The royal family may feel blindsided by “Megxit,” but Harry and Meghan have been plotting their escape since at least the fall, during their tour of Africa, according to the journalist who chronicled the trip.
“I sensed at the time that what I was witnessing on that trip was possibly a long, sad farewell to this royal life; in part, to us?” documentary filmmaker Tom Bradby told People magazine.
Bradby accompanied Harry and Meghan, who he is friends with, as they toured South Africa, Angola, Malawi and Botswana, and turned his footage into the emotional ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: an African Journey.
In a new interview with People, Bradby now calls his documentary “only half of the story.”
“Many people will ask why, of course,” he told the magazine.
“So much privilege, so much power, so much good being done. Why leave it all behind?”
But both of the Sussexes opened up in the film about being unhappy with the royal life, with Harry especially noting how the incessant, sometimes prying press was making him miserable.
“Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back,” to the painful memory of his mother’s death, he told ITV in the documentary.
Princess Diana was in a car pursued by paparazzi in Paris when she died in a crash at age 36, when Harry was just 12.
Meghan, too, signaled her unhappiness, when Bradby, interviewing her for the documentary, asked “how she’d found the last year?”
She answered, “It is a very real thing to be going through. Thanks for asking — because not many have.”