Are there more bombshells to come from still-unseen portions of the Harry and Meghan interview?

Two hours of the interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex failed to make it into the final edit, raising the prospect of further explosive revelations being drip fed by US television.

It has emerged that Oprah Winfrey interviewed first the Duchess of Sussex and then jointly with Prince Harry over the course of three hours and 20 minutes.

However, only one hour and 25 minutes made it into the prime time programme broadcast on the US network CBS on Sunday night, and repeated tonight on ITV for a fee of £1 million. A few further clips were shown on CBS’s breakfast programme hosted by one of Oprah’s closest friends.

Ms Winfrey has now disclosed details of how the interview came about – a three-year odyssey that culminated in the ‘bombshell’ interview of the decade that has wreaked havoc on the House of Windsor.

It was a television coup for Ms Winfrey that came out of a friendship that has blossomed and intensified post-Megxit.

If the reports are to be believed, the Duchess of Sussex had met Oprah Winfrey only once before her wedding to Prince Harry. The interview that ensued was born out of their first meetings.

"She had just joined the Royal family and she shared a conversation with me then that made me feel somewhat disheartened,” Ms Winfrey said on American breakfast television in the wake of the interview broadcast the night before.

"She said she had been told, or been given advice, that it would be best if she could be 50 per cent less than she was. That was the quote, if she could be 50 per cent less. I remember hearing that in 2018 and I said to her, 'I don't know how you're going to survive, being half of yourself'."

Ms Winfey, it seems, made it her mission to give the newly-wed Duchess of Sussex a platform to vent her frustration. Meghan has grasped at it and, to the chagrin of the Royal family, run with it.

The Oprah/Meghan friendship has blossomed in the increasingly messy aftermath of the marriage.

The television celebrity has finally landed an interview that will be compared with the one Princess Diana gave to the BBC 25 years ago, while the Duchess of Sussex has secured a prime time slot in the US quizzed by America’s most famous woman, guaranteeing maximum exposure.

The interview had been three years in the making. But if Meghan had been allowed to speak out prior to her wedding in May 2018, it would have been a dull, saccharine affair. Instead with the passing of Megxit, this was dynamite.

The first approach was made by Oprah, 67 and almost 30 years the senior of the actress-turned-duchess, at the beginning of 2018. Oprah had made contact through CBS and the pair spoke on the telephone, Oprah being dialled through from her home in California to Meghan, who had by now relocated to the UK.

In March 2018, two months before the wedding, Oprah landed in London for a brief visit and met Meghan face-to-face. They must have hit it off because Oprah was not only invited to the wedding at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle but sat upfront, on the bride’s side and opposite the Royal family.

The Duchess of Sussex claimed that Buckingham Palace had prevented her from doing a pre-wedding interview with Ms Winfrey, in a clip that was shown to trail the broadcast but which curiously never made it into the final cut.

The Duchess was told in February 2018 that it “wasn’t the right time” and she complained that she “wasn’t even allowed” to reject the interview personally. Members of the royal communications team were in the room during the conversation.

Explaining why she was finally “ready to talk’, the Duchess told Ms Winfrey: “We’re on the other side of a lot of life experience that’s happened and also we have the ability to make our own choices in a way I couldn’t have said yes to you then. That wasn’t my choice to make.”

She went on: “It’s really liberating to be able to have the right and the privilege in some ways to be able to say, 'yes, I’m ready to talk’. To be able to just make a choice on your own. And to be able to speak for yourself.”

By May 2019 and at around the time of Archie’s birth, the Duchess was visited by Gayle King, presenter of the flagship breakfast programme CBS This Morning and crucially best friend of Oprah. Again no interview emerged but the ground was laid.

Megxit pushed the Duchess firmly into Ms Winfrey's arms. They both live in Montecito, a wealthy enclave in Santa Barbara, up the coast and north of Los Angeles.

Just before Christmas, Ms Winfrey was plugging a vegan latte drink that the Duchess had invested in. Meanwhile, Prince Harry and Ms Winfrey had embarked on a project for Apple TV on mental health. The interview was secured by the end of last year, leaving the Royal Household braced for the worst.

The interview was filmed – not as previously thought – at Harry and Meghan’s $15 million home although it was interspersed with sections filmed in the couple’s back garden, feeding the chickens or walking in their orchard.

Nor was it filmed at Ms Winfrey's house just down the road from the Duke and Duchess. “I just want to make it clear to everybody that even though we're neighbours down there, I'm down the road. You're up the road. This isn't my house. This isn’t your house,” said Ms Winfrey by way of an introduction.

The house – with its rustic charm – belonged to a “mutual friend”. Claims it belonged to Ms King were just plain wrong.

"It was filmed at a friend's house, I'm not going to disclose the friend, I don't want people going to try to find the friend, I have friends," said Ms Winfrey.