Prince Harry talks to CBS's Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. Photo / via CBS
Prince Harry has launched a blistering attack on Queen Consort Camilla, branding her a “villain” in his interview with CBS’s Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes.
It was the Duke’s second sit-down interview today after speaking with ITV journalist and long time friend, Tom Bradby, ahead of the launch of his book Spare.
Host Cooper questioned Harry about several damaging allegations he made about Camilla in the book’s pages.
After revealing in his book that he and William “begged” their father Charles not to marry Camilla, Harry accused his stepmother of “trading information” with the press in an attempt to get more positive stories written about herself.
He then sensationally suggested that her “connections” with the media would end up with “people or bodies left in the street”.
“She was the villain,” Harry said. “She was the third person in their marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image.”
“You and your brother both directly asked your dad not to marry Camilla,” asked Cooper.
“Yes,” replied Harry.
In the interview, Cooper asked Harry about a “contentious meeting” the prince had with William 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,” the Duke replied.
”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, 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.”
Harry also told Cooper about a fight he had with his brother in 2019 that quickly turned physical.
In the book Spare, Harry claims the Prince of Wales, “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”. Harry claimed the attack left him with visible injuries to his back.
“It was a build-up of frustration, I think, on his part,” says the Duke.
”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. He had a few issues, which were based not on reality.
”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.
“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.”
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 9, 2023
Prince Harry says he hasn’t spoken with his brother or father in “quite a while.” https://t.co/OSaUYOja2F pic.twitter.com/RVyVrl978M
”He knocked me over. I landed on the dog bowl.
”I cut my back. I didn’t know about it at the time. But he apologised afterwards. It was a pretty nasty experience.”
Cooper asks if William told Harry not to tell anyone about the altercation.
”Yeah, and I wouldn’t have done. And, I didn’t until she [Meghan] saw on my back. She goes, ‘What’s that?’ I was like, ‘Huh, what?’ I actually didn’t know what she was talking about. I looked in the mirror. I was like, ‘Oh s***’. Well, because I hadn’t seen it.”
Harry told Cooper that prior to the Queen’s death, he had contacted William to synchronise travel details to get to Balmoral.
“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 in the Windsor and Ascot area were jumping on a plane together, a plane with 12, 14 maybe 16 seats.
“I was not invited.”
By the time Harry arrived at Balmoral, the Queen had died.
Prince Harry was in London when he learned the Queen was under medical supervision. He says his family got on a plane without him. By the time Harry reached Balmoral Castle on his own, the Queen had died. https://t.co/0IpSq6nOZj pic.twitter.com/HvBYG8bWoR
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 9, 2023
Harry revealed to 60 Minutes he doesn’t text or call his brother, William.
“Currently, no. But I look forward to - I look forward to us being able to find peace,” Harry said.
He said he and his father Charles haven’t spoken for a while either.
He also said he doesn’t see himself returning to being a full-time member of the royal family.
When Cooper asked if the rift between the couple and the royal family could be healed after publication of the book, Harry remained positive.
“The ball is very much in their court but, you know, Meghan and I have continued to say that we will openly apologise 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.”
Cooper replied: “I assume they would say, ‘Well, how can we trust you how do we know that you’re not gonna 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,” said a defensive Duke.
”It’s hard, I think, for anybody to imagine a family dynamic that is so Game of Thrones without dragons,” said Cooper, referencing the popular series.
”I don’t watch Game of Thrones,” said Harry, slightly awkwardly, but added: “But there’s definitely dragons. And that’s again the third party which is the British press.
”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?” asked Cooper.
”That’s all I’ve ever asked for,” said Harry.
Harry told Cooper he had a hard time accepting the death of his mother, Diana, and believed it may have been part of some elaborate “plan”.
“For a long time, I just refused to accept that she was gone,” Harry told 60 Minutes.
“Part of, you know, she would never do this to us, but also part of, maybe this is all part of a plan.”
Cooper replied: “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 that we would go and join her, yeah,” the Duke replied.
”How long did you believe that?” Cooper asked.
”Years. Many, many years. And William and I talked about it as well. He had similar thoughts.”
60 Minutes reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. Palace representatives demanded that before considering commenting we provide them with our report prior to it airing, which is something 60 Minutes does not do. https://t.co/JK98Zzaopk pic.twitter.com/VylhJ7SIz9
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 9, 2023
Cooper then said: “You write in the book, ‘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 gonna reappear’.”
”Yeah, hope. I had huge amounts of hope,” the Duke replied.
Harry also revealed he went through files on his mother’s death to look for “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 - photographs of her lying half dead on the back seat of the car.”
Cooper says: “You write in the book, ‘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’.
”The pictures showed the reflection of a group of photographers taking photographs through the window, and the reflection on the window was them,” said the Duke.
In his book, Prince Harry reveals that one argument with Prince William over Meghan Markle became physical, and William pushed Harry to the ground. https://t.co/pg1gPEJpyd pic.twitter.com/sWRR6JnnxB
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 9, 2023
”All I saw was the back of my mum’s head - slumped on the back seat. 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 told Anderson Cooper that he only cried once over the death of his mother.
He said he felt like he was “unable to show any emotion” in public after her death in 1997, and that he had only shed tears when she was buried.
“My military career saved me in many regards,” said the Duke.
”It 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. You know, 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,” joked Cooper.
”No, there’s no prince autopilot button you can press and it takes you away,” the Duke replied, laughing.
”I was a really good candidate for the military. I was a young man in my 20s 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.
”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.”
When asked by Cooper why he and Meghan hadn’t renounced their Duke and Duchess titles, Harry responded: “And what difference would that make?
“And every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain. But it’s just a motto.”
Prince Harry’s explosive memoir Spare will be officially released around the world this week following no less than four television interviews expected to air some of the bombshell allegations his book makes about the royal family - and his own indiscretions including losing his virginity and drug taking.
The first - an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby - screened in the UK today.
Harry told 60 Minutes has used psychedelic drugs to deal with grief
”You write in the book about psychedelics, Ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushrooms,” says Cooper.
”I would never recommend people to do this recreationally,” says the Duke.
”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?” asks Cooper.
”For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield, the misery of loss. 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.”
Earlier today in the ITV interview, Prince Harry acknowledged his family will likely be watching and told Bradby: “I love my family, I love the monarchy. I just wish at the second darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me.”
He went on to say: “I’m really grateful I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.
“It never needed to be to this way, it never needed to get to this point.”
Prince Harry tells Bradby that the royal family motto of “never complain, never explain ... was just a motto”.
”There was a lot of complaining and there was a lot of explaining and it continues now,” he says.
He went on to reveal the immense grief of his mother’s death and how it haunts him still.
And confessed to how he really felt about Camilla, begging his father not to marry her.
He also detailed what it was like growing up with William and how his big brother and wife Kate reacted to Harry’s own choice to wed Meghan Markle.
Bradby asked the Prince why he chose to tell his story in such unsparing detail.
“Thirty-eight years, 38 years of having my story told by so many different people, with intentional spin and distortion felt like a good time to own my story and be able to tell it for myself,” he replied.
”I don’t think that if I was still part of the institution that I would have been given this chance to. So, I’m actually really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.”
The prince was asked about losing his virginity but quickly moved on to a discussion about his drug taking.
Bradby notes the prince’s memoir details much about his drug use. Harry replies that he felt it was “... important to acknowledge.”
Asked if he accepted the fact that he was taking class A drugs is of public interest for the press he shared, “My life in itself has been put through a blender as such so I think the lines have been blurred so much.
“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 scrutinised more than, probably, anybody else. I see a lack of scrutiny to my family towards a lot of the things that have happened in the last year.”
Prince Harry moved on to the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
He recalled the moment he was told by his father, King Charles of her death at Balmoral Castle, while still a child.
He tells Bradby: “I began silently pleading with Pa, or God, or both, “No, no, no.”
His father looks down before explaining: “There were complications. Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy.
“He always called me darling boy, but he was saying it quite a lot now.
“His voice was soft. He was in shock, it seemed. ‘Oh, hospital?’ “Yes, with a head injury.”
He remembers his father telling him: “They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”
He admits he has compassion for his father having to sit with the knowledge that Diana had died and having to figure out how he was going to tell his two young sons.
Bradby asks, “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,” Harry replies.
He goes on to recall: “Those men who chased her, they never stopped shooting her as she lay between the seats unconscious. Not one of them were checking on her, comforting her, they were just shooting, shooting, shooting.”
Bradby explained how in his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry recalls seeing his mother in his dreams and saying “Mummy, Mummy, is that you?”
Prince Harry told the interviewer: “I refer to it as post-traumatic stress injury because I’m not a person with a disorder. I know I’m not.”
He says “it still hurts” when he thinks about the photographers who chased her.
Prince Harry explained how his memoir begins by detailing the death of his mother.
”I never want to be in that position, part of the reason why we are here now, I never ever want to be in that position. I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad,” he tells Bradby.
”And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father.”
He added: “I lost a lot of memories. on the other side of this mental wall, which I think is so relatable for so many people who’ve experienced loss, especially as a youngster, that inability to be able to like drag the memories back over. I think a lot of it was a defence mechanism.”
Prince Harry says how it was “very strange” for him and his brother, William, 12 and 14 at the time, going on walkabouts outside Kensington Palace where crowds of mourners flooded the streets after his mother’s death.
”Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum. And the two closest people to her, the two most-loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment,” he tells Bradby.
Discussing the moment the brothers followed behind Princess Diana’s coffin as the world watched on, the Duke of Sussex says:
“There’s absolutely no way that I would let him do that by himself. And there’s absolutely no way that he would let me do that by myself. It was, if it was role reversal.”
He adds: “Just recently I was, we, my brother and I were walking the same route, and we sort of joked to each other and said, ‘at least we know the way’.”
In a scene from the interview’s shocking trailer, Prince Harry revealed the experiences on the day of his mother’s funeral.
“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace.
“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling.”
He adds that he and William noticed people’s hands were wet with tears.
“Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment.” he said.
The Duke of Sussex said it was “heartbreaking” that he “simply didn’t believe” his brother when he told him he wanted Harry to be happy.
But at their grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, William employed an old “secret code” used between the brothers to cement his wishes: “On mummy’s life.”
In his book Spare, Harry describes the phrase as a “universal password” or a “secret code” they had used for 25 years “for when one of us needed to be heard”.
”It is heartbreaking. 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. But yes, it’s heartbreaking.”
The Duke of Sussex says his brother Prince William and he told his father on the question of Camilla, the Queen Consort:
“Please don’t marry her, just be together”.
He shared while he and his brother William “... wanted our father to be happy and he seemed to be very, very happy with her ...” they implored their father not to go ahead and marry Camilla, the woman who had cast a shadow over their parents’ entire relationship.
“We asked him not to get married. He chose to and that’s his decision. But the two of them were and remain very happy together,” he says.
He adds that now he is genuinely at peace with their marriage.
Harry said his relationship with Meghan faced scrutiny from Prince William and Kate but his brother “never tried to dissuade” him from marrying her.
He confessed William did hold “some concerns” from early on, warning his little brother that “this was going to be very hard”.
Harry told Bradby he didn’t fully comprehend what William was saying but speculated that William might have been foreshadowing the intense media reaction.
He said there was “a lot of stereotyping that was happening” about Meghan from William and Kate, admitting he was guilty of that as well, at the beginning.”
Harry explained the stereotype as “American actress”.
“Some of the things that my brother and sister-in-law – some of the way that they were acting or behaving definitely felt to me as though unfortunately that stereotyping was causing a bit of a barrier to them really sort of, you know, introducing or welcoming her in.”
The Duke of Sussex has claimed there was a “horrible reaction” from his family members when the Queen died.
He told Bradby: “The day that she died was just a really, really horrible reaction from my family members.
”And then by all accounts, well certainly from what I saw and what other people probably experienced, was they were on the back foot and then the briefings and the leaking and the planting.
”I was like ‘we’re here to celebrate the life of Granny and to mourn her loss, can we come together as a family?’ but I don’t know how we collectively – how we change that.”
Harry insists his family has “shown no willingness to reconcile”.
The Duke of Sussex said he had “written letters and sent emails” to his relatives but had been told he was “imagining it”.
”I want reconciliation, but first there needs to be some accountability. You can’t just continue to say to me that I’m delusional and paranoid when all the evidence is stacked up.
”I was genuinely terrified about what’s gonna happen to me. And then we have a 12-month transition period, and everyone doubles down. My wife shares her experience. And instead of backing off, both the institution and the tabloid media in the UK doubled down.”
Harry has revealed his hurt at William’s move to shun him when he joined his older brother at Eton, saying his experience as a parent of two children with a similar age gap has taught him that a younger sibling can be annoying and he now realises his brother needed space.
Bradby puts it to Prince Harry that his account of his brother, the Prince of Wales, begins with deep love.
”Love but also separation. Which I think will really surprise people, the fact that we grew up – I mean our mother was dressing us in the same clothes to start with, William didn’t like that, I think I seem to remember I found it quite funny, but the older, younger sort of sibling rivalry as such, now is only really becoming, I guess real to me.”
The Duke of Sussex says if it weren’t for his time in therapy he would have fought back when William allegedly ripped his necklace off and threw him to the ground in a furious attack sparked by issues with the Duchess of Sussex in 2019.
Harry described how he and William used to “fight all the time like a lot of siblings”.
He added: “I can pretty much guarantee today that if I wasn’t doing therapy sessions like I was and being able to process that anger and frustration that I would’ve fought back, one hundred per cent.”
In an excerpt read from his autobiography, the duke alleged that William urged him to fight back, saying:
“Come on, hit me, you’ll feel better if you hit me … Come on, we always used to fight, you’ll feel better if you hit me’.”
Harry said he replied: “No, only you’ll feel better if I hit you. Please, just leave.”
Turning the tables on his interviewer, the Duke of Sussex asks Bradby whether he would like to talk about losing his own virginity.
The awkward conversation was raised due to revelations made by the prince in his memoir where he details some of the escapades of his youth.
Bradby says of the recount in the book: “I won’t, uh, spoil it, ‘cause there’s a lot, there’s an awful lot of, um, material in there. You know, there’s you losing your virginity. I think, you know …?”
Harry says: “Apparently.”
”Sensitive viewers turn away now. Um …,” Bradbury continues.
”It’s four lines or something,” says Harry.
“Right …,” Bradbury replies.
”If that,” Harry continues.
Bradby says: “OK. Oh, I’m just scrubbing it from my memory still. But it’s OK.”
After this awkward exchange, the prince asks: “We can talk about you losing your virginity, if you want?”
To which Bradby replies: “No, that’s, that’s, let’s not do that um, er, let’s not go there.”
The Duke of Sussex says he does not believe his father or brother would read his book - but he holds out hope that they might.
”I really hope they do, but I don’t think they will,” he said.
”And with regard to this interview I don’t know whether they’ll be watching this or not, 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.”
But he went on to launch an extraordinary broadside at his family, referencing “abuse” as he defended speaking out.
“I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse. Right? So I don’t know how staying silent is ever gonna make things better. That’s genuinely what I believe.”
He said the Royal Family was “complicit” in the “pain and suffering” that he and Meghan faced.
But he reiterated, despite what his latest, very public conversations and book may suggest, he is not trying to harm his family.
He said his family has been “briefing the press for well over a decade”, including stories about him and his wife and apologised if “owning his story” causes upset, saying “none of this is to intentionally harm anyone in my family”.
Given the retrospective nature of everything Prince Harry has put out in recent months and his pending memoir, interviewer Tom Bradby asked the duke if perhaps he was “looking back too much”?
But Harry defended their necessity and significance, especially for his children.
“We always knew that these two projects, both the Netflix documentary and the book – one being our story and one very much being my story – they were look-back projects.
”They were necessary, they were essential for historical fact and significance.
”I don’t want my kids or other people of that age growing up thinking ‘Oh wow, this is what happens’, like no that’s not what happened. This is what happened.
”There are two sides to every story, so it’s been – it’s been a painful process – cathartic at times, but going back over old ground to be able to get these projects right has taken a lot of energy, and there’s a lot of relief now that both these projects have been complete.
”Now we can focus on looking forward and I’m excited about that. So no, I’m not stuck in the past and I will never be stuck in the past.”
As featured in a preview trailer, the 90-minute sit-down also covers Harry’s decision over attending his father King Charles’ coronation and revealed his hope for reconciliation.
He says of the pending event, “there is a lot that can happen between now and then but you know, the door is always open.
“The ball is in their court,” he says.
Washington Post: The mindset should be - less fuss, more fun with company.