Prince Harry isn’t avoiding the harsh realities of life as a British royal.
The Duke of Sussex spoke candidly with Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes,” which aired on CBS on Sunday. The interview teased the “unflinching honesty” of Harry’s upcoming memoir “Spare,” which will be released on Jan. 10 and will detail his life before and after he and his wife, Duchess Meghan, stepped down as senior members of the royal family.
During his interview with Cooper, Harry discussed his relationships with members of the royal family, including his father’s wife, Queen Consort Camilla, as well as his years-long grief over the death of his mother, Princess Diana, when he was 12 years old.
With his memoir, Prince Harry never intended to “hurt” his family.
Despite the candour of his upcoming memoir, which includes a description of brother Prince William, Harry told Cooper that “Spare” is his way of putting the record straight about family tensions.
“None of what I’ve written or included is ever intended to hurt my family,” Harry stated. “But it does provide a complete picture of the situation as we were growing up, and it also dispels the myth that my wife was somehow responsible for destroying the relationship between these two brothers.”
In response to criticism that he has been too “public” since resigning from his royal duties, Harry claimed that the royal family’s correspondence with the media has thwarted his attempts at privacy.
“Every time I’ve tried to do it privately, there have been briefings, leaks, and story planting against me and my wife,” Harry said. “The family motto is ‘never complain, never explain,’ but that’s all it is.”
“So now, in an attempt 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 lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalises its readers, potentially causing harm to my family, my wife, and my children,” he continued.
Prince Harry reflects on the ‘guilt’ he felt after Princess Diana’s death.
Prince Harry also discussed the emotional fallout from the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a fatal car accident when he was 12 years old. Harry recalled meeting mourners outside Kensington Palace in London with Prince William and recalling “the guilt that I felt.”
“The fact that the people we were meeting were displaying more emotion than we were, perhaps more emotion than we even felt,” Harry explained, adding that he felt like a “middle person” for people’s grief.
Prince Harry discusses his use of psychedelic drugs to cope with the trauma of Princess Diana’s death.
The Duke of Sussex spoke with Cooper in depth about his mother’s death and the healing process. Aside from therapy, Harry has pursued experimental medicinal treatments such as the psychedelics Ayahuasca and psilocybin.
Ayahuasca is a plant-based psychedelic made by “prolonged heating or boiling of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub,” according to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation. Psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, is a “naturally occurring substance that is consumed for its hallucinogenic effects.”
“I would never recommend doing this for fun,” Harry said. “However, if done with the right people and if you are suffering from a great deal of loss, grief, or trauma, these things have a way of working as medicine.”
Harry claimed that taking these drugs helped him understand his own relationship with grief. “They dispelled the notion that I needed to cry in order to show my mother how much I missed her. When all she really wanted was for me to be happy, “Harry stated.
Prince Harry and William did not believe it was necessary for King Charles and Camilla to marry.
Prince Harry discussed his relationship with Camilla, Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, who married his father, King Charles III, in 2005.
Harry and Prince William requested that Charles not marry Camilla. “We didn’t believe it was necessary,” Harry explained. “We assumed it would do more harm than good and that if he was now with his person, that would be sufficient. Why go to such lengths when you don’t have to?”
He went on to say: “We wanted him to be happy, and we could see how content he was with her. So it was ‘Okay’ at the time.”
Camilla’s need to “rehabilitate her image” in the media, however, came at a cost, according to Harry, because of “the connections that she was forging within the British press.”
“If you’re 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 your chances of being accepted as monarch by the British public,” Harry said.
