Prince Harry Responds to Awkward Interview Question About What Prince William Thinks of His Book
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Prince Harry just sat down for one of his two Sunday night interviews to promote his new memoir Spare, which leaked almost a week before its publication date. Much of what Harry chatted about during his interview with ITV's Tom Bradby had been discussed in the leaks from his book that bombarded the internet last week. But, Bradby did ask Prince Harry what his brother Prince William (who he accuses of physical assault) would think of his book. And it was all pretty awkward.
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amazon.comHere's how Bradby approached the question (via a transcript from the Daily Mail):
"You say you hoped discussions would be private, you've just put enormous amounts of private conversations in the public domain, and wouldn't your brother say to you 'Harry how could you do this to me, after everything we went through?' Wouldn't that be what he would say?"
In response, Harry said "He'd probably say all sorts of different things. But you know, for the last however many years, let's just focus on the last six years, the level of planting and leaking from other members of the family means that in my mind they have written countless books, certainly millions of words have been dedicated to trying to trash my wife and myself to the point of where I had to leave my country. The distorted narrative is that we wanted to leave to go and, you know, make money."
He continued by saying "We were dedicated to a life of service, as is proven by everything that we're doing now with the work that we do. And the proposal was very much on the table, publicly, which is we can't cope in this situation and we're gonna put our mental health first, we've asked for help and support.At that time I didn't fully understand how much - or how complicit the family were in that pain and suffering that was happening to my wife, and the one group of people that could've helped or stopped this from happening were the very people that were - that were encouraging it to happen."
Harry then explained, "I sit here now in front of you asking for a family. Not an institution. I want a family. And I understand how that might be hard for them to be able to separate the two, but to me everything that I've witnessed and experienced over the years, there has to be a separation."
Bradby pushed back on Harry a bit, saying, "You have railed against invasions of your privacy all your life, the—the accusation will be here are you invading the privacy of your most nearest and dearest without permission, that'll be the accusation, right?"
But Harry insisted, "That'll be the accusation from the people that don't understand, or haven't—or don't want to believe that my family have been briefing the press solidly for well over a decade. So, I'm sorry that me owning my story and being able to tell my own story is upsetting to some people."
He added, "But I have to rely on the truth, and I have done everything humanly possible in private for it not to get to this stage, but now I get to tell my story and as I said, Tom, none of this is intentionally to harm anyone in my family. But I certainly feel as though we sh...we—that we never needed to be here."
Tom then pushed back further, saying that Harry's portrait of William was "harmful to him" and said that William presumably has a side to the argument as well. In response, Harry called Bradby out for making "assumptions," and Bradby shot back with "Well I'm just—no, no, I'm just saying I think that would be the counter-narrative on the other side, that this isn't the truth, that the truth is more nuanced and all the rest of it. Right? That would be the defense."
Cut to Harry, who said that the truth is that there are "two sides to every story" and that he's put in a lot of work resolving his own trauma, and that "other people within my family could do with that support as well."
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