Well.
Prince Harry has done what we all want to do after Christmas. He’s gone on the television in the US and the UK and bitched about his family.
Go on sweetie xxx
Did he want his father to marry Camilla? Not really, no.
Did his older brother (who happens to be the future King of England) push him and then ask him not to tell his wife about the time he pushed him? Absolutely yes.
Did Granny say Harold could have a beard for his wedding but Willy could not and everyone’s still kinda cut up about it? It would appear so.
The interviews were filmed ahead of the release of Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, which has already been dominating headlines for days. While the book doesn't come out until Wednesday, it accidentally went on sale early in Spain, and okay but whoever made this 'mistake' deserves a Nobel Prize for Services To The Gossip. Because I needed to know that Prince Harry lost his virginity to an older woman who liked horses and treated him like a stallion as a matter of urgency.
On Sunday night in the UK, ITV aired the creatively named Harry: The Interview. Prince Harry spoke candidly to journalist Tom Bradby, who he's known for over 20 years and who famously asked Meghan Markle how she was coping during the couple's 2018 trip to South Africa.
Unfortunately, an American audience can't possibly understand an interview that isn't conducted by Oprah Winfrey and/or Anderson Cooper, so on Sunday night in the US, CBS aired an entirely different Prince Harry interview on 60 Minutes.
It covered almost identical subject matter and Prince Harry literally appeared to be wearing the same thing, yet on Monday night, Australians will be asked to make the impossible decision of which Prince Harry interview to watch and also it's the first night of The Bachelor and I've just come back from holidays I can't handle this kind of stress in my life.
I CAN'T POSSIBLY WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS.
But alas - do not fret. Because with the help of some dodgy internet behaviour I can't disclose for legal reasons, and which has definitely filled my laptop with viruses, I have watched both interviews so I can recap them as a selfless service to the people.
We begin with Tom Bradby telling Prince Harry he needed a "long lie down" after reading Spare, explaining the book "takes things to a whole new level." While this is the entry point to a detailed and at times tense interview, Bradby's eyes are communicating one thing his words are not: thank you.
We know, it's very exciting. Image: ITV.
Bradby is an excellent journalist but he is also a human being and you can't tell me he didn't do a little wee when he got the email offering him an exclusive interview with Prince Harry about... literally everything.
Harry shares that after 38 years of having his story told by other people with intentional spin and distortion, it felt like it was time to tell it in his words.
And every time he tells his story in his words we learn more petty details about the royal family so pls sir, go on.
He's asked how he justifies the level of disclosure in this book - what it reveals about specific members of the royal family and their interactions. To Harry, while the royal family's motto is "never complain, never explain," there's been a lot of that going on, it just hasn't been direct.
According to the prince, he's spent six years trying to get through to his family privately. "Letters, emails..." he says, "and the response is: no this is not what’s happening, you’re imagining it."
Bradby goes back to the night Harry was told his mother had died. We hear an excerpt from the audiobook where Harry describes Charles sitting on his bed in Balmoral and telling him Diana, who was 36 at the time, had been in a car accident.
"His voice was soft. He was in shock, it seemed," he reads. "'Oh, hospital?' 'Yes, with a head injury.' Did he mention paparazzi? Did he say she’d been chased? I don’t think so. I can’t swear to it but probably not. The paps were such a problem for Mummy, for everyone, it didn’t need to be said. I thought again, 'injured but she’s okay, she’s been taken to hospital, they’ll fix her head, and we’ll go and see her. Today, tonight at the latest'. 'They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.'"
For years after that night, until he was in his early 20s, Harry was convinced his mother was in hiding and would be coming back. It wasn't until his personal secretary, Jamie, showed him photos of the accident, that he started to believe she was really gone.
Prince Harry said that for years after his mother Princess Diana’s death, he believed that she had disappeared and would one day return. Searching for proof, Harry asked to see the police files of the crash that caused his mother’s death. https://t.co/Pq5F644mVs pic.twitter.com/s7MRFcuuU5
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 9, 2023
"By this point, I was starting to understand the involvement of the paparazzi chasing her and to this day, I will remain eternally grateful for Jamie for showing me - what he believed I needed to see - but removing the stuff that he knew I didn't need to see," Harry says.
Speaking to Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Harry says he thought his mother's disappearance was perhaps "all part of a plan". Cooper quotes a passage in the book where Harry writes, "maybe this is the day. Maybe this is the day that she's gonna reappear."
When he was 23, Harry asked a driver in Paris to take him through the tunnel where his mother had died, at the exact same speed she was travelling. He tells Badby he couldn't believe that it was "just a short, simple tunnel... [there's] no reason anyone should ever die inside it."
Over time, he learnt the event of Diana's death was like a "bicycle chain, if you remove one thing, the outcome is different. Including the paparazzi."
In both interviews, Harry concedes that there's a lot about his mother's death that isn't explained, but he's not sure there's any point opening up another inquiry. At the same time, he believes certain people got away with what happened.
Badby moves on to several salacious details in the book, including Harry's use of drugs and alcohol. "There's a fair amount of drugs," he says, "marijuana, magic mushrooms and cocaine, I mean that's going to surprise people."
Tom... pls.
I don't mean to be rude but the fact that an obscenely wealthy, privileged young man in London did cocaine a few times is the least surprising thing I've heard as of late.
Spare, Badby says, is "consistently scathing of Camilla," and please go on.
Harry explains that both he and William were happy for Charles to be with Camilla, but asked him not to marry her. He believed she was "dangerous," because of her connections with the British press and her determination to "rehabilitate her image," and on 60 Minutes, Harry tells Cooper his stepmother "sacrificed me on her personal PR altar".
OMG. NO.
It's at this point that the conversation moves to Harry's older brother William. He says William didn't want to know him once he got to school at Eton, a dynamic he now understands as he watches his daughter Lili's one-sided obsession with older brother Archie.
The sibling rivalry was particularly pronounced during Harry's wedding to Meghan, when he went to the Queen to ask permission to keep his beard for the wedding.
This is not a normal scenario. But... continue. Image: ITV.
The Queen said yes, probably because she was literally like 90 and didn't give a single f*ck, but William said no.
Sir... with all due respect no one asked you.
Apparently before his wedding, William had a beard and was told he had to shave it off. So yeah. The two men argued about facial hair and honestly weirder fights have been had around weddings so, touché.
After the wedding, the two couples - William and Kate and Harry and Meghan - attempted a session to move past any tensions between them. According to Harry, "it went so wrong that Kate gripped the sides of a leather chair so tightly her fingers were white," and okay but that's me now just watching this so hard relate.
I've been sweating since this started.
He tells Badby that Kate wanted an apology for Meghan describing an instance of Kate’s forgetfulness as 'baby brain', which feels... fair. It doesn't, however, sound like there was any reconciliation, and William continued to be mistrusting of Meghan.
Harry recalls the moment his brother physically attacked him, after William aired concerns about Meghan and Harry defended her. We hear how William ripped Harry's necklace, causing him to land on the dog bowl behind him, and then implored his brother to hit him back.
But in a surprising disclosure, Harry shares that at his grandfather's funeral in 2021, William told him, "I love you Harold, I just want you to be happy. I swear on Mummy’s life, I just want you to be happy."
Harry, however, didn't believe him.
"It's heartbreaking," Badby says, before asking an ingenious question: "what would you say to William if he is watching this?"
Yes you clever man you deserve all the awards.
Just one more and I'll stop (I won't). Image: ITV.
Harry insists that both his father and his brother won't read the book, and maintains that he wants to have a private conversation with them in order to reconcile.
We then learn that the family didn't come together after the Queen's death, a detail Harry elaborates on in his 60 Minutes interview.
He explains that when he found out the Queen had been placed under medical supervision, he contacted William to arrange plans to be by her side at Balmoral Castle.
"I asked my brother, I said, 'What are your plans? How are you and Kate getting up there?' And then, a couple of hours later, you know, all of the family members that live within the Windsor and Ascot area were jumping on a plane together, a plane with 12, 14, maybe 16 seats," he tells Cooper.
"I was not invited."
By the time he got to Balmoral, the Queen had died.
In one of the most moving parts of both interviews, Harry tells Badby: "I sit here in front of you asking for a family. Not an institution."
Oh darling.
"I have done everything humanely possible in private for it to not come to this," he says. "We never needed to be here."
At this point, Badby challenges Harry, arguing that the portrait of William in Spare is "harmful," and if he could, William would probably say he found Harry "emotional, defensive, he couldn’t get through to him, and the truth is more nuanced."
He doubles down, making it clear that Harry has burnt bridges by being so honest in the book, and then distills the perspectives between the two sides of this conflict perfectly. Badby quotes the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, and suggests the royal family have accepted they cannot change the press.
Harry argues his family control the press, and they don't want to change that relationship because it benefits them.
Again, Badby challenges him. "At this moment, you're the most famous person on the planet," he says. "If it's not tabloids, it'll be people on Twitter. You can't fight this."
Harry, clearly, disagrees, and when Badby raises the infamous Jeremy Clarkson column from last month that described "dreaming of the day when [Meghan] is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, 'Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her," Harry says those words proved his point. And when there was no response from the palace, the silence was deafening.
Badby ultimately asks Harry if he's happy, and Harry responds that he's in a better place than he’s ever been. "I've got two beautiful kids and an amazing wife," he says. "I've never felt this kind of happiness."
On 60 Minutes, Harry said he hasn't spoken to his father or brother for a while, and he wants a "constructive conversation that doesn't get leaked."
He looks forward to mending those relationships, and says he and Meghan openly apologise for anything they did wrong.
It's too much. It's simply too much gossip for a Monday night. I'm sweating.
But if there's one thing I'll say about Harry, it's that the man delivers. On the gossip. Every time. While the rest of us tell our family secrets to strangers while we're drunk FOR FREE, Harry has built a livelihood on his generational trauma.
I'll be buying Spare for the low-key ridiculous price of $59.99, and it will be worth every cent.
For more from Clare Stephens, you can follow her on Instagram or TikTok.
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