Prince Harry opened up about his relationship with his family in a sit-down interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby that aired on Sunday, ahead of the release of his memoir Spare.
The Duke of Essex explained criticisms of his father King Charles and his decision to leave the UK with his wifeHarry also said his family members had ‘gone to bed with the devil’ to help improve their image before the press and joked about his virginity story with Bradby.
Um, but for me, I sit here now, speaking to you, answering the questions that you put to me, um, and the words and the truth will come from my lips rather than using other people, especially through the tabloid media. Um, and we’re six years into it now, um, and I have spent every single year of those six, doing everything I can privately, to get through to my family.
TOM BRADBY: One of the things I found saddest in the book is the way, as I understand it, kind of begins with your mother’s death because you have a problem with the memories before then. Is that right? You sort of…PRINCE HARRY: Yeah, I know. I lost a lot of memories. on the other side of this mental wall. Um, which again, I think is so relatable for so many people who’ve experienced loss, especially as a youngster, um, that inability to be able to like drag the memories back over.
PRINCE HARRY: Um, I cried once, um, at the burial. Um, and, you know, I go into detail about talking how, you know, how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I, that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace and the 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother. And there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling. I’ve seen the videos, right? I’ve looked back, I look back over it all.
PRINCE HARRY: So, you know, it happened, um, the memories of the bridles chinking, you know, going down the mall, the hooves going down the, the concrete and the occasional, you know, gravel underneath the foot and the wails from the crowd. But otherwise complete silence is something that will stick with me forever.
PRINCE HARRY: Um, I don’t know where I’d be now if I saw the stuff that I wanted to see, that I demanded to see. But I was a young…PRINCE HARRY: He took out the more, the more, uh, I guess descriptive photo, photographs. Um, I saw the photographs of the reflection of all the paparazzi in the window at the same time…PRINCE HARRY: Exactly. And that, you know, that still hurts, but you know, you can see that I saw the back of her blonde hair, you know, slumped on the back of the seat.
PRINCE HARRY: There’s a lot of things that are unexplained. Um, but I’ve been asked before whether I want to open up a, you know, another inquiry. I don’t really see the point at this stage. Um, but I think anyone who knows – again, this is the most amazing thing that, of over the last, what, five years, especially the last two years, the amount of people that I’ve met here in America, everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died.
PRINCE HARRY: I felt, I felt like I was part of the family. I felt like, I felt very different to what I’d felt before that. I felt slightly isolated, I felt slightly different. I don’t know what was going on and maybe that was again, the sort of the, the suppression of the trauma and the grief. But I had a proper laugh with my, with my, uh, my Gan-gan then. And, you know, she was so close to my father as well.
TOM BRADBY: I wanted to sort of pick up in your childhood, because one of the things that came across very clearly to me is your deep love for your dad and your dad’s deep love for you.TOM BRADBY: I mean, he calls you my darling boy, you reference it pretty frequently. I loved him. I needed him. You know, you talk about being buoyed by his praise. Right? Now, I maybe this isn’t surprising to people. Why should fact you loved your dad be surprising, but it is very, very clear.
And at some point, you, you, you say he sort of acknowledges that when you really have got mental health problems.TOM BRADBY: And your other criticism is that too often your interests are sacrificed to his interests, certainly when it comes to the press. No institution is immune to accountability or taking responsibility. So you can’t be immune to criticisms either. And you talk about, you know, scrutiny and, you know, my wife and I were scrutinized more than, probably, anybody else. I, I see a lack of scrutiny to my family towards a lot of the things that have happened in the last year.
PRINCE HARRY: Um, but that is, uh, a symptom of one of the problems where we’re not just talking about family relationships, we’re talking about an antagonist, which is the British press, specifically the tabloids who want to create as much conflict as possible. The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict.
And I think what will be quite shocking or surprising to people is that after our mother died, we were on different paths. Right? Two individuals who experienced a very similar traumatic experience, but dealt with it in two very different ways. PRINCE HARRY: It’s a question for them. They were more than happy to put out statements for less volatile things. My understanding is the reason they didn’t want to come out and say it wasn’t true would therefore lead to ‘Well if it wasn’t that, was it the other way round?’ When in fact you didn’t need to confess that it was the other way round. Right, tensions were high.
As almost like a shield to my anxiety. That was – that was the time of my life when – when I – you know, when I – when I grew my beard. Um, and I think William found it hard that other people told him to shave it off, and yet here I was on my wedding day wearing military uniform, no longer in the military, um, but thinking as though I – believing as though I should shave it off before my wedding day.
PRINCE HARRY: It was something – it was something the – it was something that the British press created, which they could then dissect or – again it builds – it creates competition as well. Right?PRINCE HARRY: The idea of the four of us being together was always a hope for me. [Yeah] 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. And that, when it plays out so publicly, you can’t hide from that.
PRINCE HARRY: Me and William, like I guess a lot of siblings, or maybe not, William and I used to fight all the time. Now the difference to that was we were kids, we used to shoot each other with BB guns, we used to have firework fights, all of this stuff that I talk about in the book. Um, what was different here was this level of frustration and, you know, I talk about the red mist that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him.
TOM BRADBY: Just reading it, like everyone’s gonna think, I think, who reads that, whatever the, you know, attitude they come to this story with and just find that heart-breaking.PRINCE HARRY: It is heart-breaking. This whole thing is completely, not just unnecessary, it’s incredibly sad. But there’s a – there’s a way through it, there’s a way out of it. And that’s what I’m focused on now. Um, but yes, it’s heart-breaking.
TOM BRADBY: You – you say you hoped discussions would be private, you’ve just put enormous amounts of private conversations in the public domain, and wouldn’t your brother say to you ‘Harry how could you do this to me, after everything we went through?’ Wouldn’t that be what he would say? PRINCE HARRY: That’ll be the accusation from the people that don’t understand, or haven’t – or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press solidly for well over a decade. So, I’m sorry that me owning my story and being able to tell my own story is upsetting to some people.
TOM BRADBY: Do you still think there is any realistic chance of a reconciliation that you have so clearly articulated that you want? But their approach, which is to sort of say; in a free country, you’ve gotta have a free press, people in power’, you, your family have gotta be scrutinised, someone’s gotta do it, we’ve just gotta rub along with them. That’s not wrong, is it? That’s not a crime, that attitude?TOM BRADBY: But the accepting of, you know, just – you can’t control it, that’s what I mean.
Let’s be clear, you would owe them a pretty abject apology if you’re not right, if it’s not proven cos …TOM BRADBY: Well look but these are grave allegations, and this is raising the stakes …PRINCE HARRY: Yes, no, 100%, yeah putting those – putting those claims in was – was an acceptance of the repercussions, but what is more worrying is that those repercussions are so obvious, I guess, across the British press that there’s no one else – if they wanna hold us and the rich and powerful to...
PRINCE HARRY: No I’m not permanently at war at all. I – I made peace with it; I was willing to let a lot of it go back in 2020 when we left the country. And if living in a new country, minding our own business during lockdown, not saying anything, not doing anything that would affect the British media at all, that every single day there’s a, you know, attack, well then, the assumption of it going away or moving on isn’t the case.
TOM BRADBY: One final question on the press quickly. You – you say they’re complicit, counter argument; it’s more complicated than that.
Certainly the media should. Right? [Mm] So, the way that I’ve learnt it through my own experience and for what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, yes, you’re right the key word is concern, which was troubling.
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