Prince Harry talks future king William, Queen Consort Camilla, and grief over Princess Diana on 60 Minutes
Prince Harry sat for a conversation with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes to promote his new memoir, Spare
Aux News William
On Tuesday, Great Britain’s Prince Harry will release his new memoir Spare, which promises to be a very unsparing look at the British royal institution known as “The Firm.” To promote the book, Prince Harry sat for multiple interviews, including a lengthy conversation with Anderson Cooper for CBS’ 60 Minutes. During the interview, he speaks about his fractured relationship with his brother, his “dangerous” stepmother Camilla, and how his grief over losing his mother impacted his life.
The Duke of Sussex is not particularly generous in his description of the future king in his book, but he tells Cooper that his words weren’t “intended to hurt” Prince William, but rather to “give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up” and “[squash] this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.” As to the former, he clarifies that the brothers lived very “separate lives” after their mother died.
For Harry, that formative event sent him on a path that included illegal drug use and joining the military. While his time in the service was the first time he felt “normal,” he also “didn’t have the awareness at the time that I was living my life in adrenaline, and that was the case from age 12, from the moment that I was told that my mom had died.”
For many years, he tells Cooper, he couldn’t believe that Princess Diana was actually dead, and both he and William speculated that the tragic car accident might be “all part of a plan” to escape the public eye. Even when they reached adulthood and were able to accept her passing, the brothers considered reopening the inquest into the accident: “Because there were so many gaps and so many holes in it. Which just didn’t add up and didn’t make sense.”
Prince Harry speaks of “a huge amount of frustration and blame towards the British press for their part” in Diana’s death, but his acrimonious relationship to the tabloids extends beyond their treatment of his mother. He calls his stepmother, Queen Consort Camilla, “dangerous” for her need to rehabilitate her image—as the “other woman” in King Charles’ marriage to Diana—which necessitated her developing a relationship with the press. (Harry says both he and Prince William asked their father not to marry his mistress.) In his book, he writes that Camilla “sacrificed me on her personal P.R. altar.”
He also attributes blame for the ongoing dissolution of his relationship with William to the press’ vicious treatment of Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle. The U.K. tabloids emphasized belittling stereotypes about Markle, that “she was American, an actress, divorced, Black, biracial with a Black mother,” her husband says. Harry claims that his whole family reads the tabloids every day, and at the time of the reported physical altercation between the brothers, William “was consuming a lot of the tabloid press, a lot of the stories. And he had a few issues, which were based not on reality.”
“[A] large part of it for the family, but also the British press and numerous other people is, like, ‘He’s changed. She must be a witch. He’s changed,’” Harry explains. “As opposed to yeah, I did change, and I’m really glad I changed. Because rather than getting drunk, falling out of clubs, taking drugs, I had now found the love of my life, and I now had the opportunity to start a family with her.”
Choosing to leave the U.K. to prevent “history repeating itself”—regarding his mother and now his wife—further alienated Harry from his family. The rift became so intense that Prince William and wife Kate Middleton excluded Harry from plans to see their grandmother Queen Elizabeth on her deathbed. Prince Harry says he has not spoken to his brother nor his father, King Charles, in “a while.” Of their refusal to condemn the press for its racist treatment of Meghan he states that “there comes a point when silence is betrayal.” Further, he claims his family encouraged that treatment: “This all started with them briefing, daily, against my wife with lies to the point of where my wife and I had to run away from… my country.”
“So now, trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand, I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth,” Harry says, “rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalizes its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids.”
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I look forward to the The AV Club resuming their pop culture coverage, whatever that is nowadays.
Hey Argie, there is a movie coming out. It probably has Aubrey Plaza in it. There are people who are enthusiastic about this movie. But we can’t tell you how or when you can see it.
Ya know, if AVClub would hire someone that had some time for Kinja management, so that they could determine who is constructive and get more greys out, then I’d bet they could grow AVClub more and then… they’d be in more of a position to influence more of what pop culture becomes.
Wouldn’t want to step on Lifehacker’s beat. Or Gizmodo’s. Or IO9’s. Or Kotaku’s or…
It feels weird to have sympathy for a guy literally born to royalty, but I’ve seen enough family drama to understand that this dude escaped an absolutely toxic life. He’s going to be fine financially where so many others aren’t, but the damage is the same. Realizing that the people closest to you are vicious pack of vipers who care more about image than your literal life is a tough thing to deal with, no matter who you are.
I would also feel weird about having sympathy for a nazi costume wearing “but my brother made me do it” 38-year old man who tarnished a teacher’s reputation and got her fired for refusing to let him cheat, called killing people from a helicopter “a joy” because it reminded him of playing Xbox, and got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of his already vast sum of unearned wealth to write about how mean his brother was to him.
You can condemn his family members as abusive and still dislike him as a person
He did that to a teacher? A humble working person (teaching will humble you). I was indifferent to this guy before, but F him to hell for that.
He lost his mother at a very young age, I can still see mine. I wouldn’t trade our situations for anything.
I mean, on the one hand, even rich people need love and compassion and the like. But on the other hand, there are literally millions of people who had shitty childhoods and also aren’t filthy rich, so maybe we can work on helping out there instead of giving this “Henry Windsor” (sounds like a made-up name) more attention.
False dichotomy there, eh? Empathy’s free.
Yeah, but time isn’t.
You can empathy for someone without spending more than a few seconds on it. Besides, if your time has value, what are you doing posting on this sad husk of a site?(Yes, I would say the same thing about myself. I question – with regularity – why I spend time here, between the writers’ unearned snark, and the egregious errors that speak to basic incompetence on the writing staff, or the possibility that a significant portion of the articles are written by AI. I think it comes down to having been here so long and enjoying the way this site used to be, that I feel like I want to be here the day it finally shuts down.)
Yeah, basically that. There’s still some commenters here I appreciate, so it’s worth seeing what they write. And also inertia.
Or: maybe if you think everyone around you is an asshole you’re the asshole?
Why do you assume he’s any different and this isn’t his way of selling out his family to preserve his image, just as they would do to him? Being the first one to go to an interviewer is just as likely to show you to be a better manipulator as a victim. I will say that while I have no personal knowledge of the situation at hand really neither does any other member of the public. We just know what we’re told and everyone doing the telling is attempting to influence public opinion. They’re probably all just awful, Windsors and those wedded to them.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The royals may be toxic, but sounds like his wife is, too. That is why he is going so viciously and publicly against his family instead of just living life. From the anecdotes I’ve read, sounds like she may have BPD. Seen it before – they will pit you against your loved ones until they are the only ones left in your life. As for his worries about racial bias, that’s a good start. He can donate his book proceeds to the countries his family ravaged in Africa, as reparations.
I feel bad for Harry, he needs to get out of the spotlight and live whatever a “normal” life get can get out of the spotlight.
It’s too bad Oprah and Anderson Cooper ambushed him with those interviews, which interfered with him living life out of the spotlight, a thing he definitely wants.
“As to the former, he clarifies that the brothers lived very “separate lives” after their mother died.”Except when Wills and Kate told him he should wear that Nazi uniform. Totally separate except for that piece of advice, which made wearing the uniform totally someone else’s fault.
He’s a leading contender for ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year’ 2 years running!
Be less pathetic.
Give ‘em hell, Harry!
You’re a royal twit, ‘arry!
That’s some bad hat, Harry.
Finally a chance to hear from this reclusive figure!
He gleefully admits to war crimes too! Neat!
Killing is not a war “crime”; it is war.
“Harry claims that his whole family reads the tabloids every day”LOL. Why?
“Representing” is the (whole, entire) job.
“You’re a waste, Harry!” Hagrid, probably.
Somehow he has become more insufferable then when he used to dress up as a nazi for parties. He and Meghan need to go away and stop with their relentless media blitz they keep unleashing.
This whole situation is weird. Because I do realize that Harry has had to deal with a lot of shit in his life and I feel bad about that. But at the same time his mixed messages are annoying. Because he seem to be saying that he wants the media to leave him alone, but at the same time doing interviews and writing a book and doing a documentary are going to increase interest that the media has in your life.
He is royalty the press will ALWAYS be after him. It feels like he is just venting and getting stuff off his chest. Money be damned his growing up in the situation he was in couldn’t have been easy. He had to deal with a lot of things most of us will never have to experience. His mom dying at a young age, cbeing contantly in the press, for good or bad, his entire like being under a microscope. Like anything he did or does was disected by his family, to keep up apperances, the press and the public.
He also can’t seem to decide if the Royal Family is racist or not.It sounded like he thought they were when he talked to Oprah, and he picked up a Kennedy award for fighting against racism in the Royal Family, but now he says he never called them racist.The Queen is definitely not racist, even though she ran the family for 70 years.
He was trying to show their biases, and generously calls the “unconscious.” This is the problem with trying to combat the ingrained biases that folks raised in a racist society have (and boy howdy were the royals ever raised in white supremacy), instead of listening and trying to change, they become overly defensive. That’s how we wind up with the “calling someone racist is worse than racism itself folks.”
And moving to fucking L.A. That’s what gets me. At the very least, they could have moved to Aspen. Rich people live there, too.
A quick DNA test and we could be done with all this nonsense.
Maury Povich style! But you don’t think that poor bastard looks like Charles?
He looks a lot like Philip in his youth to me.
DAMN! Philip was a hotty back in the day
That vintage Philussy got you shook.
Don’t they make you shave in the army?
Haven’t you seen James Hewitt?
I haven’t, but I could see the relation. Honestly any of these gentlemen mentioned could potentially fit the bill [insert joke about inbreeding here]. OK, let’s get Maury!
Can we be done with him for a while after this? Please?I mean, is it really that hard to just be rich and shut the fuck up for a bit? Like, just smoke some weed and watch Netflix and go to nice restaurants for the rest of your life, dude. Enjoy.
It sounds like he had his own personal bodyguards while he was in the military, which doesn’t sound very “normal”.I can’t find it now, but I read somewhere how his bodyguards wouldn’t let him leave the building when his base came under attack. They were always ready to whisk him away if things got too dangerous.
This is a man who has no idea how to live outside of the bubble he was raised in. He doesn’t realize he is going to be questioned and disagreed with and fact-checked and that he doesn’t get to just wave his hand and have things his way or have things he’s done or said disappeared, like he’s now attempting to do with calling the Royal Family racist.Watching him grapple with the realization that he is not as smart or clever as he was lead to believe his whole life on international TV is pathetic.
Never cared much for the British Royals, but had respect for the late Queen. I was hoping her passing would mean the end of this archaic institution. No one should care anymore.
I’m sure it wasn’t any fun, but I can’t wait for him to shut up.
Hot-take; a man who approaches his relations for costuming advice and doesn’t realise that their suggestion that he should dress up as an actual literal Nazi is either (a) a joke or (b) a prank is probably not that smart.