Harry & Meghan live: Duke of Sussex compares his wife to Princess Diana in Netflix documentary

“I was a daddy’s girl my whole life” Meghan says as we see some old camcorder footage of her with her family. “I recall feeling lonely as a kid” she says, and “wanting to have more people around.”

Her actor friend Silver Tree, who worked with Meghan on Suits, is back, saying that Meghan had a whole life before meeting Harry, and is “very open-hearted”.

Prince Harry has just spoken of being proud that his children are mixed race, after we’ve seen a clip of the couple at an awards ceremony talking about their activism and Meghan spoke about the death of George Floyd.

Harry says he thinks anybody who brings a child into the world should be working to make the world a better place.

The couple are now talking about both being the products of families that experienced divorce. Harry describes it as “Being pulled from one place to another, or maybe your parents are competitive, or you spend more time in one place when you’d rather be at another.”

Meghan recounts a poem about growing up longing for a single nuclear family – saying “life would be easier if there were two of me” rather than having two houses.

British historian David Olusoga appears in episode two, and he is making the point that the vast majority of the popular press in the UK is staffed with white people, and that it is them who are making the judgement calls in newsrooms on whether coverage has been racist or not. He also says that the tabloid press holds great sway in the country.

Harry is making a strong statement here about “the race element” in the media coverage when their relationship became public. He alleges that members of the royal family felt that their wives had gone through the media machine like it was an initiation rite, so why should Meghan be any more specially treated or protected. Harry recounts putting out a statement complaining about the racial element of the abuse and coverage.

“I would say that Meg is an old soul,” her mother says, as she explained that Meghan sailed through school with straight A’s and “I couldn’t help her with her homework”.

Meghan is now recounting a time when a stranger hurled racial abuse at her mum after a traffic incident. “I’d never in my life heard someone say the N-word” Meghan says. “Obviously now everyone is aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the UK,” she says. “Before then,” she said “I wasn’t really treated like a black woman.”

There is a section now where Meghan is recounting her childhood, and her mother, Doria Ragland, is talking about her as a child. Meghan is filmed revisiting her old school and meeting up with her former principal there. She’s been shown a card she gave to the teacher which promises “when I am rich and famous” she will tell everyone about her. Meghan has just described herself as a bit of a “nerd”, and is recounting how she complained about a sexist advert and got a commercial changed. “I was the little activist” she says. The music is Deee-Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart which is quite a contrast to the sad piano we got for Harry’s childhood in episode one.

“I felt like the whole of the UK media descended on Toronto,” Meghan says. “Just men sitting in cars all day waiting for me to do something.”

She alleges that neighbours were paid to put cameras into their houses to overlook her back yard. Harry says he was hearing all about this from a distance, and it was really concerning him.

He says “there were things that were written that I then had to ask her about”.

PA have posted some images to the newswires of people settling in to watch the documentary this morning. I thought I’d share this one with you because of the expression on Sully the dog’s face.

Doria, Meghan’s mum has made her first appearance. “I’m ready to have my voice heard, thats for sure” she says, having said that the last five years have been “challenging”.

She talks about how when Meghan first told her she was going out with Prince Harry they instictively had to whisper about it, with Meghan saying “Mom, you can’t tell anyone”.”

She says they looked really happy together and that “he was the one”. She says that when it first became public, it felt like a “novelty”.

Episode two opens up with Harry talking about how while the paparazzi still chase him, a lot of the intrusion and abuse has migrated to social media in modern life. He says he was concerned to see another woman in his life beginning to go through what his mother had endured – and describes the situation as “the hunter versus the prey”.

We are getting towards the end of the first episode and they are talking about what happened when the news of their relationship became public. The final sting is a montage of aggressive social media aimed at Meghan and voiceover clips from news shows including one in which someone says “Meghan seems to be a version of the antichrist” and an image from social media of Prince Harry with a gun held to his head and the slogan “See ya later race traitor”. It is quite an abrupt change of tone in the documentary which until now has been, to be honest, a fairly genteel retelling of how their relationship began interspersed with Harry’s resentful childhood memories of the behaviour of the press around him and his mother. That’s the end of part one.

Actor Abigail Spencer is being interviewed now, and showing a photo of her and her friend Meghan together in 2016 after Meghan had told her about the relationship. Spencer says she could tell “they would go to the ends of the earth” together.

Harry explains that Meghan set a “two week rule” – that they had to see one another at least once every two weeks. Harry said at that point it made more sense for her to be surreptitiously visiting him, “without someone taking a photo so it becomes news.”

If I had to sum up one thing that has come across so far in this first episode it is a very deep-seated and angry distrust of the media from Harry.

Prince Harry says Meghan reminds him of his mother in Netflix documentary

It is hardly breaking news, but I can confirm that Dan Wootton still doesn’t understand the difference between choosing to reveal something about yourself on your own terms, and having people chase you around to take pictures of you without consent.

We are in a section now of Harry’s teenage years, scuffles with press photographers, and the press coverage of his wilder drinking days.