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Meghan says it’s ‘liberating’ to speak out as she reveals details of palace control

The Duchess of Sussex says royal life was not “what people imagine it to be” and that being able to make her own decision to speak out after the experience was “liberating”.

In the first ‘extended’ teaser from Meghan and Harry’s upcoming tell-all interview with Oprah to be aired on CBS’s This Morning show on Sunday (local time), Meghan described the control she says others had over her life.

She said her ability to make her own decisions was stripped when she took up royal life and she couldn’t even have a private phone conservation with Oprah herself without palace communications staff in the room.

In the clip, Oprah recounted how she phoned Meghan before her wedding to Prince Harry in 2018 and asked ‘would you please give me an interview’.

“And you said ‘I’m sorry, it’s not the right time’. Finally we get to sit down and have this conversation,” Oprah said.

Meghan replied: “I remember that conversation very well. I wasn’t even allowed to have that conversation with you personally, right? There had to be people [from the communications team] sitting there.”

Oprah said: “You turned me down nicely and said ‘perhaps there’ll be another, when there’s the right time’.”

She then asked Meghan why now was the right time to talk to which Meghan responded: “Well, so many things.”

“That we’re on the other side of a lot of life experience that’s happened and also that we have the ability to make our own choices in a way that I couldn’t have said yes to then. That wasn’t my choice to make,” Meghan said.

“So, as an adult who lived a really independent life to then go into this construct that is different than I think what people imagine it to be, it’s really liberating to be able to have the right and the privilege in some ways to be able to say, yes, I’m ready to talk, to say it to yourself.

“To be able to just make a choice on your own and to be able to speak for yourself.”

The latest clip comes as Buckingham Palace said it would investigate claims the duchess bullied royal staff following a report in The Times.

The anticipated two-hour interview is expected to reveal details of Meghan and Prince Harry’s experience together as working royals before they controversially stepped back from official duties and moved to the US.

The latest clip comes as British newspaper the Mail on Sunday has been ordered to publish a front-page statement saying the Duchess of Sussex has won a privacy case against it, according to a ruling handed down by a London High Court judge.

Last month, judge Mark Warby ruled the tabloid had breached the royal’s privacy and infringed her copyright by publishing parts of the five-page letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, who she fell out with on the eve of her wedding to the Queen’s grandson Prince Harry in May 2018.

As a consequence of that ruling, Judge Warby has ordered that the newspaper must put a notice on its front page and a statement about the outcome of the case in its inside pages.

He also ruled that MailOnline must publish the notice of Meghan’s victory for a week.

“In my judgment these are measured incursions into the defendant’s freedom to decide what it publishes and does not publish, that are justified in pursuit of the legitimate aim I have identified, and proportionate to that aim,” Judge Warby said.

“They will involve little if any additional expense, and certainly nothing approaching the scale of the expense that has been lavished on this litigation.”

Last week, Judge Warby awarded 450,000 pounds ($809,590) on Tuesday as a provisional payment towards her legal costs, with her legal team seeking an overall amount of more than 1.5 million pounds

Friday’s ruling comes two days before an in-depth interview Meghan and Harry have given to chat show host Oprah Winfrey is due to be broadcast on US television.

-with AAP

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