Some members of the British royal family may have avoided television on Sunday.
After a week of unprecedented and extremely damaging revelations taken from Prince Harry’s memoirs Preventive – accidentally sold early – a series of highly advertised interviews with the Duke of Sussex before the book’s official launch on Tuesday begins to air, with the potential to add more fuel to the rift He is now very public with his family.
“I don’t know if keeping quiet will ever make things better,” Harry told Tom Bradby on the British channel ITV, the first interview shown.
In the first moments of the 90-minute talk in LA, Harry said his family had shown “absolutely no willingness to reconcile” and that he had spent the past six years trying to convince them through chats, correspondence and emails. . “The saddest thing is that it never needed to be this way,” he said of this growing separation, culminating in his decision to go public with his grievances.
Discussing the “brother rivalry” with his brother, Harry stated that he had been on “different paths” with William since the death of their mother, Princess Diana. He also asserted that Kate Middleton and Markle didn’t get along in the first place. “I thought the four of us would bring William and me together… but I don’t think they ever expected me to be in a relationship with someone like Meghan, who has had a very successful career.”
He said that much of his family was reading the press – going so far as to accuse Queen Camilla of revealing private conversations in the press – and that they were “living in a tabloid bubble rather than reality”. He added that his brother and sister-in-law are absorbing what is written about Markle and the stereotypes of her being an “American actress, divorced, of mixed blood.” “. He then said it quickly became “Meghan vs Kate” with Middleton threatened by “a new kid on the block who is stealing the limelight”.
Harry insists that his brother’s team spent years “scratching” the image of himself and Meghan in the media and that their final decision to leave the US was turned into a false story that they do so simply to make money. “We have dedicated our lives to service,” he said.
One incident he denied was that he and Markle accused the royal family of racism during their sensational interview with Oprah Winfrey, asserting that it was the British press that made this clear. and actually they were referring to “unconscious bias” and not to racism.
Despite everything said and done and damned details in both the book and the interview, Harry says he “100%” believes in reconciling with his family, but says it that could only happen if the “main villain” that created the division – the British tabloid press – had nothing to do with it.
“I hope that the reconciliation between my family and us will have a ripple effect around the world,” he added.
Talk to Anderson Cooper for CBS’ 60 min: Interview with Prince Harry — for the first time with royalty in America Preventive – Harry explained that he is currently speaking publicly because “every time I try to do it privately, there are briefings, leaks and concoctions against my wife and me.” I.” In a clip released before the hour-long TV special aired, Harry claimed that journalists had previously been “stealed” by Buckingham Palace, who would later deny it. released a statement in defense of him and Meghan Markle. “There will be times when silence is treacherous.”
Harry also details how he felt when his mother, Princess Diana, died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, and the days that followed. He explained to Cooper that after his father told him the tragic news, he struggled to cope and process what had happened. Harry said: “For a long time I refused to accept that she – she was gone. “Partly, you know, she would never do this to us, but maybe this was part of the plan.”
Trying to grieve, Harry said he was addicted to alcohol, drugs and hallucinations. Years later, at the age of 20, he said he looked at the police report and some photos of the accident to try to make sense of it. Harry remained hopeful that his mother might be alive until he visited Paris at the age of 23 and asked the driver to go through the tunnel where his mother died, saying: “I need to make this journey. . I need to go the same route.
Harry added that he and his brother were not satisfied with the results of the police investigation into the 2006 crash and considered reopening the case “because there are so many loopholes and so many holes in it. That neither adds up nor makes sense. They never followed it.
In 2022, before Queen Elizabeth II died, Harry told Cooper that his family had not included him in their plans to go see her. At the time, Harry was in London for a charity event when it was announced that the Queen was under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
“I asked my brother – I said, ‘What’s your plan? How did you and Kate get up there?’ And then, a few hours later, you know, all the family members living in the Windsor and Ascot area got on the plane together,” he told Cooper. “An airplane has 12, 14, maybe 16 seats.” Harry says he was not invited and the Queen passed away when he arrived at Balmoral Castle.
Third interview — with Michael Strahan cho Good Morning America — will be broadcast on January 9.
The TV appearance comes after several days of extremely personal statements and incidents of domestic discord taken from the first readings of Preventive. Besides describing how he lost his virginity (allegedly in a field behind a pub with an “old woman” when he was 17), Harry also describes multiple episodes of drug use , including trying out magic mushrooms at a party held at Courteney Cox’s home. In a passage that sparked widespread criticism, Harry said that, as an Apache helicopter co-pilot in Afghanistan, he had killed 25 Taliban soldiers, a claim that veterans say could increases his personal security risk.
However, the most provocative revelation, which led to front page headlines across the UK and around the world, concerns the alleged 2019 fight with William, who he accused of calling Markle a “difficult,” “rude,” and “corrosive,” leading to an altercation that saw Harry “knock down to the floor,” where he landed “on top of his child’s bowl.” dog, the bowl cracked under my back, shards of it cut into me.”
Details from Preventive coming just a few weeks after Netflix Harry & Meghan documentary series in which the prince first took aim at the royal family alleging that William’s team had given stories about the Sussexes to the British press to distract from the negative attention the Cambridges were then receiving. receive.
So far there has been no comment from Buckingham Palace.
Carly Thomas contributed to this report.
Update 6:15pm on January 8th: Added quote from 60 minutes interview.
