Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, considered taking her own life amid public scrutiny of her relationship with Prince Harry and her part in the Royal Family.
The 39-year-old former actress joined the royal family in 2018 when she tied the knot with Harry, and has admitted that public scrutiny of her life got so intense, she told her husband – who lost his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash in 1997 – she was considering suicide.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey in her tell-all interview, she explained: “I was really ashamed to say it at the time, and ashamed to have to admit it to Harry especially because I know how much loss he’s suffered, but I knew that if I didn’t say it, I would do it. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore, and that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought.”
Meghan insisted she spoke to an employee of the royal family to see if she could “go somewhere to get help”, and was told it “wouldn’t be good for The Institution”.
She continued: “I went to The Institution and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said I’ve never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere, and I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for The Institution.
“I share this because there’s so many people who are afraid to voice that they need help, and I know personally how hard it is to not just voice it, but when you voice it to be told, ‘No’.”
And the former ‘Suits’ star also went to “human resources”, and was still told they couldn’t help her.
She added: “I went to human resources, and I was told, ‘My heart goes out for you, because I see how bad it is, but there’s nothing we can do because you’re not a paid employee.”
Meghan admitted that she didn’t research the royal family before she married Prince Harry.
She explained: “I’d say I went into it naively, because I didn’t grow up knowing much about the Royal Family. It wasn’t something that was part of conversation at home, it wasn’t something that we followed.
“I didn't do any research. I've never looked up my husband online. I just didn't feel the need to, because everything I needed to know he was sharing with me. Or everything that we thought I needed to know, he was telling me.”
Meghan also explained she “didn’t really understand” what it would mean to be a working royal, but knew she was “aligned” with Harry’s beliefs when it came to their charitable causes.
She added: "I didn't really understand what the job was. What does it mean to be a working royal, what do you do? I knew that he and I were aligned on all of our cause driven work because that was part of our connection and what we talked about in the beginning of our courtship.”
Meghan then insisted the “reality” of the royal family is different from the public perception.
She said: "I didn't romanticise any part of it, but I think that's ... as Americans especially, what do you know about the royals? It's what you read in fairy tales. So it's easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality. And that's what's been tricky over the past four years. When the perception and the reality are two very different things and you're being judged on the perception, but you're living the reality. There's a complete misalignment and there's no way to explain that to people."