The Duchess of Sussex wants people to know that the widespread circulation of false tabloid stories and online vitriol directly impacts her life at home.
In Volume II of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, Duchess Meghan gets emotional while explaining how a negative echo chamber online can lead to real-life consequences, specifically recalling an incident in which she read an alleged death threat posted to Twitter.
"When you plant a seed that is so hateful," she says in Episode 5 about what she wants people to understand, know "what it can grow into."
The duchess says she was recently flipping through the manual for her security at her home and happened upon a section about online monitoring. "They’re like, ‘If you see a tweet like this, please report it to head of security immediately.’ It just said, ‘Meghan just needs to die. Someone needs to kill her. Maybe it should be me,’" she recalls. "And I was just like, ‘Okay.’ That’s, like, what’s actually out in the world because of people creating hate."
As she continues to remember the incident, the duchess becomes visibly teary-eyed. "I’m a mom. That’s my real life. And that’s the piece when you see it and you go, ‘You are making people want to kill me. It’s not just a tabloid. It’s not just some story. You are making me scared,’" she says. "That night, to be up and down in the middle of the night, looking down my hallway, like, ‘Are we safe? Are the doors locked? Is security on? Is every’—that’s real. ‘Are my babies safe?’ And you’ve created it for what? Because you’re bored, or because it sells your papers? Or it makes you feel better about your own life? It’s real what you’re doing. And that’s the piece I don’t think people fully understand."
Netflix
Netflix
In Episode 4 of Harry & Meghan, Meghan describes the moment she realized tabloid stories genuinely affect the public’s perception of her.
"I had still been under the delusion that if it was in a tabloid, no one believed it. Like, it’s a tabloid," she says. "Then, we had a walkabout in Liverpool and there was a group of women, and one of them said to me, ‘What you’re doing to your father’s not right.’ It was the first time that I went, ‘Oh, my God. People actually believe this stuff.’ And then my entire center was rocked to its core."
The endless barrage of media scrutiny led Meghan into a depression, even causing her to contemplate ending her own life. "It was like, ‘All of this will stop if I’m not here.’ And that was the scariest thing about it. It was such clear thinking," Meghan says.
