Prince Harry: The 60 Minutes Interview Transcript

Prince Harry may have stepped back from his royal duties in 2020, but he and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, certainly haven’t stepped away from the spotlight. Just last month, they appeared in a six-part Netflix documentary about their relationship and their decision to leave their royal lives behind. But now, the 38-year-old Prince Harry is telling his own story in a new memoir coming out Tuesday, called Spare, a nod to his backup role in the line of succession. The book is a stunning break with royal protocol. It’s a deeply personal account to Prince Harry’s decades-long struggle with grief after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and a revealing look at his fractured relationships with his father, King Charles, his stepmother, the Queen Consort Camilla, and his brother, Prince William, the heir to his spare.

The story will continue in a moment.

You write about a contentious meeting you had with him in 2021. You said, “I looked at Willy, really looked at him, maybe for the first time since we were boys. I took it all in: His familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me. His alarming baldness, more advanced than my own. His famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time, with age.” That’s pretty cutting.

I don’t see it as cutting at all. 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. None of anything that I’ve written and anything I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family, 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.

I think so many people around the world watched you and your brother grow up, and feel like you two were inseparable. And yet in reading the book, you have lived separate lives from the time your mom died. Even when you were in the same school, in high school-

Sibling rivalry.

… your brother told you, “Pretend we don’t know each other.”

Yeah. And at the time, it hurt. I couldn’t make sense of it. I was like, “What do you mean? We’re now at the same school. I haven’t seen you for ages. Now we get to hang out together.” He’s like, “No, no, no. When we’re at school, we don’t know each other.” And I took that personally. But yes, you’re absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head. We had a very similar traumatic experience, and then we dealt with it two very different ways.

William tried to talk to you occasionally about your mom, but as a child you couldn’t respond.

For me, it was never a case of, “I don’t want to talk about it with you.” I just don’t know how to talk about it.

How to talk about it.

I never, ever thought that maybe talking about it with my brother or with anybody else at that point would be therapeutic.

In August, 1997, Harry and William were vacationing in Scotland with their father. Harry was 12, William 15. They were asleep at Balmoral Castle on August 31, when Harry was awakened by his father, who told him his mother had been in a car crash in Paris. In the book you write, he says, “They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.” “These phrases remained in my mind like darts on a board,” you say. Did you cry?

No. No. Never shed a single tear, at that point. I was in shock. You’re 12 years old, sort of 7:00, 7:30 in the morning, early. Your father comes in, sits on your bed, puts his hand on your knee, and tells you there’s been an accident. I couldn’t believe.

And you write in the book that, “Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, but his hand did fall once more on my knee, and he said, ‘It’s going to be okay.'” But after that, nothing was okay for a long time.

No, nothing was okay.

Harry says his memories of the next few days are fragmented, but he does remember this: Greeting mourners outside Kensington Palace in London the day before his mother’s funeral.

(04:15)
When you see those videos now, what do you think?

I think it’s bizarre, because I see William and me smiling. I remember the guilt that I felt.

Guilt about-

The fact that the people that we were meeting were showing more emotion than we were showing. Maybe more emotion than we even felt.

They were crying, but you weren’t.

There was a lot of tears, and I talk about how wet people’s hands were, and I couldn’t understand it at first.

Their hands were wet from crying.

Their hands were wet from wiping their own tears away.

(04:48)
I do remember one of the strangest parts to it was taking flowers from people, and then placing those flowers with the rest of them, as if I was some sort of middle person for their grief, and that really stood out for me.

The funeral, on a cool September morning, was watched by as many as two and a half billion people around the world. Perhaps the most indelible image, Prince Harry and his brother walking behind their mother’s casket on its way to Westminster Abbey.

(05:19)
What do you remember about that walk?

How quiet it was. I remember the occasional wail and screaming of someone. I remember the horse hooves on the road, the bridles of the horses, the gun carriage, the wheels, the occasional gravel stone underneath your shoe, but mainly the silence.

After the service. Princess Diana’s body was brought for burial to her family’s ancestral estate, Althorp.

Once my mother’s coffin actually went into the ground, that was the first time that I actually cried. Yeah. There was never another time.

All through your teenage years, you didn’t cry about it.

No.

You didn’t believe she was dead.

For a long time, I just refused to accept that she was gone. Part of, “She would never do this to us.” But also part of, “Maybe this is all part of a plan.”

I mean, you really believed that maybe she had just decided to disappear for a time.

For a time, and then that she would call us, and we would go and join her. Yeah.

How long did you believe that?

Years. Many, many years. And William and I talked about it as well. He had had similar thoughts.

You write in the book, you say, “I’d often say it to myself first thing in the morning. ‘Maybe this is the day. Maybe this is the day that she’s going to reappear.'”

Yeah. Hope. I had huge amounts of hope.

He held on to that hope into adulthood. When Harry was 20, he asked to see the police report about the crash that killed his mother, her boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, while they were being pursued by paparazzi in a Paris tunnel.

(06:57)
The files contained photographs of the crash scene. Why did you want to see it?

Mainly proof. Proof that she was in the car, proof that she was injured, and proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones that were taking photographs of her lying half dead on the back seat of the car.

You write, “I hadn’t been aware before this moment,” talking about looking at the pictures of the crash scene, “that the last thing Mummy saw on this earth was a flash bulb.”

Yeah.

That’s what you saw in the pictures.

Well, the pictures showed the reflection of a group of photographers taking photographs through the window, and the reflection of the window was them.

He only saw some of the crash photos. His private secretary and advisor dissuaded him from looking at the rest.

All I saw was the back of my mum’s head slumped on the backseat. There were other more gruesome photographs, but I will be eternally grateful to him for denying me the ability to inflict pain on myself by seeing that, because that’s the kind of stuff that sticks in your mind forever.

Harry says he believed his mother might still be alive until he was 23 and visited Paris for the first time.

(08:14)
You told your driver, “I want to go to the tunnel where my mom died.”

Yeah. I wanted to see whether it was possible, driving at the speed that Henri Paul was driving, that you could lose control of a car and plow into a pillar, killing almost everybody in that car. “I need to take this journey. I need to ride the same route.”

The same tunnel, the same speed-

All of it.

… your mother was going.

Yup. Because William and I had already been told, the event was like a bicycle chain. If you remove one of those chains, the end result would not have happened. And the paparazzi chasing was part of that, but yet everybody got away with it.

Harry writes he and his brother weren’t satisfied with the results of a 2006 investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police, concluding Diana’s driver, Henri Paul, had been drinking, and the crash was a, quote, “tragic accident.”

William and I considered reopening the inquest, because there were so many gaps and so many holes in it, which just didn’t add up and didn’t make sense.

Would you still like to do that?

I don’t even know if it’s an option now, but no, I think … Would I like to do that now? That’s a hell of a question, Anderson.

Do you feel you have the answers that you need to have about what happened to your mom?

Truth be known, no. I don’t think I do, and I don’t think my brother does either. I don’t think the world does. Do I need any more than I already know? No. I don’t think it would change much.

Harry now says it wasn’t until he served in combat with the British Army in Afghanistan that he finally found purpose and a sense of normalcy.

My military career saved me in many regard.

How so?

Got me out of the spotlight from the UK press. I was able to focus on a purpose larger than myself, to be wearing the same uniform as everybody else, to feel normal for the first time in my life, and accomplish some of the biggest challenges that I ever had. I was training to become an Apache helicopter pilot. You don’t get a pass for being a prince.

The Apache doesn’t give a crap about who you are.

No. There’s no prince autopilot button that you can press and just takes you away. I was a really good candidate for the military. I was a young man in my twenties suffering from shock, but I was now in the front seat of an Apache, shooting it, flying it, monitoring four radios simultaneously, and being there to save and help anybody that was on the ground with a radio, screaming, “We need support. We need air support.” That was my calling. I felt healing from that, weirdly.

And that multitasking, the brain work of that, that felt good to you.

It felt like I was turning pain into a purpose. I 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 mum had died.

You say, “War didn’t begin in Afghanistan. It began in August, 1997.”

Yeah. The war for me, unknowingly, was when my mom died.

Who were you fighting?

Myself. I had a huge amount of frustration and blame towards the British press for their part in it.

Even at 12, at that young, you were feeling that toward the British press?

Yeah. I mean, it was obvious to us as kids, “The British press is part in our mother’s misery.” And I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily I never expressed to anybody, but I resorted to drinking heavily, because I wanted to numb the feeling, or I wanted to distract myself from whatever I was thinking, and I would resort to drugs as well.

Harry admits he smoked pot and used cocaine, and writes that in his late twenties, he felt hopeless and lost.

There was this weight on my chest that I felt for so many years, and I was never able to cry. So I was constantly trying to find a way to cry, and even sitting on my sofa and going over as many memories as I could muster up about my mum. And sometimes I’d watch videos online.

Of your mom?

Of my mum.

Hoping to cry?

Yup.

And you couldn’t?

I couldn’t.

He sought out help from a therapist for the first time seven years ago, and reveals he’s also tried more experimental treatments.

(12:47)
You write in the book about psychedelics: Ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushrooms.

Yeah. 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.

They showed you something. What did they show you?

For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield, the misery of loss. They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that my mother, that I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her, when in fact what she wanted was for me to be happy.

Prince Harry says he’s found that happiness with his wife in California, but as you’ll hear in a moment, he’s far from at peace with the royal family.

(13:44)
Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, is anything but spare in its unflattering portrayal of the royal family, especially his stepmother, Camilla, now the Queen Consort. She married then Prince Charles in 2005, though the two had been romantically involved on and off for decades. When Princess Diana famously referred to Camilla as the third person in her marriage, the British tabloids ran with it, and Prince Harry has never forgotten.

The story will continue in a moment.

She was the villain. She was the third person in the marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image.

You and your brother both directly asked your dad not to marry Camilla.

Yes.

Why?

We didn’t think it was necessary. We thought that it was going to cause more harm than good, and that if he was now with his person, that surely that’s enough. Why go that far when you don’t necessarily need to? We wanted him to be happy, and we saw how happy he was with her. So at the time it was, “Okay.”

You wrote that she started a campaign in the British press to pave the way for a marriage, and you wrote, “I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy.” How was she dangerous?

Because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image.

That made her dangerous.

That made her dangerous, because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information, and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that.

Harry says over the years, he was one of those bodies. He accuses Camilla and even his father at times of using him or William to get better tabloid coverage for themselves. Prince Harry writes Camilla, quote, “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.”

If you are led to believe, as a member of the family, that being on the front page, having positive headlines, positive stories written about you, is going to improve your reputation or increase the chances of you being accepted as monarch by the British public, then that’s what you’re going to do.

In his book, Harry writes that when he introduced Meghan Markle to his family in 2016, his father initially took a liking to her, but William was skeptical, disdainfully referring to Megan as an “American actress.” Though Harry doesn’t specify who, he says other members of the royal family were uneasy as well.

Right from the beginning, before they even had a chance to get to know her. And the UK press jumped on that, and here we are.

And what was that based on? That mistrust?

The fact that she was American, an actress, divorced, Black, biracial, with a Black mother. Those were just four of the typical stereotypes that becomes a feeding frenzy for the British press.

But all those things within the family also were sources of mistrust.

Yes. My family read the tabloids. It’s laid out at breakfast when everyone comes together. So whether you walk around saying you believe it or not, it’s still leaving an imprint in your mind. So if you have that judgment based on a stereotype right at the beginning, it’s very, very hard to get over that. And a large part of it for the family, but also the British press and numerous other people was like, “He’s changed. She must be a witch. He’s changed.” 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’d now found the love of my life, and I now had the opportunity to start a family with her.

Soon after their relationship became public, Harry insisted on putting out a statement condemning some of the tabloid coverage of Meghan, and what he called, quote, “the racial undertones of comment pieces.”

(17:47)
You write that your dad and your brother William were furious with you for doing that. Why?

They felt as though it made them look bad. They felt as though they didn’t have a chance or weren’t able to do that for their partners. What Meghan had to go through was similar, in some part, to what Kate and what Camilla went through. Very different circumstances, but then you add in the race element, which was what the press, British press jumped on straight away. I went into this incredibly naive. I had no idea the British press was so bigoted. Hell, I was probably bigoted before the relationship with Meghan.

You think you were bigoted before the relationship with Meghan?

I don’t know. Put it this way, I didn’t see what I now see.

They were married in May, 2018, in a ceremony that seemed to promise a more modern and inclusive royal family, and given the titles Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But behind the scenes, according to Harry, William’s mistrust of Meghan only worsened.

(18:49)
Did you ever try to meet with William and Kate to try to diffuse the tension?

Yup.

How did that meeting go?

Not particularly well.

In early 2019, Harry writes, the rancor between William and him exploded at Harry’s cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.

(19:08)
Your arguments with your brother became physical.

It was a buildup of frustration, I think, on his part. It was at a time where he was being told certain things by people within his office, and at the same time, he 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, and I was defending my wife, and he was coming for my wife. She wasn’t there at the time, but through the things that he was saying, I was defending myself, and we moved from one room into the kitchen, and his frustrations were growing, and growing, and growing. He was shouting at me. I was shouting back at him. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t pleasant at all. And he snapped, and he pushed me to the floor.

He knocked you over?

He knocked me over. I landed on the dog bowl.

You cut your back?

Yeah. I cut my back. I didn’t know about it at the time, but yeah. He apologized afterwards. It was a pretty nasty experience, but-

He asked you not to tell anybody, not to tell Meghan.

Yeah. And I wouldn’t have done. I didn’t, until she saw on my back. She goes, “What’s that?” I was like, “What?” I actually didn’t know what she was talking about. I looked in the mirror. I was like, “Oh, (beep).” Well, because I hadn’t seen it.

Meghan has said constant criticism and pressure led her in the winter of 2019 to contemplate suicide.

The thing that’s terrified me the most is history repeating itself.

You really feared that your wife Meghan-

Yes, I feared a lot the end result. The fact that I lost my mum when I was 12 years old could easily happen again to my wife.

In January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan announced they intended to, in their words, “step back as senior members of the royal family.” They moved to California three months later. Then there was the headline grabbing interview with Oprah Winfrey, and a deal with Netflix worth a reported $100 million. Critics say the Duke and Duchess are cashing in on their royal titles while they still can.

(21:19)
Why not renounce your titles as Duke and Duchess?

And what difference would that make?

One of the criticisms that you’ve received is that, “Okay, fine. You want to move to California. You want to step back from the institutional role. Why be so public? Why reveal conversations you’ve had with your father or with your brother?” You say you tried to do this privately.

And every single time I’ve tried to do it privately, there have been briefings, and leaking, and planting of stories against me and my wife. The family motto is, “Never complain, never explain,” but it’s just a motto ,and it doesn’t really hold.

There’s a lot of complaining and a lot of explaining.

Endless.

Being done through leaks.

Through leaks.

Prince Harry continues to claim he would never leak against his family.

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, 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.

Last month, the British tabloid, The Sun, published a vicious column about Meghan, written by a TV host. And he said, “I hate her. At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day where she is made to walk naked through the streets of every town in Britain, while the crowds chant, ‘Shame,’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” Did that surprise you?

Did it surprise me? No. Is it shocking? Yes. I mean, thank you for proving our point.

Has there been any response from the palace?

No. And there comes a point when silence is betrayal.

Harry has been back in the United Kingdom. He was in London last September for a charity event, when the palace announced his grandmother, the Queen, was under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

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, 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.

You were not invited on that plane?

I was not invited.

By the time Harry got to Balmoral on his own, the Queen was dead.

I walked into the hall, and my aunt was there to greet me, and she asked me if I wanted to see her. I thought about it for about five seconds, thinking, “Is this a good idea?” And I was like, “You know what? You can do this. You need to say goodbye.” So I went upstairs, took my jacket off, and walked in, and just spent some time with her alone.

Where was she?

She was in her bedroom. I was really happy for her, because she’d finished life. She’d completed life, and her husband was waiting for her, and the two of them were buried together.

As they had 25 years earlier, Harry and William found themselves walking together, but apart this time, behind their grandmother’s casket.

(24:31)
Do you speak to William now? Do you text?

Currently, no, but I look forward to us being able to find peace.

How long has it been since you spoke?

A while.

Do you speak to your dad?

We haven’t spoken for quite a while. No, not recently.

Can you see a day when you would return as a full-time member of the royal family?

No. I can’t see that happening.

In the book, you called this a full scale rupture. Can it be healed?

Yes. The ball is very much in their court, but Meghan and I have continued to say that we will openly apologize for anything that we did wrong. But every time we ask that question, no one’s telling us the specifics or anything. There needs to be a constructive conversation. One that can happen in private, that doesn’t get leaked.

I’d assume they would say, “Well, how can we trust you? How do we know that you’re not going to reveal whatever conversations we have in an interview somewhere?”

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.

It’s hard, I think, for anybody to imagine a family dynamic that is so Game of Thrones without dragons.

I don’t watch Game of Thrones, but there’s definitely dragons, and that’s, again, the third party, which is the British press. So ultimately, without the British press as part of this, we would probably still be a fairly dysfunctional family, like a lot are. But at the heart of it, there is a family, without question. And I really look forward to having that family element back. I look forward to having a relationship with my brother. I look forward to having a relationship with my father and other members of my family.

You want that?

That’s all I’ve ever asked for.

We reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. Its representatives demanded that before considering responding, 60 Minutes provide them with our report prior to airing it tonight, which is something we never do.

Prince Harry, on how being a father helps him understand his own mother.

I’m starting to comprehend the position that she was in.

At 60minutesovertime.com.