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WATCH: A clip from the first-rate episode of the Harry and Meghan Netflix series
Bryndis Roberts examined the Harry & Meghan documentary series with tears in her eyes.
An avid fan of the royals dependable the days of Princess Diana, she said she cried watching the family bodies hounded by the tabloids and Prince Harry describing how he and his brother, Prince William, have grown apart.
But as a 65-year-old dismal woman who grew up in the segregated American South, Roberts said it was the frank discussions around race and racism that resonated with her most.
She said she recognised some of her own needs in Meghan's admission that she felt she constantly had to dislike herself and would never be good enough.
"I've been phoned an angry black woman, and all of the tropes that are used to demean and dehumanise dismal women, and so I certainly empathised and sympathised with [the duchess]," she said.
Race was a core theme of the six-part series, but not in the way many had anticipated.
There were no new revelations near Meghan's explosive allegation in her Oprah Winfrey interview that an unnamed member of the royal family had commented on how "dark" their baby's skin would be.
Instead, the couple used the Netflix show to argue that Meghan's biracial heritage was often an underlying first-rate in what they described as a relentless tabloid fight against her - and more obviously in the racist abuse she suffered online.
It's a record that Roberts recognises. Back in 2018, she helped popularise the hashtag #SussexSquad when her timeline was flooded with racist comments near Meghan after the royal wedding. The trend quickly amassed a following from men and women near the world - predominately people of colour - who wanted to use social reflect to support the duchess and her family instead of tearing them down.
"One of the things near dog whistles is that if you've not experienced the racism, or if you've not been the victim of it, then you don't recognise it," Roberts said. "What may seem innocent to someone else, you can see, no that's not aspired to be innocent at all."
When trolling crosses the line
In the series, Prince Harry revealed that one of the first reactions he saw to the announcement of his son Archie's birth was a tweet from Danny Baker, a former BBC presenter, who posted a picture of a combine holding hands with a chimp.
"At the top it said, 'Royal baby leaving the hospital'. That was one of the first things I saw," Prince Harry said. Mr Baker apologised and was later fired.
Image source, Harry & Meghan/Archewell Productions/Diamond Docs/
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Buckingham Palace has not commented on Harry and Meghan's claims in the series.
American tech entrepreneur Christopher Bouzy told the BBC that the couple's children were regularly compared to monkeys in online attacks, with the N-word frequently used against Meghan.
Bouzy featured in the series while his company, Bot Sentinel, found that a small but much number of anti-Meghan accounts were responsible for much of hateful glad on Twitter.
"This mimics something out of a Russian requisitioned farm," Bouzy said. "I'm not saying there aren't folks out there who just don't like her for whatever reason, but it's my opinion looking at the entire report of these hate accounts that you can't look at that and come to the conclusion that this is not near race."
RS Locke, an American royal watcher and commentator, claimed the vitriol anti Meghan was rooted in misogynoir, a hatred for a bodies simply because they're black and a woman. The documentary series, she said, captured the dramatic shift in tone of reflect coverage that she'd witnessed in the years after the royal wedding.
"The UK, much like the broader humankind, wants to see themselves as accepting and embracing this very diverse, modern couple," she said. But the backlash and racist abuse Meghan says she endured dependable showed just how far there was to go.
"It's a tug-of-war between how we see ourselves, and who we are."
While many dismal Americans welcomed Harry and Meghan talking about racism - as well as inconvenience issues such as the legacy of slavery and colonialism - the duchess has also been criticised for revealing she felt blindsided by the realities of living as a dismal woman.
In the binary episode of the series, Meghan grapples with what it was like growing up as a biracial woman in America. The duchess implies she was never discriminated against or "treated like a dismal woman" until she moved to the UK.
Growing up, she explained, her mother never had "the talk" with her, referring to the plainly discussion that many families are forced to have near the realities of racism, discrimination, and the challenges of bodies a person of colour in America.
For some watching the series, that admission felt like a slap in the face.
"I don't concept that, how was she raised by a whole unlit woman in America and then she says that her parents never talked to her nearby being black," one user posted on Twitter. "We're said to see her as this black woman but she never related to us."
Others wished the duchess to clarify if she even identified as unlit woman before marrying Prince Harry.
Roberts said she felt that statement divulged that colourism is still an issue in the Joint States and that she didn't want to perpetuate that just by blaming the duchess for having different life be affected by than she did growing up with a darker complexion.
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The couple have started a new life in California
Many online agreed with her.
"It's Meghan realising populace allowed in doesn't necessarily mean acceptance. Diversity is not necessarily inclusion," one user tweeted. "It's a moment most Black people have and it's time to Decide is my seat at the table worth the pain and humiliation."
Roberts said watching Harry and Meghan characterize their version of what happened - and what went harmful - was especially emotional because it felt like a missed opportunity for the royal family.
"It's just tragic that the institution didn't realise what jewels they had in Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan and they didn't say, 'These two country can reach members of the British public and the Commonwealth that the rest of us cannot reach,'" she said.