During her sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle shared the story behind a 2019 photo of her and Prince Harry.
While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex appeared to be all smiles when they attended a performance of Cirque du Soleil's Totem at the Royal Albert Hall in Jan. 2019, Meghan—who was pregnant with son Archie Harrison at the time—told Oprah about the pain she was really enduring behind the scenes.
"One of the things that still haunts me is this photograph that someone had sent me, we had to go to an official event at the Royal Albert Hall," Meghan, who is currently expecting a baby girl with Harry, recalled during the March 7 tell-all. "A friend said, 'I know that you don't look at pictures, but oh my god, you guys look so great' and sent it to me."
"I zoomed in and what I saw was the truth of what that moment was. Because right before we had to leave for that, I had just had that conversation with Harry that morning," Meghan said, referencing how—shortly before attending the event—she told Harry she "didn't want to be alive anymore" amid ongoing media scrutiny and struggles with the royal family.
While speaking to Oprah, Meghan said she was not given any help from the royal institution when she expressed she needed it. "I said that, 'I've never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere,'" she recalled. "And I was told that I couldn't, that it wouldn't be good for the institution."
After sharing how she was feeling with her husband, Harry suggested she stay home and not attend the event at Albert Hall. However, as Meghan noted in her interview with Oprah, she didn't want to stay home and be "left alone."
Looking at the photo from that event, Meghan said, "And that picture, if you zoom in, what I see is how tightly his knuckles are gripped around me. You can see the whites of our knuckles because we are smiling and doing our job, but we are both just trying to hold on."
Meghan also shared that every time the lights went down she was "weeping."
The Palace hasn't publicly commented on Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah.