As a Brit, my overwhelming thought when I watched Harry & Meghan on Netflix was: ‘This doesn’t feel British.’ Seeing as this is a docuseries centred around two members of the British Royal Family on my screen, that was an unusual experience.
From the oozingly positive self-talk to the smattering of US talk shows, it screamed ‘America’ to me in a way that no other royal-focused documentary had. Where was the British reluctance to talk about yourself with anything other than sarcasm? Where was the UK awkwardness around any kind of emotion? While I wouldn’t say these are good qualities of my culture, they’re certainly a big part of it.
This is, in my opinion, part of the reason the docuseries didn’t go down as well in the UK as it did in the US. The cringe-worthy bow, the PR-style lauding of achievements: none of it translates well to a British audience. Still, I think that was largely the aim.
Looking at how Harry is promoting his upcoming book, Spare, the Duke of Sussex has done four interviews, but just one of which is in the UK. While you could argue that it’s just because he’s in the US, any UK broadcaster would surely travel around the world several times for this interview.
Ultimately, it suggests that this book, the Netflix docuseries, and the future of Harry and Meghan’s public faces are designed to target at an American audience—and really, can you blame them? The treatment of the couple and their young family by the UK media has been nothing short of dangerous. For a man who went through all that he did as a young boy regarding the press, facing the death of his mother and then the following dogging of his footsteps throughout a troubled teenagehood, it’s perhaps not surprising that the couple would prefer to retreat to the United States.
While the paparazzi still certainly follow the couple’s footsteps, tabloid media is more disparate in the United States. What’s more, and perhaps most significantly, the US media doesn’t go hand in hand with an institution that Harry is trying to escape from.
The way that Harry, and Meghan to an extent, are approaching media attention and publicizing now is a sign that they haven’t just physically relocated across the pond, but are also planning to stay and grow there for the foreseeable future.
(featured image: Netflix)
