*Queen Elizabeth II has broken her silence on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s tell-all interview with Oprah.
In a statement Tuesday, Buckingham Palace said Harry, Markle, and their son Archie will “always be much loved family members.”
“The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” says the statement. ”The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”
During the Oprah interview, which aired Sunday night on CBS, Markle revealed that her son was denied a royal title and protection — and that there were “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
READ MORE: Meghan Markle Tells Oprah Senior Royals Had ‘Concerns’ About How Dark Archie’s Skin Would Be
Buckingham Palace have just released a statement: pic.twitter.com/JzlYvef4Wn
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) March 9, 2021
“They didn’t want him to be a prince . . . which would be different from protocol, and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” she told Winfrey, noting that senior members of the royal family worried her child might be born too dark and that would be a bad look for the royal family.
Oprah asked Harry who was behind the comment, but he refused to spill the tea. “That conversation I’m never going to share,” he said. “It was awkward. I was a bit shocked.”
In a new clip from the interview, Oprah asks Meghan whether it “felt like betrayal” when she learned her father, Thomas Markle, “was working with the tabloids” in staging paparazzi photos, Meghan said, “We called my dad and I asked him [about staging the photos] he said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ ” she explained, per PEOPLE. “I said, ‘The institution has never intervened [on] anything for us, but they can try to go in and kill this story. But if they do this once, we’re not gonna be able to use that same leverage to protect our own kids one day.’ “
“I said, ‘I just need you to tell me and if you tell me the truth, we can help,’ and he wasn’t able to do that,” Meghan said. “And that, for me, has really resonated, especially now as a mother.”
Meghan added, “I look at Archie, I think about this child [on the way], and I genuinely can’t imagine doing anything to intentionally cause pain to my child. I can’t imagine it. So it’s hard for me to reconcile that.”
When it comes to her relationship with her half-sister Samantha, who wrote a book about the former actress, Meghan told Oprah, “I think it’d be very hard to ‘tell-all’ when you don’t know me.”
“This is a very different situation than my dad — when you talk about betrayal, betrayal comes from someone that you have a relationship with, right? I don’t feel comfortable talking about people that I really don’t know,” she continued.
“The last time I saw [Samantha] was [about] 19 years ago, and before that, 10 years [previously],” Meghan said. “She changed her last name back to Markle I think … only when I started dating Harry. So I think that says enough.”
Harry and Meghan announced during their conversation with Oprah that they are expecting their second child, a girl, this summer.
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