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“They were happy to lie to protect my brother, they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us,” says Prince Harry in the latest trailer for the Harry and Meghan series on Netflix.
Ahead of the second half of the series, the trailer shows the couple saying why they stepped down from royal duties.
“I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves,” says Meghan.
Prince Harry blamed “institutional gaslighting”.
But there is some confusion about the most controversial and headline-grabbing moment in the trailer, with its reference to lying to protect Prince William.
The commentary from Prince Harry claims: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother”, but without saying who “they” were or the context in which Prince William was being protected.
But another version of the same Netflix trailer seems to suggest an explanation – with a different subtitle for the same commentary that says: “The British media are happy to lie to protect my brother.”
The voiceover doesn’t change, but it might suggest that the context is going to be a more generalised attack on the press, rather than a more damaging accusation against an individual or the Royal Family.
Netflix has been approached for a response about the differences in this key moment between the two trailers, one on YouTube and the other on the Netflix website.
Later the version of the trailer on Netflix showed a message that it wasn’t available and it then appeared to have been taken down.
The tone of the latest trailer suggests some more hard-hitting claims, after the first half of the documentary series had fewer bombshells or specific revelations than expected.
The trailer suggests allegations of a campaign against the couple, “gaslighting” them and leaving them feeling unsafe.
“I said, ‘We need to get out of here,'” says Prince Harry in the trailer for the final three episodes being released on Thursday.
“I wonder what would have happened to us had we not got out when we did?” says Prince Harry, who now lives with Meghan in California.
Meghan speaks of security worries – and a clip shows Prince Harry saying they were on a “freedom flight”, suggesting that this was their departure away from the pressure they felt around them in the UK.
Also appearing in the trailer was Christopher Bouzy, who set up a tech company that researches abuse and misinformation on social media. He says: “They were actively recruiting people to disseminate disinformation.”
There are clips of the couple enjoying their new life in the sunshine, but Prince Harry adds: “To move to the next chapter, you’ve got to finish the first chapter.”
Buckingham Palace has so far not commented on the Netflix series and has not responded to these latest clips.
After so much hype, the first three episodes drew mixed reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, with questions about how much of the information was new.
Audience figures in the UK on the launch day of the first part of the series showed 2.4 million viewers watched the first instalment, episode two had 1.5 million viewers on the first day, and the third part attracted 800,000.
These were higher audience figures than for The Crown, but below the 3.5 million who watched that evening’s episode of the soap opera Coronation Street. BY MPASHO NEWS