Netflix's Harry and Meghan documentary series will be 'personal and raw'

The documentary series is the highest-profile project from Story Syndicate, a company run by filmmaker Liz Garbus and her husband, Dan Cogan.

Liz Garbus was skeptical.

The documentarian behind movies like "Becoming Cousteau" and "What Happened, Miss Simone?" was not an avid royal observer. She knew the main lines of the decision of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to leave the British royal family. She had seen their interview with Oprah Winfrey. But she surmised that the stiff upper lip emblematic of elite British society wouldn't make a compelling documentary - too cautious, too interested in hagiography, too much royal pain.

Then she saw the footage.

Encouraged by friends to document their dramatic decision to "step back" as senior family members British royals and asserting their financial independence, Harry and Meghan shot more than 15 hours of home video in the first months of 2020 as they finalized their plans to leave Buckingham Palace for good. Then they shared it all with Mrs. Garbus and her husband, producer Dan Cogan.

Suddenly Mrs. Garbus found herself watching Harry in the Windsor Suite of the Heathrow Airport, speaking directly to the camera. The video is dated March 11 and Harry has just completed his last two weeks of royal engagements and is heading to Vancouver to meet Meghan.

"You're there with Harry in the Windsor suite is dealing with him leaving the royal family for the first time in his life," Ms. Garbus said. "Then there was another clip with Meghan at home alone, fresh from the shower, hair in a towel, no makeup, thinking on her own about what their life might be like.

"It's very personal, raw and powerful, and it made me appreciate the incredible weight that influenced their decision," she said. "It also confirmed the choice I had made to want to find out how this historic break occurred."

ImageWhen asked if Harry and Meghan had final approval for the series, Ms. Garbus replied: "It was a collaboration. You can keep asking me, but that's what what I will say."Credit...Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times made available to the world when Netflix released the first three hour-long episodes of 'Harry and Meghan,' a six-part documentary series. (The final three episodes are set to debut on the streaming service on December 15.)

Given the rabid and often polarizing opinions that seem to crop up whenever Harry and Meghan are mentioned, the series will almost certainly result in social media memes, tabloid gossip and – Netflix hopes, considering he signed a very rich deal with the couple in 2020 – a global streaming event.

"You don't always expect that people at their celebrity level speak with emotional honesty and intensity about things that upset them or c...