MEAWW.COM / ENTERTAINMENT / MOVIES

'Suicidal' Meghan Markle wanted to throw herself down the stairs like Diana, claims Lifetime movie

Among its most outrageous scenes is the one showing Meghan contemplate flinging herself down the stairs like her mother-in-law Diana

Lifetime's latest installment of 'Harry & Meghan' concludes the saga with 'Escaping the Palace'. The film is a depiction of the Sussex royals' ordeal endured ever since their son Archie was born, culminating in the infamous 'Megxit' and its aftermath, including the bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey. To say the film has been slammed for its over-exaggeration would be an understatement, but even among its most dramatized moments, there are some that really go beyond normal levels of dramatic license — even by Lifetime standards. One of them includes the scene where the film's Meghan Markle contemplates falling down the stairs like her late mother-in-law, Diana.

Even before this certain outrageous scenes from the movie had gone viral, the film had already garnered flak for a controversial car crash scene where Sydney Morton as Meghan Markle can be seen lying under a wreck, resembling the fatal crash that killed Princess Diana. Dubbed vile and disrespectful, even though the scene is fit into the narrative as a nightmare that 'movie-Harry' has, this is not the only 'Diana reference' the film make. The late Princess of Wales's eldest child, Prince William is shown still furious at his mother's affair and the subsequent Martin Bashir interview - something that causes him to look down on younger brother Prince Harry giving unauthorized interviews to the public. 

READ MORE

Lifetime's 'Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace' slammed: 'Two hours of life WASTED!'

Lifetime movie 'Harry & Meghan' slammed for teaser showing Duchess dying like Diana

William can also be seen being confronted by Harry for doing nothing to stop the racism and bullying that Meghan faces from the Royals as well as British tabloids. The Duke of Cambridge tells his brother that the problem with Meghan is not the colour of her skin, but her American culture that makes her act more like a celebrity than a Royal. Despite William and Kate Middleton's evil secretary suggesting they use cancel culture to plot against the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, it is the scene where movie-Meghan contemplates suicide by falling down the stairs like Diana that proves to be the most unmissable one.

The scene begins with Meghan visibly depressed and presumably suicidal - exactly how the real-life former actress had shared in the Oprah interview. It's been established that she isn't allowed to step out of the castle, doesn't have her wallet or her keys, and feels shacked because of her deteriorating mental health. So the movie-Meghan begins contemplating taking her life the way her mother-in-law had once tried to do when pregnant with William. Diana had opened up in the Bashir interview that her husband's affair and the royal family constantly isolating her had led to suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and an eating disorder. In an attempt to get her husband Charles to listen to her, Diana had thrown herself down the stairs to stop her husband from going riding.

“When I was four months pregnant with William I threw myself downstairs, trying to get my husband’s attention, for him to listen to me,” Diana had recorded in tapes she later sent to journalist Andrew Morton who published her memoir posthumously. "I had told Charles I felt so desperate and I was crying my eyes out. He said I was crying wolf. ‘I’m not going to listen,’ he said. ‘You’re always doing this to me. I’m going riding now.’ So I threw myself down the stairs. The Queen comes out, absolutely horrified, shaking — she was so frightened”.

The same is reenacted for the film, but only this time, it's almost as if Meghan is haunted by visuals of Diana self-harming because she too is considering the options latently. Meghan has already revealed the Royal family's indifference to her plight had forced her to have suicidal thoughts, but the unauthorized movie's extent of these thoughts might seem deplorable to many. But to social media it was a heartbreaking scene. "My heat sunk seeing Meghan imagining thrown herself down the stairs," tweeted one user. Another lamented, "The flashes of the same thing that Diana had done on the staircase was chilling. Meghan was suffering as Diana was." But not everybody was pleased; one user tweeted: "Are we going to be subjected to a Harry and Meghan movie every quarter??? I hope that staircase scene isn't what I think it is."