“It's not a fairy tale.”
Before the Meghan Markle Special, Watch Oprah's 1996 Interview With Sarah Ferguson
Today is March 7 and you know what that means: the highly anticipated interview between Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry airs on CBS at 8 p.m. EST.
Ahead of the two-hour, tell-all chat, you should probably watch this interview that Winfrey conducted with Sarah Ferguson about the reality of marrying into the Royal Family, palace life, and the British press.
Ferguson was married to Prince Andrew from 1986-1996 and is the mother of Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice. She first spoke with Winfrey in '96 and opened up about the “cruelty” she faced at the hands of the British press, a subject Markle and Prince Harry are all too familiar with.
"I must explain that the British press at the moment is completely and utterly cruel and abusive and so invasive," she said in the interview, per People, also saying, "it is very cruel and very painful when you are going to try and find the feelings within to be on such a public stage."
The Duchess of York, who also goes by “Fergie,” also touched on the high expectations of life as a member of the Royal Family. "You didn't marry the fairytale, you married a man," she told Winfrey. "You fell in love and married a man, and then you have to come to terms with the fairytale. Now it's not a fairy tale, it's real-life—well, they think it's real-life over there."
For her part, Meghan Markle revealed in a recent clip from the CBS special that she feels “liberating” to finally be able to share her experience. “I don’t know how they could expect that after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that The Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us," Markle said in another preview. "And if that comes with risk of losing things, there’s a lot that’s been lost already.”
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Emily Tannenbaum
