"They’ve been in on it." The 8 biggest revelations from Netflix's Harry and Meghan.

Netflix's six-part documentary series, Harry and Meghan, was billed as "the other side" of perhaps the world's most high-profile love story. The one beyond the headlines and the second-hand commentary. The one told in their own words.

Directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Liz Garbus, the first three episodes launched on Thursday night, and feature interviews with the Sussexs, their friends, colleagues, and a handful of choice commentators, as well as footage and photographs captured by the couple themselves.

It's important to note that the interviews aren't exactly current. A notice at the beginning explains that they were all completed before August 2022.

Also flagged at the off is that "members of the Royal Family declined to comment on the content within this series". (I mean, was anyone actually expecting King Charles to flick on the front-facing camera and pour his Royal heart out?)

Watch the trailer...

So, three episodes in (the remaining trio will drop on December 15), what do things look like on "the other side?"

Here are some of the key moments.

Why they chose to make the documentary.

More than a few eyebrows were raised at the announcement of the series. This is, after all, a couple who fled the UK and their lives as senior royals in search of a more private existence in North America.

Harry explained that the idea for the doco came courtesy of an unnamed friend, and that "with all of the misinformation that was going on out there, especially about us and the departure [from Royal life], it seemed like a really sensible idea."

"We know the full truth, the institution knows the full truth, and the media knows the full truth because they’ve been in on it," he said.

"When you feel like people haven’t gotten any sense of who you are for so long, it’s really nice to have the opportunity to let people have a bit more of a glimpse into what’s happened and also who we are," Meghan added.

"Books were written about our story from people I don’t know. Doesn’t it make more sense to hear it from us?"

Harry was late to their first date.

The couple recap the Haz and Megs origin story. The general gist? Harry spotted Meghan in a friend's Instagram video, and despite the fact that her face was partially concealed by a snapchat filter that turned her into a cartoon dog, he was intrigued ("I thought, who is THAT?")

Oddly enough, when the friend emailed Meghan offering to introduce her to "Prince Haz", the then Suits star asked precisely the same question. 

Yet rather than google the Prince, Meghan said she chose to use his Instagram feed as a barometer. His "beautiful photography", including shots of nature and conservation work in Africa, were apparently all the research she needed.

They met for a date in New York, and Prince Harry was more than 30 minutes late, which Meghan found insulting. At first.

"I didn’t know him so I was like, 'is this what he does? Got it.'" Turning to Harry during the interview, she explained that she assumed he was "one of those guys that has so much of an ego that any girl would sit around and wait for a half hour for you. I was just not interested in that." 

When the royal arrived, sweating, embarrassed and apologising profusely, she realised that wasn't his character at all. 

Cut to second date the next night, followed a month later by third date (which happened to be an impromptu trip to Botswana), and the rest is history.

The couple shortly after they met. Image: Getty.

Harry has "blocked" out memories of his mother.

"I don’t have many early memories of my mum," Prince Harry said. "It’s almost like internally I sort of blocked them out. But I always remember her laugh. Her cheeky laugh."

Though the prince described his youth as "filled with laughter, filled with happiness and filled with adventure", he also recalled realising the scrutiny he and his loved ones were subjected to.

He said many of his childhood memories are dominated by paparazzi. Swarms of them following on his family's holidays, chasing his mother and, later, his teenage self down the streets of London.

“There was always public pressure with its fair share of drama, stress and also tears, and witnessing those tears. I could see it on my mum’s face. And I guess those are the moments when I thought, 'Hang on a minute. What am I? Who am I? What am I a part of?'"

He carried that with him into his relationships.

"I saw things, I experienced things, I learnt things. The pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution. I remember thinking how can I ever find someone who is willing and capable to withstand all the baggage that comes with being with me?"

When he met Meghan, he was frightened the media would scare her off, like they did his previous girlfriends.

Meghan's neighbours were paid to spy on her. 

Meghan said she felt "tremendous relief" when they went public with their relationship, but that very quickly changed. 

She recalled the first time she was met with photographers outside her home and that she greeted them politely. 

"I remember H the next day saying, 'You can't talk to them… the UK media is saying you love it, you're smiling, you love it'," she said. 

The Duchess said suddenly it "felt like all of the UK media descended on Toronto". 

"My house was just surrounded, just men sitting in their cars all the time, waiting for me to do anything," she says in the documentary, explaining they would knock on her neighbours' doors and even pay locals to put "livestream cameras" up that pointed into her yard.

"The race element."

Reflecting on her childhood, Meghan recalled moments in which she witnessed her mother, Doria Ragland, enduring racism. From being mistaken for Meghan's nanny because of her dark skin, to being called the n-word by another motorist when she honked at them in a carpark.

"I just remember the grip that her hands had on the steering wheel... And she was just silent the rest of the drive home. We never talked about it," said Meghan.

But as a mixed-race person with light skin, Meghan said she was largely spared that treatment. Until she moved to the UK. There tabloids described her as being "straight outta Compton" and ran headlines like, "Harry to marry into gangster royalty? New love 'from crime-ridden neighbourhood.'"

"Before that most people didn't treat me like a Black woman," she said.

Doria Ragland. Image: Netflix

Prince Harry said the direction from the Palace was to remain tight-lipped about the treatment Meghan was receiving in the media.

"What people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well.

"So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like 'my wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?'

"I said 'the difference here is the race element'."

Prince Harry on "one of the biggest mistakes" of his life.

Amid the discussion about race, viewers are reminded that Prince Harry infamously wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party in 2005. That, he said, is "one of the biggest mistakes of his life".

"I felt so ashamed afterwards. All I wanted to do was make it right," he said. "I sat down with the Chief Rabbi in London, which had a profound impact on me. I went to Berlin and spoke to a Holocaust survivor. I could have just ignored it and gone on and probably made the same mistakes over and over again in my life. But I learnt from that."

Meghan on her relationship with her half sister, Samantha Markle.

While Meghan described her mother as "classy and quiet" in the face of the media attention that came with her relationship, she contrasted that with the other side of her family who was, as she delicately phrased it, "acting differently". 

Her father's daughter from a previous marriage, Samantha Markle, gave numerous interviews offering insights about Meghan. Though it seems they weren't as close as Samantha made out.

"I don't remember seeing her when I was a kid at my dad's house," Meghan said. "The last time that I saw her, that I remember, I was in my early 20s.

"I don't know your middle name. I don't know your birthday. You're telling these people you raised me and you're calling me Princess Pushy?"

The documentary featured a disclaimer that "Samantha Markle maintains she and Meghan had a close relationship until 2018 and that the media fabricated quotes that have been attributed to her.

Meghan on the "unravelling" of her relationship with her father.

Meghan described herself in the documentary as a "daddy's girl". Yet In the week leading up to her wedding to Prince Harry in 2018, her relationship with her father, Hollywood lighting designer Thomas Markle, collapsed.

Meghan called her father to raise allegations that he had been paid by paparazzi to pose for a series of staged photos (including him looking at pictures of Harry and Meghan and reading books about the UK). He denied it. Though speaking on the documentary, Meghan described his response as "cagey".

"When we hung up, I looked at H[arry] and I said, 'I don’t know why but I don’t believe him,'" she recalled.

She claimed that over the days that followed, Thomas declined all of her calls but continued speaking to tabloids.

Harry described the disintegration of the relationship as "incredibly sad".

"She had a father before this, and now she doesn’t have a father, and I shouldered that," he said.

“If Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad."

Feature image: Netflix