Prince Harry says he and Prince William believed Diana faked her own death

Prince Harry has revealed he and his brother once believed their mother, Princess Diana, faked her own death.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper for CBS’ 60 Minutes – which aired Sunday (8 January) – the Duke of Sussex spoke openly about the death of his mother, the late Princess of Wales, when he was just 12 years old.

During their televised conversation, the CNN journalist pointed out an excerpt from Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, titled Spare, in which the prince admits to believing his mother had faked her death to escape the press.

Harry told Cooper he believed “for a long time” that Princess Diana had “decided to disappear for a time” but would call her two sons to come and join her wherever she was.

“I just refused to accept that she was gone,” he said. “Part of, she would never do this to us but also part of, maybe this is all part of a plan.”

When asked by Cooper how long he believed she had faked her own death, Harry replied: “Years. Many, many years. William and I talked about it as well.

“He had similar thoughts,” Harry said in reference to his older brother, Prince William.

The late Princess of Wales was killed during a fatal car crash in Paris, France on 31 August, 1997. In his autobiography, which hits shelves on 10 January, the Duke of Sussex recalls driving through the Paris tunnel where Princess Diana died at the same speed her car had been travelling before the crash.

In an excerpt from Spare, which was obtained by People, Harry wrote about attending the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi final in Paris when he was 23 years old. While there, he spoke to his chauffeur about the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris where his mother was being driven through when her car crashed.

“The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother…” he wrote. “I watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large. The tunnel is called Pont de l’Alma, I told him. Yes, yes. He knew it.”

He went on to describe how he asked the driver to “go through the tunnel” at precisely “65 miles per hour”.

“The exact speed Mummy’s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash,” he continued. “Not 120 miles per hour, as the press originally reported.”

“We came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip of the tunnel’s entrance, the bump that supposedly sent mummy’s Mercedes veering off course. But the lip was nothing, we barely felt it,” he wrote.

“As the car entered the tunnel I leaned forward, watched the light change to a kind of watery orange, watched the concrete pillars flicker past. Fphfff, Fphfff Fphfff. I counted them, counted my heart-beats and in a few seconds, we emerged from the other side.

“I sat back. Quietly I said, ‘Is that all of it? It’s nothing, just a straight tunnel.’ I’d always imagined the tunnel was some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous but it was just a short, simple, no frills tunnel. No reason anyone should ever die inside it.”

During his interview with Anderson Cooper, Prince Harry also admitted to watching videos of Princess Diana in an effort to make himself cry. The duke told Cooper that he was only able to cry once after his mother’s death, when she was finally buried. His inability to cry had haunted him so much that he watched online videos of his mother “hoping to cry”.

The Duke of Sussex’s candid interview with Anderson Cooper is just one of many sit-down interviews Prince Harry has given, leading up to the release of his memoir. On Sunday evening, Prince Harry also spoke with ITV’s Tom Bradby for a nearly two-hour long conversation – titled Harry: The Interview – which aired at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.

During the interview, Harry admitted to feeling “some guilt” when walking among the gathered crowds outside Kensington Palace after his mother’s passing.

He told Bradby: “Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died.

“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.”

From looking at photos of the car crash that killed his mother, Prince Harry also said he believes the last thing Princess Diana saw before her death were the lights of paparazzi cameras. “I saw the photographs of the reflection of all the paparazzi in the window at the same time,” the Duke of Sussex said. “I saw the back of her blonde hair, you know, slumped on the back of the seat.”

Harry also told ITV of other photographs “that would probably show my mother’s face and blood.” He said he assumes those images were kept from him – something the Duke said he was “grateful” for.