The 41-year-old 'Archetypes' host appears on the cover of 'The Cut' Magazine, offering an update on her new life in California.
Meghan Markle is speaking out on life outside the palace, addressing the "bittersweet" transition as she and Prince Harry relinquished their royal duties and built a new life for their family on the other side of the world.
In a new cover story interview for The Cut magazine, Meghan says that she's "never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking" and that she decides how much she is willing to share publicly about her journey from Hollywood actress to the Duchess of Sussex.
"I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to," she says. Asked by the reporter why she chooses not to talk, Meghan responds, "Still healing."
Following their high-profile move to Montecito, California, in 2020, Meghan and Harry visited the United Kingdom earlier this summer to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in London. While there, Meghan says she stopped by the couple's former residence -- Frogmore Cottage, which is still theirs -- to pack up some of their remaining belongings. Stepping into her old life, albeit momentarily, felt "surreal."
"You go back and you open drawers and you’re like, 'Oh my gosh. This is what I was writing in my journal there? And here’s all my socks from this time?'" Meghan says. "It was bittersweet, you know? Knowing none of it had to be this way."
Meghan also addresses the strained relationships both she and Prince Harry have endured with their own fathers throughout the duration of their courtship and marriage, blaming tabloid culture for tearing their families apart. "Harry said to me, 'I lost my dad in this process.' It doesn't have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that's his decision," she says.
The 41-year-old is open to mending fences with both her own family and her in-laws.
"I think forgiveness is really important. It takes a lot more energy to not forgive," she says. "But it takes a lot of effort to forgive. I've really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything. ... I have a lot to say until I don't. Do you like that? Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song."
The interview comes just as Meghan is launching her new podcast, Archetypes With Meghan. The show's debut episode launched on Aug. 23, featuring a wide-ranging conversation with Meghan's longtime friend, Serena Williams.
"People should expect the real me in this, and probably the me that they've never gotten to know," she said in a promo for the podcast. "Certainly not in the past few years, where everything is through the lens of the media. As opposed to, 'Hey, it's me.' I'm just excited to be myself, and talk and be unfiltered and ... yeah, it's fun."
Markle's new podcast will also "investigate, dissect, and subvert the labels that try to hold women back." Ahead of its episode with the tennis great, Archetypes With Meghan dropped a trailer previewing some of the labels they get into, and she promises to "cut through the noise" and "get to the roots of these words."
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