Before his memoir, Spare, was published, Prince Harry participated in a number of tense interviews. His eagerly awaited 90-minute interview with ITV and his confessional appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes were both shown on Sunday. Additionally, his interview with Good Morning America was shown today.
The Duke of Sussex spoke on the conflicts that developed when Duchess Meghan joined the family between himself, Prince William, and Princess Kate in the interviews. In addition, he spoke about his ambitions for his future interactions with the royal family and said that his stepmother, Queen Camilla, had a plan to enhance her reputation.
The most significant disclosures are listed below.
Kate versus Meghan
Harry, who spent years doing royal events as a triad with brother William and his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, tells ITV host Tom Bradby that he believed the four would make a terrific, easy new unit when he married Meghan Markle. “I thought that the four of us would bring me and William closer together, we could go out and do work together,” he says. “Before it was Meghan, whoever it was gonna be, I always hoped that the four of us would get on, but very quickly it became Meghan versus Kate.”
Unintentional prejudice within the family
Harry claims that William and Kate’s behavior made Meghan feel uncomfortable. He also claims that, despite his insistence that his family is not racist, they do have “unconscious bias” that became apparent when Meghan joined the family. Harry claims they saw a “American actress, divorced, biracial” when they first saw her.
In his interview with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes, the prince reiterates his assertions, claiming that the royal family perceived his bride as a “American, an actress, divorced, Black, multiracial with a Black mother.” However, he claims throughout the conversation that the majority of the racial slurs directed against Meghan came from the British press.
“What Meghan had to go through was similar in some part to what Kate and what Camilla went through,” the duke says. “But then you add in the race element, which was what the press—British press jumped on straight away.”
He goes on, “I went into this incredibly naive. I had no idea the British press were so bigoted. Hell, I was probably bigoted before … the relationship with Meghan.”
Stories were made up by Camilla
Harry acknowledges in his book that he and William pleaded with King Charles III to postpone the wedding to Camilla, Queen Consort, in the wake of Princess Diana’s passing. The Duke of Sussex also claims in his ITV interview that his stepmother plotted with the British media to boost her reputation in order to join the royal family.
“She began to play the long game,” Harry says, per an audiobook reading of the memoir aired in the ITV interview. “A campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the crown, with Pa’s blessing, we presumed.”
Prior to Charles and Camilla’s nuptials, Harry claims that good reports about Camilla started to surface in all British newspapers, most notably those referencing her private chats with William. The prince claims that those tales included “accurate details, none of which had come from Willie, of course. They could only have been leaked by the one other person present.”
In attempt to “rehabilitate” their reputation, he continues, senior royals like Camilla have decided to “get in the bed with the devil.” In his interview with 60 Minutes, the duke also mentions his stepmother, stating, “She was the villain” and “the third person” He and William believed that Charles and Camilla’s union would result in “more harm than good.”
To deal with the loss of his mother, he turned to drugs.
The prince claims that in his early 20s, he began to use cocaine and to drink excessively. As a form of therapy to deal with the loss of his mother, he also took psychedelics. On 60 Minutes, Cooper echoes the duke’s sentiments “War didn’t begin in Afghanistan. It began in August 1997.”
Cooper also notes that Harry discusses using psychedelics, such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, and mushrooms, in Spare. Harry answers, “I would never recommend people to do this recreationally. But doing it with the right people if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief, or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine.”
“What did they show you?” Cooper asks, the duke claiming that they assisted him in overcoming his “misery.”
“For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield, the misery of loss,” he says. “They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that … I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her. When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy.”
How the queen reacted as he left the palace
My grandmother and I had a very wonderful connection,” Harry tells GMA’s Michael Strahan, adding that she did not have any bad feelings toward his choice to stand down as a senior royal in January 2020.
He claims that neither the queen nor anybody else were surprised by his or Meghan’s departure. “She knew what was going on, she knew how hard it was,” he continues, speaking of his late grandmother. “She never said to me that she was angry. I think she was sad that it had got to that point.”
He hopes to make things right with his family.
Harry declares, “I love my father, I love my brother, and I love family,” but he is unsure if he will go to his father’s coronation because “the ball is in their court” at this point. “I don’t think my father or brother will read the book. … But what they have to say to me and what I have to say to them will be in private, and I hope it can stay that way,” Harry says to ITV.
Additionally, he tells 60 Minutes that he is coming out about his brother, father, and the remainder of his family in order to clear up any misunderstandings and not in an effort to hurt them or portray them as adversaries. He admits that he hasn’t spoken to William or King Charles in a while, but he says he hopes that soon, he and his brother will “be able to find harmony.”
“My brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years,” Harry says. He also defends his wife, who some have claimed is keeping him from his roots and his heritage as a prince.
“None of anything I’ve written, anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family,” the prince says. “But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.”
He will no longer serve as a senior royal.
Although Harry is eager to make amends with other royal family members, he tells 60 Minutes that he doesn’t anticipate ever rejoining the family as a senior member working full-time. He also tells GMA, “I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible,” but insists that if there is ever a way he and Meghan can “continue to support the Commonwealth, then that’s, of course, on the table.”
Even if he were to return and his senior royal family members, King Charles and Prince William, approved, the British press would make life for him and Meghan difficult.
“I don’t think that—you know, even if there was an agreement or an arrangement between me and my family, there is that third party that is going to do everything they can to make sure that that isn’t possible,” he says. “Not stopping us from necessarily going back, but making it unsurvivable, and that’s really sad, because that is essentially breaking the relationship between us.”
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