her titles and all the privileges,” she adds. “But now it’s clear that she probably had it all figured out from day one.”
Newspaper coverage has also been circumspect. The Wall Street Journal The documentary review appeared under the scathing headline: “A Royal Pity Party on Netflix.” While the document describes Harry’s repeated reference to the media bullying that led to his mother’s death as a “legitimate device,” the review notes that “Ms. Markle’s victimization is harder to buy.” .
Howard Stern, a popular US radio personality, agreed that the Duke and Duchess seemed entitled. “Jesus Christ, when those two start whining, ‘Wah wah wah’ and ‘They don’t like me.’ It’s very strange to see two people who keep yelling ‘We wanted our privacy, we wanted the press to leave us alone.’ And then what is your special that they put on Netflix? Showing you them and their children and their life. It’s like the Kardashians, except it’s boring,” he told his millions of listeners.
Cooper and his friends, however, remain delighted with the couple who have all their admiration; In his eyes, there’s little to distinguish Royal’s latest series from the countless others topping the Netflix charts.
“It’s like Meghan is a character from a sequel episode of The crownCooper quips, sipping his Earl Gray at Tea and Sympathy. “She comes in as this outsider—black, divorced Catholic, American—and reveals to the family who she is. She would definitely see that!”
telegraph, london
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