A shot of Kate Middleton looking straight into the lens of the camera has been featured in the Netflix trailer for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's upcoming docuseries, Harry & Meghan.
The trailer, which was released globally on Thursday, shows a previously unseen photo of Meghan in tears while talking on the phone, then cuts to the shot of Kate as the sound of breaking glass plays. The image was taken one year before the Sussexes stepped down as working royals and moved to the U.S. in 2020.
The trailer's release comes as Kate and Prince William are in the middle of a three-day visit to the U.S. to attend the Earthshot Prize awards ceremony, set for Friday in Boston. No release date for Harry & Meghan has been announced yet.
Besides the focused image of Kate in the trailer, previously unseen photos of Harry and Meghan behind the scenes have been released.
In a short clip, Meghan explains the couple's motivation for taking part in the project, saying, "When the stakes are this high, doesn't it make more sense to hear our story from us?"
The relationship between Meghan and Kate has been the subject of intense media speculation since the American-born actress married into the royal family in 2018. Things came to a head in 2021 when Meghan told Oprah Winfrey that Kate made her cry before her wedding day.
Tabloid stories published in 2019 said it was Meghan who made Kate cry. Meghan later voiced frustration that the royal "firm" made little effort to correct the stories.
The image of Kate shown in the trailer was taken on Commonwealth Day in 2019, a turbulent period for Meghan in which, she later revealed to Winfrey, she had considered ending her life.
The Commonwealth Day commemorations one year later marked Harry and Meghan's last public engagements as working royals. This followed the polarizing period nicknamed by the press "Megxit," and it also was the last time the sisters-in-law were photographed together until this September, when they reunited for events after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Little is publicly known about the Netflix series, with Meghan only saying that it takes place in August.
During a recent interview with Variety, the duchess discussed how the docuseries would present her love story with Harry, as shown through the eyes of director Liz Garbus.
Asked what viewers could expect from the show, Meghan responded: "It's nice to be able to trust someone with our story—a seasoned director whose work I've long admired—even if it means it may not be the way we would have told it. But that's not why we're telling it. We're trusting our story to someone else, and that means it will go through their lens."
She continued: "It's interesting. My husband has never worked in this industry before. For me, having worked on Suits, it's so amazing to be around so much creative energy and to see how people work together and share their own points of view. That's been really fun."
The series marks the first piece of creative content released by Harry and Meghan as part of their deal with Netflix. Meghan's hit podcast Archetypes, the product of a content deal with streaming giant Spotify, ended its first season on Tuesday.
Before the trailer drop for Harry & Meghan, publisher Penguin Random House said that Harry's highly anticipated memoir would be released on January 10.
With the interviews, the podcasts, a docuseries and a book, the public is getting unprecedented access to the private life of a royal family member. But that access could widen a reported rift with Harry's family in Britain.
Newsweek reached out to Kensington Palace and to Harry's and Meghan's representatives for comment.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
