The timing of Harry & Meghan’s Netflix trailer is so perfect, it almost seems deliberate

Timing is everything. Say what you will about the first trailer for Harry & Meghan – Netflix’s unprecedented new documentary produced in conjunction with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – but it could hardly have been timed for more explosive impact.

The programme’s teaser comes just a day after the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, resigned from the palace over a racism scandal. The royal aide, who also happens to be Prince William’s godmother, apologised for making “unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments” to a Black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse. Reports claim she also served as an advisor to Meghan Markle.

Now, on the face of it, few will be surprised to hear that the walls of Buckingham Palace have heard some problematic remarks over the years. We are, after all, talking about the figureheads of British colonialism, the crustiest of the upper crust of British society. Racism isn’t just some transient problem, it’s part of the very fabric of the institution. Acting shocked at the news that bigotry is alive and well among such a white, privileged milieu constitutes a pathetic, feigned obliviousness to the way our country works and has always worked.

Much of the animosity towards Meghan is rooted in racism, and in the fact she had the temerity to call it out. Harry & Meghan still rattles in the aftershock of the royal couple’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which Meghan discussed some of the racism she had allegedly suffered under the Windsors’ auspices. Releasing the trailer right in the middle of one of the biggest racism scandals ever to hit the royals isn’t just a flex, it’s a full-on mic drop. After years of vilification in the right-wing press, Meghan has finally been vindicated.

Netflix’s documentary has long been teased as Harry and Meghan’s defiant rebuke to the suffocating influence of The Firm. But other than a few juicy specifics, it is unlikely to tell us too much more than what she has already disclosed, and what we should already know to be true. (Reports surfaced, for instance, that Harry and Meghan had sought to soften some of the documentary’s revelations out of respect for the Queen’s death). What it will do is chip away at the wall of impunity that has always surrounded the royals, piece by piece.

Skeptics have already dismissed Harry & Meghan as a glorified PR exercise, a canny piece of image management from ex-royals and current celebrities. And this is partly true, of course. But the fact that Meghan and Prince Harry are two people of immense privilege does not inoculate them from harm. Meghan has told us before what she has had to endure. Maybe next time, people will have no choice but to listen.