Did Meghan Markle, Prince Harry make money from Oprah interview?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's explosive interview is all anyone on the Internet is talking about since it aired on Sunday in the US.  Oprah Winfrey, who took the interview dived in on the money aspect of the interview right in the beginning.

"Before we get into it, I just want to make it clear to everybody that even though we're neighbours... that there has not been an agreement. You don't know what I'm going to ask, there is no subject that's off-limits and you are not getting paid for this interview," said Oprah, to which Meghan responded, "That is correct."

Meghan and Harry reportedly did not earn from the interview. Instead, Oprah Winfrey's production house Harpo Productions is said to earn millions from the interview. CBS paid around $7-9 million to Harpo for the interview rights, as mentioned in a report in the Wall Street Journal. CBS now has the right to market the interview in international markets.

The interview deal proved to be a lucrative one for CBS too as more than 49.1 million across the world have watched the bombshell interview, either on television or via streaming. CBS, a unit of ViacomCBS Inc said that the audience was only growing and plans to rebroadcast the interview in the US on Friday. CBS said that the US accounted for 17.8 million viewers, making the Harry-Meghan interview the highest-rated entertainment since the February 2020 Oscars ceremony. CBS reportedly charged advertisers around $325,000 for 30 seconds of air time during the airing of the interview.

In the interview, Meghan said that she had suicidal thoughts when working as a senior royal. Harry, too, opened up about his fractured relationship with his brother and father. In one of the most damning bits, the royals said that an unnamed member of the royal family expressed concerns about 'how dark' their son Archie was going to be. Harry said that the royal family cut him off financially shortly after he and Meghan stepped back as senior royals.

Harry also said that the Netflix and Spotify deals were also signed out of financial necessity. "All I wanted was enough money to get security and keep my family safe," he said during the interview. Netflix and Spotify signed deals with Archewell Productions and Archewell Audio, Harry and Meghan's companies. The duo are expected to make feature films, documentaries, docu-series, children's programmes and scripted shows for Netflix, while their multi-year deal with Spotify would see them creating podcast content.

The duo was reportedly helped by media mogul Tyler Perry when they moved from Canada to Los Angeles in 2020. Perry offered them one of his Hollywood mansions to stay for free, they said in the interview. He also offered them his security. They said they decided to leave the location after it became known to the wider public. "We didn't have a plan. We needed a house and he offered his security as well, so it gave us breathing room to try to figure out what we were going to do," said Meghan to Oprah.

Also read: 49.1 million people watched Harry, Meghan interview with Oprah Winfrey

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