Oprah Winfrey Insists Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 'Didn’t Know Anything I Was Going to Ask Them' During Infamous 2021 Interview

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry caused quite the stir when they sat down with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 to talk about their post-royal life.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex chatted with the media mogul, 72, at the time where they unleashed their thoughts surrounding their royal exit that occurred a year prior.

Now, Winfrey is lifting the lid on what really went down during the bombshell interview.

In January 2020, Harry, 41, and the Suits star, 44, moved their family to Montecito, Calif., and announced they would be stepping back as senior members of The Firm.

Winfrey shared some insight into the "Megxit" interview in a Vanity Fair video published on Tuesday, July 22.

“They didn’t know, obviously, anything that I was going to ask them, but I had said to them ahead of time, ‘I’m going to try to cover everything,'" The Butler actress recalled.

“This interview took three and a half hours. And as is always the case for me, I want it to be a win-win for [them],” she continued about speaking with the Sussexes.

Winfrey went on: “So I was just trying to carefully go through everything that had come up in the past.”

In the interview, Harry and Meghan mentioned the plethora of emotions they felt while living in the U.K. as members of the royal family.

Meghan — who was pregnant with daughter Princess Lilibet at the time — claimed the family was racist and offered no support to her. She also detailed experiencing suicidal thoughts and mental health issues during her pregnancy with her first child, Prince Archie.

Perhaps the most viral moment from the interview occurred when Winfrey asked the former actress whether she was "silent or silenced" by the royal family, to which Meghan bluntly replied: “The latter."

Winfrey famously made a "zipped lip" hand gesture while asking the question, and also looked back on the moment in her Vanity Fair clip.

“I don’t know where the h--- that came from,” The Color Purple star chuckled about her hand movement. “I don’t think I’ve done it since.”

“I wanted to be clear, because was she silenced? Were people telling her not to talk?” she explained. “I said it for clarification, because I didn’t want later to hear, ‘Well, no, it wasn’t that. It really was that I was silenced. They wouldn’t let me talk.’ So it was all for clarification.”

It was previously reported Prince William was "sick with worry" about his estranged brother's interview with Winfrey.

Royal author Christopher Andersen wrote in his Kate Middleton biography, Kate! The Courage, Grace and Power of the Woman Who Will Be Queen, the Prince of Wales, 44, was "retching for a week" before the chat.

“William was too distracted to think of food" over what Harry and Meghan would spill about the family.