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Home/Entertainment/Prince Harry’s relationship with royals is ‘hanging by a thread’ after explosive Oprah ‘truth bomb’
Entertainment
Prince Harry’s relationship with royals is ‘hanging by a thread’ after explosive Oprah ‘truth bomb’
May 22, 2021
1 hours read
Prince Harry’s relationship with the Royal Family was ‘hanging by a thread’ last night after he detonated another nuclear ‘truth bomb’, accusing them of ‘total neglect’, bullying and even a smear campaign against his wife.
In his latest attack, part of a series on mental health for Apple TV+ with his friend Oprah Winfrey, the former royal suggested his father, Prince Charles, had allowed his children to ‘suffer’ when it came to the media because of his own negative experiences.
He also accused the monarchy and the media of attempting to ‘smear’ his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, in the run-up to the couple’s bombshell interview with Miss Winfrey in March.
In the documentary, Harry describes how Meghan shared her darkest thoughts with him, including ‘the practicalities’ of how she had considered ending her life.
He said: ‘I felt completely helpless. I thought my family would help – but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence or total neglect.’
Harry, referring to the racism he believed Meghan experienced in the UK, also suggested his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, had been hounded to death because she was dating ‘someone that wasn’t white’ – Dodi Fayed. Buckingham Palace and Clarence House were last night retaining what sources described as a ‘dignified silence’ on the claims.
Prince Harry’s relationship with the Royal Family was ‘hanging by a thread’ last night after he detonated another nuclear ‘truth bomb’, accusing them of ‘total neglect’, during an interview with Oprah Winfrey (pictured)
Prince Harry accused the monarchy and the media of attempting to ‘smear’ his wife, the Duchess of Sussex (pictured together), in the run-up to the couple’s bombshell interview with Miss Winfrey in March
The former royal suggested his father, Prince Charles, had allowed him and his brother Prince William (pictured) to ‘suffer’ when it came to the media because of his own negative experiences
One royal aide said the Queen’s statement following the couple’s previous interview with Miss Winfrey – in which the monarch famously said ‘recollections may vary’ about allegations, but that they wanted to work out issues privately as a family – still stood.
However, an exasperated insider told the Mail the family appeared to be at the end of their tether over Harry’s never-ending forays from across the Atlantic and that relationships were hanging by a thread.
They said: ‘Everyone is struggling to understand what he gets from, or hopes to achieve, by interventions like this. It is perfectly possible to campaign effectively on the issue of mental health without talking in such intimate detail about his own experiences.’
The five-episode The Me You Can’t See series – part-televised therapy session and self-help guide, part-confessional – was released in its entirety yesterday.
It contains a number of ‘truth bombs’, an insider told the New York Post earlier this week.
Harry was billed as an executive producer alongside Miss Winfrey, who originally bagged the lucrative Apple deal. But it also included large segments of him in conversation with the chat show host, as well as interspersed footage of Harry at his mother’s funeral and her being chased by paparazzi as a young woman.
It set the tone for what was another slew of accusations against the Royal Family, the monarchy and the British media.
He accused the Royal Family of treating Meghan with ‘total neglect’ while she was suicidal and said they had felt ‘bullied into silence’.
Harry told how frightened he was by Meghan’s ‘clarity of thought’ about how she wanted to kill herself when she was six months pregnant with their son Archie. Going back to his childhood, the prince talked in moving terms of how much he had been scarred by the loss of his mother.
In the documentary which aired yesterday, Harry describes how Meghan shared her darkest thoughts with him, including ‘the practicalities’ of how she had considered ending her life
Harry, referring to the racism he believed Meghan experienced in the UK, also suggested his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, had been hounded to death because she was dating ‘someone that wasn’t white’ – Dodi Fayed
Buckingham Palace and Clarence House were last night retaining what sources described as a ‘dignified silence’ on the claims. Pictured: Prince Philip, Prince William, Earl Spencer, Prince Harry and Prince Charles walk behind Diana’s coffin for her funeral in 1997
Prince Harry accused the Royal Family of treating Meghan with ‘total neglect’ while she was suicidal and said they had felt ‘bullied into silence’. Pictured: The royal family watch the RAF flypast in 2018
He is still clearly traumatised at having to walk behind her coffin and said he can still hear the sound of the horses’ hooves in his head.
He said it was his wife who persuaded him, after a row in which she said he had regressed back to his 12-year-old self – the age at which he lost his mother – to seek professional help. This included Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).
The fear of losing his wife and raising Archie alone ‘was one of the biggest reasons to leave the UK’, he added.
He said at the time that he was ‘feeling trapped and feeling controlled through fear both by the media and by the system itself, which never encouraged the talking about this kind of trauma… But certainly now I will never be bullied into silence.’
Displaying what many will see as paranoia, however, Harry claimed that ‘forces were working against us’ as they attempted to quit as working royals, but that he and Meghan were proud of what they had achieved and ‘had no regrets’.
Drinks, Drugs. Bullied into silence by the uncaring royals: His explosive ‘truth bombs’
BY REBECCA ENGLISH
Prince Harry has again bared his soul to the world, this time in a five-part AppleTV+ series with Oprah Winfrey, called The Me You Can’t See. In more detail than ever before, the Duke of Sussex reveals his grief and anger over his mother’s death, his battle with his mental health, and why he had to leave the Royal Family.
His unresolved anger over Diana’s death
Prince Harry said when he thinks back to his childhood and his mother, he remembers crying in the back of her car while she was being chased by paparazzi.
He claimed there was ‘no protection’ for her and he found it frustrating ‘being too young, being a guy’ and not being able to protect her.
To a backdrop of footage around her death in 1997, Harry said when his mother was ‘taken away from me at the age of 12’, he knew he ‘didn’t want the life’ of being a royal. He talked about having to ‘share the grief of my mother’s death with the world’ and says his most vivid memory of her funeral is hearing the sound of the horses’ hooves along the cobbles as her coffin approached The Mall.
‘I always wanted to be normal, as opposed to being Prince Harry,’ he said. ‘It was a puzzling life’
He said both he and William were ‘in shock’ at her funeral and he felt as if he was ‘outside’ his body, doing ‘what was expected of me’ but being able to show only ‘one tenth’ of the emotion that the crowds who gathered were able to. ‘This is my mum, you never even met her,’ he recalls thinking.
He also raged against the paparazzi who chased Diana in Paris and who photographed her dying on the back seat of the car.
‘I was so angry with what happened to her and the fact that there was no justice at all.’
On being ‘Prince Harry’ and self-medicating
‘I always wanted to be normal, as opposed to being Prince Harry,’ he said. ‘It was a puzzling life.’
The prince said he was encouraged to put his ‘head in the sand’ and just ‘crack on’ with his life. But inside he was ‘all over the place’ and struggled with being on show, and having to put on his ‘game face’.
As a result, he said he suffered panic attacks and severe anxiety, particularly between the ages of 29 and 32.
On official engagements, he would start sweating and looking red in face, panicking about what people were thinking.
Harry admitted he started drinking heavily and taking drugs, although he does not specify when this was or what the drugs were
Harry admitted he started drinking heavily and taking drugs, although he does not specify when this was or what the drugs were.
He said his decade in the Army was the happiest time in his life as it made him feel normal, there was no special treatment and he was away from the media.
His ‘suffering’ as a child, and criticism of Charles
Harry said he was told to ‘play the game’ when it came to public expectations and the media. But he added: ‘I’ve got a hell of a lot of my mum in me. I feel as though I am outside of the system but I am still stuck there.
‘The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth.’
Harry again hit out at Prince Charles, saying: ‘My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I, “Well, it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you”.
‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite – if you suffered, do every thing you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, that you can make it right for your kids.’
How he was ‘bullied into silence’
Despite his family being among the leading mental health campaigners in the country, Harry said he was ‘ashamed’ to go to them when he and Meghan were struggling, because he knew they could not give him what he needed.
‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, “You can’t do this”.’
Despite his family being among the leading mental health campaigners in the country, Harry said he was ‘ashamed’ to go to them when he and Meghan were struggling, because he knew they could not give him what he needed
‘And it’s like, “Well, how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?” She [Meghan] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
He added: ‘That was one of the biggest reasons to leave, feeling trapped and feeling controlled through fear, both by the media and by the system itself which never encouraged talking about this kind of trauma. Certainly now I will never be bullied into silence.’
‘I was the Royal Family’s yes man’
Complaining about his jet-set lifestyle when he was in his 20s, Harry described himself as his family’s ‘yes man’.
He said he would go wherever the family sent him around the world – specifically mentioning an official visit to Nepal in 2016 – that led him to a catastrophic ‘burnout’.
He said his life ‘became really hectic but to the point of exhaustion’. Yet he did not mention that all members of the Royal Family travel whenever and wherever the Government asks them to.
Meghan convinced him to leave
Harry said he sought help only after ‘a couple of people close to me’ told him his behaviour was ‘not normal’ and he needed to seek help. He does not name his estranged brother William as being one of them, even though he has previously said he was.
He said he was treated by GPs, doctors, therapists and alternative therapists – but ‘meeting and being with Meghan’ changed everything. ‘I knew if I didn’t do therapy and fix myself then I was going to lose this woman I could see spending the rest of my life with.’
‘I became aware that I had been living within a bubble of this family, this institution,’ he said
He said there was a ‘lot of learning’ at the beginning of their relationship and claimed Meghan had been ‘shocked to be coming backstage of the institution, of the British Royal Family’. The prince said it was following a row with Meghan that she convinced him to seek professional help.
‘In that argument, not knowing about it, I reverted back to 12-year-old Harry.’
Harry said his therapist immediately picked up on it. ‘I felt somewhat ashamed and defensive… “how dare you call me a child”,’ he said. But his therapist explained she was expressing sympathy for him as he was never allowed to ‘process’ or talk about his issues.
‘I became aware that I had been living within a bubble of this family, this institution,’ he said.
More claims of racism
The prince claimed his late mother was hounded in part because she was dating half-Egyptian Dodi Fayed. Asked by Miss Winfrey if he had any regrets, Harry also said he wished that he had taken a stronger stance on ‘the racism’ aimed at Meghan early in their relationship.
‘By this point, both of us were in shock,’ he said. ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone that wasn’t white. And now look at what’s happened.
‘And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Asked whether he had regrets, he replied: ‘My biggest regret is not making more of a stance. Calling out racism when I did. History was repeating itself.’
His family’s ‘total neglect’
He claimed he felt ‘helpless’ in the face of media attention and social media trolls.
‘The clicking of cameras and the flashes of cameras makes my blood boil. It makes me angry. It takes me back to what happened to my mum, what I experienced as a kid,’ he said.
‘But it went to a whole new depth, with not just traditional media but social media platforms as well. I felt completely helpless.’
He said he thought his family would help, ‘but every single ask, request, warning, got met with total silence or total neglect’. ‘We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
He dramatically claimed he felt that the media would never stop until it had destroyed him and his wife. ‘You want to talk about history repeating itself ? They’re not going to stop until she dies. It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life.’
Meghan’s suicidal thoughts
The prince points to a photograph of himself and Meghan, taken in January 2019, squeezing each other’s hands as they arrived for a charity performance at the Royal Albert Hall when she was six months pregnant. Earlier that evening, he said, his wife ‘decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life’.
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought,’ he said.
‘She hadn’t lost it, she wasn’t crazy, she wasn’t self-medicating through pills or alcohol. She was absolutely sober, she was completely sane, yet in the quiet of night these thoughts woke her up.’
Harry claims that it was only him and their unborn child that kept her going.
‘The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now be put in a position of losing another woman in my life, with a baby inside of her, our baby.’
He said he was ‘somewhat ashamed’ of the way he dealt with it, suggesting that rather than prioritising their official duties they should have pulled out. But at the time, Harry said, that was not an option, because of ‘the system’.
Using therapy to fix his pain
Harry is dismissive of his family, saying he ‘wasn’t in an environment’ that dealt with his issues properly.
He said he was ‘holding on to’ his pain for many years, not even aware of it, but she decided in order to ‘fix it’ he needed to ‘go back to the past, go back to the point of trauma, deal with it, process it and then move forward’.
Harry is also filmed in California trying online EMDR therapy, a relatively new form of treatment for PTSD, with London-based consultant Sanja Oakley.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) looks at the life events that may have caused the relevant symptoms. Harry is seen using ‘bilateral stimulation’ – tapping himself – while thinking negative thoughts in order to associate it with something more positive.
London is a ‘trigger’
He said he always feels ‘worried, concerned, a little bit tense and uptight’ at flying back into London. ‘I could never understand why,’ he said, before explaining that he believes London is a ‘trigger’ for him as it is intrinsically linked with what happened to his mother, and what he experienced and saw as a child.
Closing his eyes, he describes his feelings of anxiety, nervousness, hollowness and fear’. Asked what negative thoughts it makes him feel about himself, he says it is being ‘the hunted and being helpless and knowing you can’t do anything about it, there is no escape, there is no way out of this’.
Harry strongly defended the couple’s decision to speak to Miss Winfrey, despite the anguish it has wreaked on the Royal Family
Harry refers going to Africa for two weeks following his mother’s death – a trip suggested by his father – which offered him a sense of ‘escapism’ and how scared he felt coming home again.
He adds: ‘One of the biggest lessons I have ever learnt in life is you have to go back and to deal with really uncomfortable situations and be able to process it in order to heal. For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on anything. That’s why I am here now. That’s why my wife is here now.’
No regrets about Oprah interview
Harry strongly defended the couple’s decision to speak to Miss Winfrey, despite the anguish it has wreaked on the Royal Family.
‘I like to think we were able to speak truth in the most compassionate way possible, therefore leaving an opening for reconciliation and healing,’ he says. ‘The interview was about being real, being authentic and hopefully about sharing an experience that we know is incredibly relatable to a lot of people around the world despite our unique, privileged position.’
But he claimed a ‘combined effort’ of the media and ‘The Firm’ to ‘smear’ Meghan in the run-up to the interview, left his wife in tears the night before it aired.
‘I was woken up in the middle of the night to her crying into her pillow because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much. That’s heartbreaking,’ he says.
‘I held her, we talked, she cried and cried and cried.’
Prince Philip’s funeral
The prince said he was ‘worried and afraid’ to return to London for Prince Philip’s funeral last month.
He said he used the skills he has learned during his therapy sessions to cope, adding: ‘It definitely made it a lot easier, but the heart still pounds.’
He still feels Diana’s presence
Pointedly, Harry said he had ‘no doubt that my mum would be incredibly proud of me’.
‘I am living the life she wanted to live for herself. Living the life she wanted us to be able to live,’ he says. ‘So not only do I know she’s incredibly proud of me, but she’s helped me get here.
‘I wish she could have met Meghan, I wish she was round for Archie. I have got a photo up in his nursery and one of the first words that he said apart from “mama”, “papa” was “Grandma”, “Grandma Diana”. It’s the sweetest thing but at the same time it makes me really sad, because she should be here.‘Now I am on my way to having healed that part of my life.’
Grim-faced Prince William is seen for first time since Harry dropped ‘truth bomb’ on Palace: Royal experts warn devastating TV attacks will make ‘huge gulf between him and family’ even worse… with all hope of ‘reconciliation fading’
Prince William put on a brave face yesterday after his younger brother dropped another nuclear ‘truth bomb’ on the royals during his new series about mental health with Oprah Winfrey.
Prince Harry used his Apple TV+ show to accuse his family of ‘total silence’ and ‘neglect’ when Meghan was suicidal, claiming his father Prince Charles made him ‘suffer’ as a child and insisting he would not be ‘bullied into silence’ when he alleged ‘The Firm’ ‘trapped’, smeared and dumped them after they emigrated to LA.
Today, 24 hours after he launched an eviscerating attack on the BBC over their treatment of Princess Diana, the Duke of Cambridge was in Scotland for a mental health event as experts said he will be ‘dismayed’ after Harry‘s latest brutal attack left a ‘huge gulf’ between them.
Harry has said he hopes by ‘speaking his truth’ there can be ‘reconciliation and healing’ with his family, however, experts believe the chances of this are fading fast – especially because the ‘erratic’ Sussexes keep ignoring the Queen’s plea to deal with their rift privately.
William, who is unlikely to comment on his brother’s latest incendiary comments, visited Spartans FC’s Ainslie Park Stadium in Edinburgh to hear about initiatives in Scottish football that champion mental health ahead of the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Park today.
Royal biographer Phil Dampier said Harry’s trip to unveil a statue of Princess Diana with his brother William on July 1 will now be in ‘grave doubt’, especially after the Duke of Sussex said London is a ‘trigger’ for his anxiety.
He said: ‘The royals will be dismayed and Charles and William will be tearing out what’s left of their hair. It just seems to be another day and another whinge. We need to be respectful of Harry’s mental health, of course, but you do wonder – when he is going to stop?’
Prince William today put on a brave face amid more turmoil caused by his ‘erratic’ brother Prince Harry who dropped another nuclear ‘truth bomb’ on the Royal Family to millions of people on TV
William issued an extraordinary attack on the BBC last night for deceiving his mother, ruining her life and helping to hasten her divorce, just four hours before Harry’s TV documentary was released causing more damage
The football mad Duke of Cambridge kicks a ball during a visit to Spartans FC’s Ainslie Park Stadium in Edinburgh to hear about initiatives in Scottish football that champion mental health
Duke of Cambridge inspects the Guard of Honour on the forecourt of the Palace of Holyroodhouse and is formally welcomed as Lord High Commissioner in the Ceremony of the Keys today
Prince William met a group of military personnel who have been invited to watch the ceremony at the Palace of Holyroodhouse
Prince William is seen at the Palace of Holyroodhouse today. He is the Lord High Commissioner in the Ceremony of the Keys
Prince William beams as he inspects the guard of honour and the band whilst taking part in the Ceremony of the Keys in his role as the Lord High Commissioner to to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Harry said his family tried to prevent him and Meghan from leaving when she was having suicidal thoughts, insisting they were ‘neglected’ and ‘trapped’ but have no regrets about quitting for LA
Key revelations from Prince Harry’s latest bombshell interview on US TV
On the Royal Family ignoring their cries for help
‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence, total neglect. We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
On Harry’s family ‘stopping’ them from quitting
‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this’, And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’. She [Meghan] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
On Meghan’s wish to ‘end her life’
‘Meghan decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life.
‘The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life — with a baby inside of her, our baby.
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought. She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane’.
On Prince Charles’ parenting
‘My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I, ‘Well it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’,’ Prince Harry says in the new documentary.
‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite.
‘If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, that you can make it right for your kids’.
On ‘smears’ from ‘The Firm’
‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of the combined efforts of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her crying into her pillow because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much. That’s heartbreaking.’
And trying to repair the relationship
‘I like to think that we were able to speak truths in the most compassionate way possible, therefore leaving an opening for reconciliation and healing’.
On Meghan helping Harry into therapy
‘I saw GPs. I saw doctors. I saw therapists. I saw alternative therapists. I saw all sorts of people, but it was meeting and being with Meghan I knew that if I didn’t do the therapy and fix myself that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.
‘When she said, ‘I think you need to see someone,’ it was in reaction to an argument that we had. And in that argument not knowing about it, I reverted back to 12-year-old Harry.’
On his mother’s funeral
‘When my mum was taken away from me at the age of 12, just before my 13th birthday, I didn’t want the [royal] life. Sharing the grief of my mother’s death with the world,’ he said.
‘For me, the thing I remember the most was the sound of the horses’ hooves going along the pavement. Along the Mall, the Red Brick Road. By this point I was, both of us were in shock. It was like I was outside of my body and just walking along doing what was expected of me.
‘Showing one tenth of the emotion that everybody else was showing. I thought, ‘This is my mum. You never even met her’.
Using booze and drugs to cope with his mother’s death
‘I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.’
The royal said he would drink a week’s worth of alcohol on a Friday or Saturday night ‘not because I was enjoying it but because I was trying to mask something’.
On quitting the Royal Family
‘Making this move was really scary. At every possible opportunity the forces working against us tried to make it impossible. Did I expect to find ourselves in this situation so quickly? No. I think we’ve done a really good job.
‘I have no regrets. It’s really sad but I have no regrets at all because now I’m at a place where I think I should have been four years ago…
‘Now we’ve got a beautiful little boy who keeps us busy, keeps us running around, he makes us laugh every day. We’ve got two dogs. And another little baby girl on the way. I never dreamt that.
‘I have no doubt my Mum would be incredibly proud of me. I’m living the life that she wanted to live for herself. Living the life that she wanted us to be able to live.
‘Not only do I know that she’s incredibly proud of me, but that she’s helped me get here. And I’ve never felt her presence more than I have over the last year. I wish she could have met Meghan. I wish she was around for Archie.’
On dealing with his anger and anxiety
‘I can’t remember the first time it happened, I can just remember the feeling, anxiety, like a hollow empty feeling almost of nervousness, is it fear? Everything feels tense.
‘It’s being the hunted, and being helpless and knowing that you can’t do anything about it. There is no escape. There is no way out of this.’
‘Wherever I could I wanted to understand more about what was going on and why my nervous system was reacting the way that it was.
‘I quickly established that if this relationship was going to work then I was going to have to deal with my past, because there was anger there, and it wasn’t anger at her, it was just anger, and she recognised it, she saw it.
‘Well, so how do I fix this? And it was a case of needing to go back to the past, go back to the point of trauma, deal with it, process it, and then move forward.
‘Having now done therapy for four and bit years, five years now, for me it’s all about prevention.
‘That doesn’t mean we have to speak to them every single day, but to have someone that can help guide us and create that awareness in our own life to when we might be feeling pain and how to get out of that and what the tools are available to us on any given day to make sure that it doesn’t snowball into something bigger’.
Attending Prince Philip’s funeral
‘I was worried about it, I was afraid’, adding therapy ‘made it a lot easier, but the heart still pounds’.
On his insistence on speaking out
‘I see it as a responsibility. I don’t find it hard to open up. Knowing the impacts and the positive reaction that it has for so many people that also suffer, I do believe it’s a responsibility’.
‘How much longer he can do this for?’, he told The Sun.
Harry’s TV series was released just four hours after William issued an extraordinary attack on the BBC for deceiving his mother, ruining her life and helping to hasten her divorce.
As the Corporation was damned by an official report into the Bashir scandal, the Duke of Cambridge said the BBC’s failures had contributed to his mother’s ‘fear, paranoia and isolation’ in her final years.
In a excoriating statement, the Prince said that the BBC’s infamous 1995 Panorama interview had made a ‘major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse’.
He said had BBC bosses investigated Martin Bashir’s conduct properly, Princess Diana would have known she had been deceived.
And he castigated the Corporation chiefs who had ‘looked the other way’ and failed to ask tough questions, while cashing in on commercial deals as rogue reporter Martin Bashir wrought chaos on the royals.
Shortly after his damning and rare public statement, Harry poured his heart out to millions.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said said there is now ‘clearly a huge gulf between the Royal Family and the Sussexes’, while Harry’s biographer Angela Levin called his appearance ‘phoney and embarrassing’, claiming Harry is ‘still very unwell’ because he’s ‘stuck’ in the past and talking ‘so negatively’.
Mr Fitzwilliams said: ‘The Queen urged that the issues be dealt with privately as a family. Meghan and Harry don’t seem to be heeding that at all. The other problem is that when you’re dealing with a couple who are erratic, you don’t know what’s coming.
‘There is for the Royal Family a very, very real problem about the way the Sussexes are addressing their unhappiness. It’s about the way they speak of how unhappy they feel, how they felt trapped and how Meghan felt suicidal.
‘He also attacks his upbringing. But the way he chooses to open up, and how – it’s very difficult to know how you come to terms with this’.
In candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new five-part AppleTV+ show, The Me You Can’t See, the Duke of Sussex said he and his wife felt abandoned by his relatives and this was one of their ‘biggest reasons’ for leaving for California last year.
He said: ‘Certainly now I will never be bullied into silence’, adding: ‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence, total neglect. We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
He added: ‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this’, And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’. She [Meghan] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
Royal biographer Angela Levin says Prince Charles will be particularly hurt by Harry’s repeated criticism of his parenting, and Harry’s claims he was made to ‘suffer’.
He said: ‘Harry seems to be stuck in this and some of the things he said about his father, for example… that he didn’t have it very good as a child, therefore Harry and William must have it too.
‘I find that extremely hard to believe because Prince Charles did his absolute best. Maybe he wasn’t the best parent but I don’t know many people who are perfect parents.
She added: ‘I watched it all and I felt so embarrassed that he would go through this’.
The Apple TV series was released in full online just four hours after his brother Prince William issued an extraordinary attack on the BBC for ruining Princess Diana’s life after her Panorama interview with ‘rogue reporter’ Martin Bashir in 1995.
But despite a judge-led inquiry yesterday finally confirming their mother was deceived into doing the show her friends say began a chain of events leading directly to her death in Paris less than two years later, Harry launched yet another full-frontal attack on the Royal Family, who are private exasperated and upset about his constant ‘pot shots’ from across the Atlantic but are unable to respond publicly.
Today, as Harry launched another volley of attacks on the royals while insisting he wanted ‘reconciliation and healing’ with his family, he also claimed:
Meghan told him she wanted to kill herself and had planned how to do it – but was only prevented from killing herself by concern over him ‘losing another woman in my life’;
Harry claims the royal family tried to smear Meghan before their Oprah interview, saying she woke him up while crying into her pillow;
Duke says he drank alcohol and took drugs to cope with his mother’s death, admitting he would drink a week’s worth of booze on a Friday or Saturday night to ‘feel less like he was feeling’. The Duke describes how he is still haunted by the sound of hooves after being forced to watch his mother’s coffin pass him on The Mall. He says at 12 he already knew: ‘I didn’t want the life’ ;
He again blasted his father’s parenting, saying Charles informed him and William that they would suffer the same problems he did but he was determined to ‘break the cycle’. He also slammed Prince of Wales for ‘not making it right’ for his two sons when their mother died;
Prince Harry reveals one of Archie’s first words was ‘Grandma’, along with crocodile and hydrate, and it made him ‘really sad’ because his late mother Diana ‘should be here’ to see her grandson grow up. But he said he thinks she would be ‘incredibly proud’ of him and says he feels her ‘presence’ with him in California living a life she ‘always wanted for herself’;
Returning to London to attend Prince Philip‘s funeral last month was a ‘trigger’ for his anxiety, and a test of his ability to cope, showing how he meditates to banish negative thoughts as he was ‘worried and afraid’ about returning to the UK;
Harry says he felt forced by the royals to go on a trip to Nepal and constant jet-setting became ‘hectic to the point of exhaustion’;
Duke of Sussex reveals he did show with Oprah saying two most important issues on the planet are: Climate change and mental health;
Harry and Oprah made The Me You Can’t See to focus on mental illness and mental wellness, and features tearful interviews with Ms Winfrey, actress Glenn Close and pop superstar Lady Gaga who describes how she had a nervous breakdown was raped as a teenager and became pregnant.
But the five, one-hour shows, are dominated by Harry addressing the traumatic memories from his childhood, including the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, his use of drugs and alcohol as a crutch to cope with losing his mother and his decision to quit as a frontline royal last year and head for the US with his ‘struggling’ American wife.
The Duke of Sussex described how his Meghan first told him she wanted to kill herself, while six months pregnant with Archie, on the way to the Royal Albert Hall in London in January 2019, and how she spoke to him of the ‘practicalities of how she was going to end her life’. Harry said it reminded him of his mother’s final weeks in 1997, saying that it was when he was 12 and watching his mother’s coffin that he first thought: ‘I didn’t want the life’.
He said: ‘Meghan decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life’, adding that she later decided against it because she didn’t want Harry to lose ‘another woman in my life’.
The Duke said ‘history was repeating itself’, because Princess Diana was with Dodi Fayed, who was Egyptian by birth, when she died in 1997, saying there was a real fear that he would lose Meghan too.
He told Oprah: ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. And now look what’s happened. And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry,’ he said. He added: ‘They’re not going to stop until she dies. It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life’. Harry doesn’t name who is out to kill Meghan, but it is believed he is talking the media.
Accusing his own family of briefing against them, he said: ‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of their headlines and that combined effort of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her [Meghan] crying in her pillow – because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much. That’s heartbreaking. I held her. We talked. She cried and she cried and she cried.’
The Duke binged on alcohol and drugs to cope with the death of his mother, saying that being in London is a ‘trigger’ for his ‘anxiety’, and describes how how he is still haunted by the ‘sound of the horse’s hooves going along The Mall’ as his mother’s coffin passed him, slamming Prince Charles for ‘not making it right’ for his two sons.
Harry also used the five-part renew his criticisms of his father’s parenting, and how the Queen had also brought up Charles, insisting he had to quit as a frontline royal to ‘break the cycle’.
He said: ‘My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I, ‘Well, it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you,’ Harry says, ‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered, that doesn’t mean your kids have to suffer. In fact, quite the opposite. If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, you can make it right for your kids.’
‘Isn’t this all about breaking the cycle?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘Isn’t this all about making sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.’
Harry insisted he has ‘no regrets’ about his decision to emigrate to LA saying he believes Diana ‘helped me get here’ and that Meghan’s insistence he went into therapy has ‘equipped me to be able to take on anything’, including ‘reconciliation and healing’ with his British family.
At one point he speaks to a therapist and is filmed having a form of therapy known as EMDR – known as Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. Harry is seen comforting himself with a series of movements such as closing his eyes, crossing his arms and calming his breathing while remembering traumatic events in his past.
Promoting it on Good Morning America today his ‘services to others’ had helped him to heal, adding: ‘The best we can all do collectively is to continue to talk and share stories that are relatable to people all around the world’.
Prince Harry carries out movements such as crossing his arms while remembering events in his past during therapy, he believes has saved him
Prince Harry has revealed his sadness that his son Archie will never get to meet his late mother, Princess Diana, claiming that her name was among the youngster’s first words. Pictured, a shot of Archie and Meghan on the beach from the documentary in previously unseen footage
In candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new show, The Me You Can’t See, he said: ‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever, it is just got met with total silence, total neglect
Harry says he and Meghan were bullied and trapped by the Royal Family who tried to stop them leaving for America
‘Our mother lost her life because of this’: Furious Prince William says Martin Bashir’s ‘lurid and false claims’ to secure his interview with Diana fuelled her ‘paranoia and isolation’ and drove their parents apart
The Duke of Cambridge said Martin Bashir’s deceit in obtaining his 1995 interview with Princess Diana hastened his parents’ divorce and ‘hurt countless others’ in unprecedented broadside against the shamed BBC
Prince Harry blasted the 1995 BBC Panorama interview with Princess Diana as ‘unethical’ while furious William said Martin Bashir’s ‘lurid and false claims’ to secure it fuelled the ‘paranoia and isolation’ of their mother’s final years.
The Duke of Cambridge said Bashir’s deceit in obtaining his 1995 interview with Princess Diana hastened his parents’ divorce and ‘hurt countless others’ in an unprecedented broadside against the shamed BBC.
His brother Prince Harry – who is based in California – also responded to Lord Dyson’s damning report into how the interview was obtained, saying his mother ‘lost her life because of this’.
The Duke of Sussex thanked those who took ‘some form of accountability’ for ‘owning it’, but said ‘the ripple effect of a culture of exploitation and unethical practices ultimately took [Diana’s] life’.
In a statement last night, Prince William laid bare his ‘indescribable sadness’ that his precious final years with his mother had been marred by the isolation the historic Panorama interview caused.
What ‘saddens’ him the most was that should a 1996 investigation into claims Diana was hoodwinked by Bashir have been conducted ‘properly’, the princess would have known she was ‘deceived’ prior to her death in 1997, he claimed.
He said the interview now held ‘no legitimacy’, had established a ‘false narrative’ for 25 years, and the BBC’s failings had let his mother, his family and the public down.
The Duke of Cambridge read his bombshell statement to camera in a courtyard at Kensington Palace – his London residence and the home of his late mother.
Both William and the Duke of Sussex yesterday received ‘unconditional apology’ letters from the BBC over Bashir’s conduct and the subsequent cover-up now fully laid bare 25 years on.
Harry’s candid interviews with The Me You Can’t See is going to cause more tensions with the Royal Family, who were braced for another attack overnight.
But they may not have been ready for the amount of criticism he hands out in the five-part series, with Harry telling his co-host and co-producer Oprah Winfrey that his relatives trapped, smeared and abandoned him and Meghan. But he said would ‘never be bullied into silence’ in the future.
He did not go to his family when Meghan felt suicidal because he was ashamed the situation had got ‘that bad’ and also suspected the royals would not have been able to help.
The duke said: ‘That was one of the biggest reasons to leave, feeling trapped and feeling controlled through fear, both by the media and by the system itself which never encouraged the talking about this kind of trauma.
‘Certainly now I will never be bullied into silence.’
In the candid interviews, the prince discusses his failure to process the grief from the death of his mother; the helplessness he felt to protect her; his dependence on drugs and alcohol to numb the pain; his anxiety and sense of being trapped in the palace; his family’s refusal to help when Meghan felt suicidal and how therapy helped him ‘break the cycle.’
‘For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on anything,’ he said.
He says his family tried to prevent him and Meghan from leaving when she claims she was suicidal and admits to drinking and doing drugs in his 30s.
‘Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this,’ Harry recounted to Oprah. ‘And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’ She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
When asked if he has any regrets, he says it is not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Meghan Markle, claiming she was only stopped from killing herself by concern over Harry’losing another woman in my life’.
The pair had been married for less than a year and she was pregnant with their son Archie when, in January 2019, she told him she was deeply depressed.
Markle first revealed the trauma of that night in her March interview with Winfrey.
‘She was completely sane, yet at the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up,’ Harry said.
‘The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life — with a baby inside of her, our baby.’
Harry said that he did not know how to handle her confession.
‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with them,’ he said.
‘And of course, because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event. Then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s okay.
‘There wasn’t an option to say, ‘you know what, tonight, we’re not going to go’ because just imagine the stories that come from that.’
The prince, whose new series airs on Apple TV+ from May 20, told Winfrey he feared ‘history repeating itself’ after he began dating Markle , and was reminded of his mother being pursued to her death while she was dating ‘someone who wasn’t white’.
Diana, the princess of Wales, died in 1997 alongside Egyptian film producer Dodi Al Fayed, who she had been dating for several months.
Harry said he felt there were parallels in their stories when he followed in his mother’s footsteps and began dating a person of color.
‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white,’ he said.
‘And now look what’s happened.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing.
‘And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Speaking on GMA today, Harry promoted his new show and said: ‘It’s true for Oprah, its been true for me, starting the Invictus Games, to create something, to watch other people heal is part of our healing process’
Experts have said they now expect Harry to talk about his family again and his and his wife’s decision to quit as frontline royals in the upcoming documentary
Footage shown in the clip shows William (second left) and Harry (right) as they grieved for their mother Diana, with the Duke of Sussex saying the sound of hooves still haunts him
One must go on! Queen is all smiles as she hosts a Buckingham Palace audience via videolink from Windsor Castle hours after grandson Prince Harry blasted the ‘unsupportive’ Royal Family
The Queen beamed widely as she virtually welcomed the new Singapore High Commissioner, Lim Thuan Kuan, who presented the Letters of Recall of his predecessor and his own Letters of Commission, pictured
The Queen was all smiles as she appeared via video link today for an audience at Buckingham Palace despite private anguish she will be suffering in the wake of yet another explosive TV interview by her grandson Prince Harry.
The Duke of Sussex used his new Apple TV+ series to drop another nuclear ‘truth bomb’ on his British relatives, accusing them of ‘total silence’ and ‘neglect’ when Meghan was suicidal, claiming his father Prince Charles made him ‘suffer’ as a child and insisting he would not be ‘bullied into silence’ when he alleged ‘The Firm’ ‘trapped’, smeared and dumped them.
The all-out attack on the Windsors will cause fury at Buckingham Palace and leave a ‘huge gulf’ between the ‘erratic’ Sussexes and his family because they have ignored the Queen’s warning to deal with their rift privately, royal commentators said today.
But the Queen brushed aside any personal ill feelings to carry out a royal engagement via videolink from Windsor Castle.
The Queen beamed widely as she virtually welcomed the new Singapore High Commissioner, Lim Thuan Kuan, who presented the Letters of Recall of his predecessor and his own Letters of Commission.
She appeared via videolink from Windsor Castle, where she has spent most of the last year, while the dignitary was at Buckingham Palace.
The monarch also welcomed the new Uruguayan Ambassador, His Excellency Dr. Cesar Rodriguez-Zavalla, who presented the Letters of Recall of his predecessor and his own Letters of Credence.
In the candid interview, the prince discusses his failure to process the grief from the death of his mother; the helplessness he felt when he struggled to protect her; and his dependence on drugs and alcohol to numb the pain.
He spoke of his anxiety and sense of being trapped in the palace, and his family’s refusal to help when Meghan felt suicidal.
He said therapy helped him ‘break the cycle.’
‘For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on anything,’ he said.
He says his family tried to prevent him and Meghan from leaving when she was suicidal and admits to drinking and doing drugs in his 30s.
‘Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this,’ Harry told Winfrey.
‘And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’
‘She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
When asked if he has any regrets, he says it is not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Markle.
Harry told Winfrey that the trauma from his childhood ran deep.
‘I always wanted to be normal, as opposed to being Prince Harry, just being Harry,’ he says.
‘It was a puzzling life and, unfortunately, when I think about my mum the first thing that comes to mind is always the same one, over and over again: Strapped in the car, seatbelt across. My brother in the car as well, and my mother driving and being chased by three, four, five mopeds with paparazzi on.’
He said that his mother was vulnerable, exposed, and given no support.
‘She was almost unable to drive because of the tears, there was no protection,’ he recalled.
‘One of the feelings that come up is helplessness. Being too young, being a guy too young to be able to help a woman, in this case, your mother.
‘And that happened every single day until the day she died.’
The 36-year-old, who began dating Markle in 2016 and married her in 2018, said that he has been seeing a therapist for the past four years.
He told Winfrey that he found it incredibly beneficial, and the process helped him deal with the trauma of his mother’s death.
He explained that he simply tried to push his mother from his mind.
‘I don’t want to think about her, because if I think about her then it’s going to bring up the fact that I can’t bring her back and it’s just going to make me sad,’ he said.
‘What’s the point in thinking about something sad, what’s the point of thinking about someone that you’ve lost and you’re never going to get back again.
‘And I just decided not to talk about it.’
In his 20s and early 30s the prince self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, he has revealed.
‘Towards my late 20s, I was starting to ask questions of should I really be here? That was when I suddenly started going, ‘You can’t keep hiding from this.”
The Queen smiles during a virtual audience to receive His Excellency Lim Tuan Kuan, the High Commissioner for the Republic of Singapore today as her grandson launched yet another attack on the royals
He said his family could not understand his attitude, and his need to deal with the grief.
‘Family members have said just play the game and your life will be easier,’ Harry told Winfrey.
‘But I have a hell of a lot of my mum in me. I feel as though I am outside of the system but I’m still stuck there.
‘The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth.’
He said that the attention he and his wife get ‘makes my blood boil’.
The prince explained: ‘We get followed. Photographed, chased, harassed. The clicking of cameras and the flashes of the cameras makes my blood boil.
‘It makes me angry and takes me back to what happened to my mom and what I experienced as a kid.
‘Not just traditional media, but also social media platforms as well. I felt completely helpless.’
Meghan told Harry HOW she was going to kill herself while six months pregnant
Prince Harry has told Oprah Winfrey that his wife Meghan Markle was only prevented from killing herself by concern over him ‘losing another woman in my life’.
In his new docuseries, The Me You Can’t See, Harry opens up about the night Markle told him she was suicidal.
The pair had been married for less than a year and she was pregnant with their son Archie when, in January 2019, she told him she was deeply depressed.
Markle first revealed the trauma of that night in her March interview with Winfrey.
‘The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life — with a baby inside of her, our baby,’ he said.
Harry and Meghan are pictured on January 16, 2019 – the night she told him she was suicidal
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought.
‘She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol.
‘She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up.’
Harry said that he did not know how to handle her confession.
‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with them,’ he said.
‘And of course, because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event. Then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s okay.
‘There wasn’t an option to say, ‘you know what, tonight, we’re not going to go’ because just imagine the stories that come from that.’
He said that the night was, for him, a revelation. He realized that they could not continue the way they were.
‘While my wife and I were in those chairs, gripping each other’s hand, the moment the lights go down, Meghan starts crying. I’m feeling sorry for her, but I’m also really angry with myself that we’re stuck in this situation,’ Harry said.
‘I was ashamed that it got this bad. I was ashamed to go to my family.
‘Because to be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age could probably relate to, I know that I’m not gonna get from my family what I need.
‘I then had a son who I’d far rather be solely focused on, rather than every time I look into his eyes, wondering whether my wife is going to end up like my mother and I’m going to have to look after him myself.’
Prince Harry says Royals tried to STOP him and Meghan leaving after ‘she was going to end her life’
But, the prince said, his family tried to stop him and Meghan from leaving, even as she was supposedly feeling suicidal.
‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this.’ And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’ She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
He said his biggest regret was not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Markle, claiming a barrage of attacks on her won’t stop ‘until she dies.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life,’ Harry said in the interview with Oprah. ‘Like the list is growing, and it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Harry claims the royal family tried to SMEAR Meghan before Oprah interview
Prince Harry has claimed the royal family tried to smear Meghan before her interview with Oprah Winfrey, said The Firm is still ‘trying to control the narrative’ and that he has ‘no regrets’ since ‘speaking his truth’.
In a series of interviews on Apple TV’s The Me You Can’t See, the Duke of Sussex also accused the Royal Family of ‘total silence’ and ‘total neglect’ when Meghan was suicidal, claiming his father Prince Charles made him ‘suffer’ as a child.
He said: ‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of their headlines and that combined effort of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her [Meghan] crying in her pillow – because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much.
‘That’s heartbreaking. I held her. We talked. She cried and she cried and she cried.’
Prince Harry said: ‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of their headlines and that combined effort of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her [Meghan] crying in her pillow’ (pictured: Harry and Meghan being interviewed by Oprah in March this year)
The Duke said he and his wife felt abandoned by his relatives and this was one of their ‘biggest reasons’ for leaving for California last year, insisting he had ‘no regrets’ about his decision.
He added: ‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this’, And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’. She [Meghan] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
Prince Harry says he believed his ‘compassionate’ Oprah interview would ‘leave door open to reconciliation’ with his family
Prince Harry has claimed he and Meghan Markle believed their explosive Oprah Winfrey interview would help reconcile them with the Royal Family – and said his wife was so distressed ahead of the programme airing she sobbed through the night.
The Duke of Sussex, 36, who is currently living in his $14 million mansion in California having stepped back from royal duty, opened up about his decision to do the interview during his new documentary series The Me You Can’t See.
In the fifth series of the episode, Prince Harry described the bombshell discussion as ‘real and authentic’, saying: ‘I like to think that we were able to speak truths in the most compassionate way possible, therefore leaving an opening for reconciliation and healing.’
He continued: ‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of the combined efforts of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her crying into her pillow because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much. That’s heartbreaking.’
The couple were accused of ‘blowing up the royal family’ after the interview, in which they laid bare the extent of their rift with the Queen and other senior royals and accused The Firm of racism, sent shock waves around the world.
During the programme, the Duke could be seen discussing the decision to do the Oprah Winfrey interview.
Prince Harry described Megxit as ‘an awakening’, saying: ‘The media is desperately trying to control the narrative because they know if they lose it, the truth will come out.’
He continued: ‘The interview was about being real and authentic. And hopefully sharing an experience which we know to be incredibly relatable to people around the world, despite our unique privileged position.’
The Duke went on to discuss waking up to find Meghan crying into her pillow the night before the Oprah interview aired in February.
He said she ‘hadn’t wanted to wake him’ because he was already ‘carrying too much.’
Harry continued: ‘I held her, we talked, she cried and cried and cried.’
Prince Harry shown closing his eyes in footage from EDMR session that has ‘freed him’
Prince Harry has revealed he becomes ‘tense and update’ whenever he visits Britain, during a therapy session filmed on camera in which he said: ‘London is a trigger.’
The Duke of Sussex said in his new mental health documentary series with Oprah Winfrey that he has ‘always felt worried’ for most of his life when he flies back to London, but only became aware of this after doing therapy.
Appearing on Apple TV’s The Me You Can’t See, Harry told how he remembered ‘everything felt tense’ when he travelled to London ‘because of what happened to my mum, and because of what I experienced and what I saw’.
The Duke, who co-created the documentary, has addressed traumatic memories from his childhood, including the death of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, and the impact of social media on him as well as his wife Meghan.
He was filmed having a form of therapy known as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), which is a treatment technique for helping someone come to terms with traumatic experiences. This saw Harry carry out a series of movements such as closing his eyes and crossing his arms while remembering events in his past.
Harry’s therapy session was filmed and shown on the new Apple TV documentary series The Me You Can’t See
The Duke, who now lives in an £11million mansion in Montecito, California, carried out the therapy via videolink with Sanja Oakley, a UK-based psychotherapist who used to be a trauma specialist for London Underground.
Prince Harry told the documentary, released today: ‘For most of my life I’ve always felt worried, concerned, a little bit tense and uptight whenever I fly back into the UK, whenever I fly back into London.
What is EMDR therapy?
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy treatment that helps people heal from the symptoms and emotional distress following disturbing life experiences.
The idea is that the mind can heal from trauma by using mental processes that helps to unblock the impact of a traumatic experience so someone can heal from it.
Experts have compared the treatment to the physical practice of removing a foreign object from a wound to help it heal faster.
Ssessions see eye movements used, with the client asked to hold different aspects of a memory in their mind. They are then encouraged to use their eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision.
Studies have connected this with the biological mechanisms involved in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which bring out internal associations and help clients process the memory and disturbing feelings.
This is then meant to help clients conclude that EMDR therapy makes them feel empowered by the experiences, with the wounds closed and transformed.
Over 100,000 clinicians around the world are said to have used the therapy, with millions of people treated with it over the past 25 years.
‘And I could never understand why. I was aware of it, I wasn’t aware of it at the time when I was younger, but after I started doing therapy stuff I became aware of it.
‘I was like, why do I feel so uncomfortable? And of course for me London is a trigger, unfortunately, because of what happened to my mum, and because of what I experienced and what I saw.’
He told London-based Ms Oakley: ‘Happens every time. I can’t remember the first time it happened, I can just remember the feeling, anxiety, like a hollow empty feeling almost of nervousness, is it fear? Everything feels tense.
‘It’s being the hunted, and being helpless and knowing that you can’t do anything about it. There is no escape. There is no way out of this.’
Speaking to Oprah in episode three about his work with Ms Oakley, he added: ‘Wherever I could I wanted to understand more about what was going on and why my nervous system was reacting the way that it was.
‘I quickly established that if this relationship was going to work then I was going to have to deal with my past, because there was anger there, and it wasn’t anger at her, it was just anger, and she recognised it, she saw it.
‘Well, so how do I fix this? And it was a case of needing to go back to the past, go back to the point of trauma, deal with it, process it, and then move forward.
‘Having now done therapy for four and bit years, five years now, for me it’s all about prevention.
‘That doesn’t mean we have to speak to them every single day, but to have someone that can help guide us and create that awareness in our own life to when we might be feeling pain and how to get out of that and what the tools are available to us on any given day to make sure that it doesn’t snowball into something bigger.
‘EMDR is always something that I’ve wanted to try and that was one of the varieties of different forms of healing or curing that I was willing to experiment with.
‘And I never would have been open to that had I not put in the work and the therapy that I’ve done over the years.’
Harry says he was ‘worried and afraid’ to return to UK for Philip’s funeral
For Harry, returning to London to attend Prince Philip‘s funeral last month meant once more facing a place where he felt trapped and hunted by cameras. It would be a test of his ability to cope with the anxiety that was bubbling up again.
‘I was worried about it, I was afraid,’ Harry told The Associated Press during a recent joint interview with Oprah Winfrey to promote a mental-health series they co-created and co-executive produced for Apple TV+.
He was able to work through any trepidation using coping skills learned in therapy.
‘It definitely made it a lot easier, but the heart still pounds,’ said Harry, the Duke of Sussex and grandson of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband Philip.
In ‘The Me You Can’t See,’ which debuted Thursday night on Apple’s streaming service, Harry reveals that he first saw a therapist approximately four years ago at the encouragement of then-girlfriend Meghan. They’d had an argument and she recognized his anger seemed misplaced.
Winfrey’s existing partnership with Apple created a rare opportunity to reach the vast number of people who use the company’s devices, Harry said.
‘If that’s in a billion pockets on a billion screens, then maybe we can really start a global conversation about this,’ he said.
Winfrey recalls some of her own childhood traumas in ‘The Me You Can’t See.’ In addition to her and Harry’s stories, the series also features accounts from both regular people and celebrities including Lady Gaga and Glenn Close, who speak candidly about their own experiences with mental illness.
Winfrey said Harry pushed to present a global perspective. ‘This has got to be a world thing and not just a U.S. thing,’ she recounted him saying, adding: ‘I think we’ve accomplished that really well.’
Harry jokes he’s ‘slowly catching up’ to Winfrey’s decades of inner-work and encouragement of others to do the same whether on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ or her ‘Super Soul Sunday’ interviews on OWN. Even Winfrey said she’s had a lot to learn.
‘I have dealt personally with one of the girls from my school (Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa), who had schizophrenia,’ Winfrey said. ‘Only after hearing the doctor say that ‘it’s a diagnosis. It’s not your life, it’s not who you are,’ that I had my great awakening about it. … ‘That is not you. You are a person who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia.’ That is powerful.’
Prince Harry reveals one of Archie’s first words was ‘Grandma’ thanks to pictures of Diana
Prince Harry has revealed his sadness that his son Archie will never get to meet his late mother, Princess Diana, claiming that her name was among the youngster’s first words.
In his new mental health series with Oprah Winfrey The Me You Can’t See, the Duke of Sussex said: ‘I got a photo of her in his nursery, and it was one of the first words that he said — apart from ‘mama’, ‘papa’, it was then ‘grandma’. Grandma Diana.
‘It’s the sweetest thing, but at the same time, it makes me really sad because she should be here.’
The doting father also released new footage of his toddler son playing on the beach and on the swings at home.
In one clip in the programme believed to have been taken in the grounds of the Santa Barbara mansion, the toddler can be seen sitting on a swing with his back facing the camera, while another person, believed to be Prince Harry, can be seen swinging alongside him.
Prince Harry has revealed his sadness that his son Archie will never get to meet his late mother, Princess Diana, claiming that her name was among the youngster’s first words. Pictured, a shot of Archie and Meghan on the beach from the mental health interview
Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 39, who now live in Montecito, California, previously revealed their son Archie’s favourite word is ‘hydrate’ (Archie pictured on the beach with Meghan in a shot shown on the Apple TV+ series)
Playful Archie bends down to walk underneath Prince Harry’s legs in a sweet beach moment
Harry reveals he would ‘pour with sweat’ due to stress of public events
Prince Harry has said the stress of going to public events would make him pour with sweat, saying ‘One bead of sweat feels like the whole face is pouring down’.
The Duke of Sussex disclosed his nerves at occasions he had attended as a working Royal and how he would feel as his face was bright red and he was ‘two or three degrees warmer than everybody else’.
He said his problem was so serious at functions it would take finding someone else who was similarly nervous and sweating to calm his nerves.
The Royal revealed the symptoms of his anxiety as part of his mental health series with chat show queen Oprah Winfrey.
He said: ‘Every time I put a suit and tie on and having to do the role, to go ‘Right, game face’ look in the mirror, right let’s go.
‘Before I left the house I was pouring with sweat, my heart rate was racing. I was in fight or flight mode.
‘Freaking out every single time I jumped in the car, every single time I would see a camera.
‘I would just start sweating. I would feel as though my body temperate was two or three degrees warmer than everybody else in the room.
‘I would convince myself that my face was bright red and therefore everybody could see how I was feeling, but nobody would know why.
‘So it was embarrassing. You get in your head about it and then you’re just like ‘everybody is looking at me’. One bead of sweat feels like the whole face is pouring down.
‘Just sweating and then all in my head, this is so embarrassing, what are they thinking of me? They have no idea, I can’t tell them.
‘Everywhere I go, every time I meet someone, it’s almost like I am being drained of this energy, picking up on other people’s emotion, finally I would bump into someone more than me and I would stop, be able to speak to them and everything would calm down and I could move on again.’
Harry says he took alcohol and drugs to cope with mother’s death
Prince Harry, pictured above, has said the trauma of his mother’s death led him to use alcohol and drugs to ‘mask’ his emotions and to ‘feel less like I was feeling’
Prince Harry has said the trauma of his mother’s death led him to use alcohol and drugs to ‘mask’ his emotions and to ‘feel less like I was feeling’.
The Duke of Sussex was just 12 when Diana, Princess of Wales, died in August 1997 in a car crash while being pursued by the press in Paris.
In the first three episodes of Apple TV’s The Me You Can’t See, the royal addressed traumatic memories from his childhood including the moment he was famously photographed with his brother, father, uncle and grandfather walking behind Diana’s coffin at her funeral.
The 36-year-old told his series co-host Oprah Winfrey: ‘I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.’
The royal said he would drink a week’s worth of alcohol on a Friday or Saturday night ‘not because I was enjoying it but because I was trying to mask something’.
‘It was like I was outside of my body and just walking along doing what was expected of me. (I was) showing one tenth of the emotion that everybody else was showing: This was my mum – you never even met her.’
The series focuses on mental health, with Harry telling Winfrey the trauma of the loss caused him to suffer anxiety and severe panic attacks from ages 28 to 32.
‘I was just all over the place mentally,’ he said.
‘Every time I put a suit on and tie on … having to do the role, and go, ‘right, game face’, look in the mirror and say, ‘let’s go’. Before I even left the house I was pouring with sweat. I was in fight or flight mode.’
Harry claims Charles told him he would ‘suffer with the same problems as him’
Prince Charles and Prince Harry attend the ‘Our Planet’ global premiere at Natural History Museum on April 4, 2019 in London, England
Prince Harry again blasted his father’s parenting, claiming in a new mental health documentary series with Oprah Winfrey that his father told him he would suffer the same problems he did.
Prince Charles would allegedly tell his son to ‘play the game’ and his life would improve, Harry recounts in Apple TV’s The Me You Can’t See while discussing traumatic memories from his childhood – including the death of his mother Diana.
‘My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I, ‘Well it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’,’ Prince Harry says in the new documentary.
‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite.’
‘If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, that you can make it right for your kids,’ he says.
Prince Harry, 36, suggests to Winfrey that he didn’t want to ‘play the game.’
‘I’ve got a hell of a lot of my mum in me. The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth,’ he says.
Harry says Diana was ‘chased to death while in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white’ and feared ‘history repeating itself’ with Meghan
Diana, the princess of Wales, died in 1997 alongside Egyptian film producer Dodi Al Fayed, who she had been dating for several months
Prince Harry says his mother was ‘chased to death while in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white’ and feared ‘history repeating itself’ with wife Meghan.
The Duke of Sussex made the startling revelation in a series of interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new AppleTV+ show, The Me You Can’t See.
Diana, the princess of Wales, died in 1997 alongside Egyptian film producer Dodi Al Fayed, who she had been dating for several months.
Harry said he felt there were parallels in their stories when he followed in his mother’s footsteps and began dating a person of color.
‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white,’ he said.
‘And now look what’s happened.
‘You want to talk about history repeating itself, they’re not going to stop until she dies.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing.
‘And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Harry admitted he wished he had called out racism when he first started dating Meghan, but said he would no longer accept it.
‘My biggest regret is not making more of a stance earlier on in my relationship with my wife and calling out the racism when I did,’ he said.
Harry says the royals forcing him to go to Nepal and constant jet-setting led to ‘burnout’
Prince Harry has moaned about his jet set lifestyle when he was in his 20s and said being the Royals’ ‘yes man’ to fly abroad led to a ‘burnout’.
The Duke of Sussex said his life ‘became really hectic but to the point of exhaustion’ during his second explosive sit down with Oprah Winfrey.
The 36-year-old complained about his family sending him to Nepal in 2016 and said he felt like he was their ‘yes man’ for foreign jaunts.
The comments came as Harry and Oprah spoke in detail about their histories of trauma and anxiety in The Me You Can’t See on Apple TV.
The Prince dropped another series of nuclear ‘truth bombs’ on his family and accused them of ‘total silence’ and ‘neglect’ when Meghan was suicidal.
The 36-year-old complained about his family sending him to Nepal in 2016 and said he felt like he was their ‘yes man’ for foreign jaunts
In the second episode the Duke is onscreen sitting opposite Oprah as they talk about growing up as a member of ‘The Firm’.
Prince Harry told her: ‘Towards my late 20s everything became really hectic for me, but to the point of exhaustion.
‘I was travelling all over the place because, you know, from the family’s perspective I guess I was the person who like ”we need someone to go there. Nepal, Harry you go”.
‘I was always the yes man I was always the one willing to say yes. But that yes and yes and yes of course yes yes yes led to burnout.
‘And it was like someone had taken the lid off. All of the emotions that I had suppressed for so many years suddenly came to the forefront.’
He added: ‘I saw GPs, I saw doctors, I saw therapists I saw alternative therapists, I saw all sorts of people, but it was meeting and being with Meghan.
‘I knew that if I didn’t do therapy and fix myself, that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.’
Meghan Markle pushed Harry to get therapy as he feared he would lose her
Prince Harry revealed an argument with then-girlfriend Meghan Markle was what pushed him to get therapy.
In candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new Apple TV show, The Me You Can’t See, the Duke of Sussex, 36, said he realised he could ‘lose the woman he could see spending the rest of his life with’ if he didn’t ‘fix’ himself.
Harry told how he had tried drugs and alcohol to numb his pain, not realising at the time that was what he was doing, and when people close to him told him to seek help, he would say he did not need help.
It wasn’t until he met Meghan, he said in the second episode, that he decided he needed help. He’s now been in therapy for four years.
‘I saw GPs. I saw doctors. I saw therapists. I saw alternative therapists. I saw all sorts of people, but it was meeting and being with Meghan,’ he explained.
Prince Harry revealed an argument with then-girlfriend Meghan Markle was what pushed him to get therapy
‘I knew that if I didn’t do the therapy and fix myself that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.
‘When she said, ‘I think you need to see someone,’ it was in reaction to an argument that we had. And in that argument not knowing about it, I reverted back to 12-year-old Harry.’
Prior to seeking help, Harry told how he simply tried to push his mother from his mind.
‘I don’t want to think about her, because if I think about her then it’s going to bring up the fact that I can’t bring her back and it’s just going to make me sad,’ he said.
‘What’s the point in thinking about something sad, what’s the point of thinking about someone that you’ve lost and you’re never going to get back again. And I just decided not to talk about it.’
He said the moment he started therapy, his therapist told him that during his argument with his girlfriend, it sounded like he was ‘reverting to 12-year-old Harry’.
‘I felt somewhat ashamed and defensive. Like, ‘How dare you? You’re calling me a child’. And she goes, ‘No, I’m not calling you a child. I’m expressing sympathy and empathy for you for what happened to you when you were a child. You never processed it. You were never allowed to talk about it and all of a sudden now it’s coming up in different ways as projection’.
‘That was the start of a learning journey for me. I became aware that I’d been living in a bubble within this family, within this institution and I was sort of almost trapped in a thought process or a mindset.’
‘Angry’ Prince Harry reveals he’s ‘haunted by the sound of horses hooves’ on The Mall at Diana’s funeral
Prince William and Prince Harry at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997. Harry explained he ‘didn’t want to share the grief of her death with the world’, was haunted by the sound of hooves
Prince Harry has revealed he didn’t understand the public outpouring of emotion following Princess Diana‘s death and that he didn’t want to share his grief with the world.
Speaking on The Me You Can’t See, his new mental health series with Oprah Winfrey, The Duke of Sussex added that he’s ‘haunted’ by the sound of horses hooves clacking down The Mall at the Princess of Wales’ funeral and that he was ‘outside of his body’ while following his mother’s coffin.
‘When my mum was taken away from me at the age of 12, just before my 13th birthday, I didn’t want the [royal] life. Sharing the grief of my mother’s death with the world,’ he said.
‘For me, the thing I remember the most was the sound of the horses’ hooves going along the pavement. Along the Mall, the red brick road. By this point I was, both of us were in shock. It was like I was outside of my body and just walking along doing what was expected of me.
‘Showing one tenth of the emotion that everybody else was showing. I thought, ‘This is my mum. You never even met her.”
‘I always wanted to be normal as opposed to Prince Harry. Just being Harry. It was a puzzling life.
‘But unfortunately, when I think about my mum the first thing that comes to mind is always the same one over and over again,’ he explained as footage of Diana taking Harry to school flashed on the screen.
Prince Harry says he feels Diana’s presence with him in California
Prince Harry revealed he thinks Princess Diana would be ‘incredibly proud’ of him and says he feels her ‘presence’ with him in California.
Speaking candidly in new AppleTV+ series The Me You Can’t See, Harry said: ‘I’m living the life that she wanted to live for herself. Living the life that she wanted us to be able to live.’
The Duke of Sussex, 36, said he believes his late mother ‘helped him get here’ and that he’s ‘never felt her presence more’ than he has over the last year living in California with Meghan, 39, and Archie, two.
Prince Harry spoke about the important role his mother continues to play in his life, revealing Archie has a photo of Diana in his bedroom and that one of his first words was ‘grandma’.
Harry also said he thought Diana was ‘chased to death’ and that he could see clear parallels between her and Meghan before their decision to leave the UK.
The Duke of Sussex, 36, said he believes his late mother ‘helped him get here’ and that he’s ‘never felt her presence more’ than he has over the last year living in California with Meghan, 39, and Archie, two. Pictured, with William and Diana in London in 1995
The couple now live in a mansion in Montectio, California, and are expecting a daughter together this summer.
Reflecting on the move, he said: ‘Making this move was really scary. At every possible opportunity the forces working against us tried to make it impossible. Did I expect to find ourselves in this situation so quickly? No. I think we’ve done a really good job.
‘I have no regrets. It’s really sad but I have no regrets at all because now I’m at a place where I think I should have been four years ago…
‘Now we’ve got a beautiful little boy who keeps us busy, keeps us running around, he makes us laugh every day. We’ve got two dogs. And another little baby girl on the way. I never dreamt that.
‘I have no doubt my Mum would be incredibly proud of me. I’m living the life that she wanted to live for herself. Living the life that she wanted us to be able to live.
‘Not only do I know that she’s incredibly proud of me, but that she’s helped me get here. And I’ve never felt her presence more than I have over the last year. I wish she could have met Meghan. I wish she was around for Archie.’
Lady Gaga details being raped by a producer and left pregnant aged 19
Lady Gaga says she had a ‘total psychotic break’ when she was sexually assaulted at the age of 19 by a music producer and ‘dropped off pregnant on a street corner’.
The singer, 35, spoke about the traumatic event during an appearance on Prince Harry and Oprah’s new Apple TV+ mental health docuseries, The Me You Can’t See.
Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, recalled: ‘I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off’.’
Heartbreaking: Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, recalled: ‘I was 19 years old and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off’ (pictured in 2005 aged 19)
‘And I said ‘no’. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and … I don’t even remember.’
Gaga, who has never mentioned the producer’s name for fear of seeing him again, said she blacked out amid the assault, and purged herself by being physically sick for an extended period as a way of coping with the pain.
‘I was sick for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks after, and I realized that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner,’ she said.
She said she was ‘at [her] parents’ house amid the illness because she was ‘being abused’ and ‘locked away in a studio for months.’
Gaga said the incident left her scarred physically and emotionally, which lingers to this day.
The singer said a doctor advised her to see a psychiatrist for her chronic pain, leading to her diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
‘I had a total psychotic break, and for a couple years, I was not the same girl,’ Gaga said. ‘The way that I feel when I feel pain was how I felt after I was raped. I’ve had so many MRIs and scans where they don’t find nothing. But your body remembers.’
Glenn Close, 74, says growing up in a cult caused all her relationships to fail
Glenn Close has revealed the ‘devastating’ impact of growing up in a cult.
Making an emotional appearance on Prince Harry and Oprah’s new Apple TV+ mental health docuseries, The Me You Can’t See, the 74-year-old actress spoke candidly about her childhood trauma.
When she was still a child Glenn’s late father Dr William Taliaferro Close became enamoured with a conservative new religious group Moral Re-Armament.
Eventually he moved the family to the organization’s headquarters in Switzerland, effectively cutting Glenn off from the life she once knew.
Candid: Glenn Close revealed the ‘devastating’ impact of growing up in a cult in an emotional appearance on Prince Harry and Oprah’s new Apple TV+ mental health docuseries
Speaking about her traumatic experience on the show, Glenn said: ‘I was in this group called MRA and it was basically a cult, everyone spouted the same things and there’s a lot of rules, a lot of control.
‘Because of how we were raised, anything you thought you’d do for yourself was considered selfish. We never went on any vacations or had any collective memories of stuff other than what we went through, which was really awful.’
Detailing the impact this had on her mental health, Glenn explained: ‘We were so broken up. It’s astounding that something you go through at such a young stage in your life still has such a potential to be destructive.
‘I think that’s childhood trauma, because of the devastation, emotional and psychological, of the cult.’
Prince Harry ‘addresses Charles direct’ when discussing how ‘history was repeating itself’ with Meghan and shows gestures of mimed aggression when expressing ‘regret for not calling out racism earlier’, body language expert claims
Prince Harry ‘addressed Prince Charles directly’ and showed gestures of ‘mimed aggression’ when discussing how ‘history was repeating itself’ with his wife Meghan Markle during his new docuseries, a body language expert has claimed.
During The Me You Can’t See, the Apple TV+ show he co-produced with Oprah Winfrey, the Duke of Sussex, 36, claimed Prince Charles made him ‘suffer’ as a child – something royal commentators have claimed will ‘hurt’ the Prince of Wales deeply.
He also accused the Royal Family of ‘total silence’ and ‘total neglect’ when Meghan was suicidal, adding: ‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of their headlines and that combined effort of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her [Meghan] crying in her pillow – because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much.’
Harry admitted he wished he had ‘called out the racism’ when he first started dating Meghan, but said he would no longer accept it after fearing ‘losing another woman’ in his life. He also allowed cameras to film him undergoing an ‘extraordinary’ therapy session, during which he received ‘eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing’ (EMDr) treatment for anxiety attacks he said are triggered every time he flies into Britain.
Speaking to FEMAIL, body language expert Judi James said she observed a ‘powerful’ body language moment where Harry appeared to be addressing his father directly.
Prince Harry ‘addressed Prince Charles directly’ and showed gestures of ‘mimed aggression’ when discussing how ‘history was repeating itself’ with his wife Meghan Markle during his new docuseries, a body language expert has claimed
‘We see three strong sets of emotional reveal from Harry in this first documentary about mental health. First is the unmasked version with signals of sadness and vulnerability, then the very angry, resentful version with eye-narrowing and lip-jutting and lastly the “adult, in control” version of Harry, who appears calmer and as something of a guru or therapist himself.’
She added: ‘There is a very powerful body language moment in this episode where Harry appears to be addressing his father Charles directly.
‘He begins by making comparisons between his mother’s fate and Meghan. When he asks himself about regrets in a rhetorical format he shows signs of anger again as he replies he regrets “not taking a stance earlier and calling out racism”.
‘His finger points in a stabbing gesture of mimed aggression and his blink rate increases. He makes comparisons to his mother’s circumstances using the pointing gestures and ending in a wry, mirthless laugh to suggest disbelief.
‘Harry’s hands stir in the air when he says it was “incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life” – and again the wry, understated smile of disbelief that history could repeat itself.
Judi said Harry makes comparisons to his mother’s circumstances using the pointing gestures and ending in a wry, mirthless laugh to suggest disbelief
‘He then says that it “comes back to the same people”, and Charles is shown on screen with his young son.
‘It is at this point that Harry appears to be “posting” his conversation directly at his father, even using the word “you” when he says “You chose”.’
When discussing his childhood and talking about his mother, Judi said Harry’s voice ‘deepens, softens and seems to crack as though he is near to tears’.
‘There is a micro-gesture of disgust as he wrinkles his nose at one point,’ she observed. ‘The angry Harry returns with Oprah now as he uses mime gestures like horses’ hooves to re-live the experience of Diana’s funeral. He re-lives his anger of the time here too, using pointing and stabbing gestures and with his eyes narrowing as he says “This is my mum”. His lower lip juts, his hands ball into fists and his blink rate becomes more rapid.’
Judi said there are some ‘subtle clues’ that suggest tension and anxiety within the prince, especially when he talks about his four years of therapy.
‘Harry becomes less assured at this point, fiddling with his wedding ring to suggest a desire to channel Meghan’s reassuring presence and speaking about himself in the third person – “for an individual who never thought they would need or do therapy” – rather than speaking personally.
‘Harry’s anger begins to become obvious here though as he mimes pushing away with both hands to describe how he was treated in the past.’
By the end of the series in episode five, Judi said we see Harry back in his ‘calm, adult power pose’, speaking to Oprah.
She observed that his ‘summary’ towards the end triggered new gestures ‘associated with self-calming or suppressing thoughts or emotions’.
‘He face-touches here, touching his lips in a self-comfort ritual before changing position to touch his face with his other hand. He also scratches his neck and plays with his wedding ring,’ Judi noted.
‘When he speaks he sounds on-message again, referring to his “awakening” and defining time via some invisible brick gestures that separate chunks of his past, present and future life into different themes.
‘There is huge emphasis here on his rubbing and fiddling with his wedding ring to suggest the support and comfort he gets from his wife and the pose and background imply a sense of reflective peace and solitude and found freedom with Meghan,’ Judi concluded
‘He places his finger to his lips and pauses when asked if he is still controlled by the media and then he rubs his lips to suggest mixed feelings of possible unease and a desire to self-comfort.’
When he discusses the couple’s previous explosive Oprah interview, Judi said Harry is ’emphatic’ that he ‘spoke the truth in the most compassionate way possible’ – despite many royal commentators claiming the Firm would be deeply hurt by their accusations of institutional racism and neglect.
It prompted the Queen to issue a statement after the programme aired, which stated: ‘The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.
‘The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.’
‘Harry then uses mime gestures to mime a gap in front of his body as he describes leaving an “opening for reconciliation and healing”,’ Judi went on.
‘Harry is equally sharing and open when he speaks about how Meghan cried the night before the interview. He actually shares by miming the act and then miming the hug he gave her. His body language and his words are very emphatic here as he says she “cried and cried and cried”.
This revelation is followed by shots of Harry driving and sitting in a forest ‘reflectively’.
‘There is huge emphasis here on his rubbing and fiddling with his wedding ring to suggest the support and comfort he gets from his wife and the pose and background imply a sense of reflective peace and solitude and found freedom with Meghan,’ Judi concluded.
Duchess put on a brave facade but reached for her husband’s hands while he sat ‘stony-faced’ after smiling for the cameras, body language expert claims
Meghan Markle put on a brave face to mask her pain while Prince Harry gave away tell-tale signs of anxiety during their appearance at London‘s Royal Albert Hall, a body language expert claimed.
Harry and Meghan were seen sitting together as the lights went down at the concert in January 2019, before the Duchess started crying. Speaking to FEMAIL, Judi James said Meghan was able to mask what what we now know went on behind the scenes and appeared ‘gracious and elegant’.
‘She reaches for Harry’s hand frequently and when she sits she reaches for it and places it in both of her hands,’ Judi observed. ‘Harry’s facial expression does appear more telling. His eyes looks wide at times and he is seen sucking his lips in once the attention is off him, suggesting he is struggling with anxiety or some sort of pain or worry.
‘Like Meghan he appears keen to look animated and sociable when he is doing his job but his demeanour does seem to change to something a lot more serious when the lights are lowered.’
When Harry speaks about his wife in the docuseries, Judi said his gestures became ‘very emphatic, clear and precise’ before he got emotional when he described how she was feeling when she shared her suicidal thoughts with him.
‘He uses a pursed-finger hand to baton his messages and he uses that finger-pinch to draw vertical and horizontal lines in the air to be forensic with his words and memories,’ she explained.
‘He also starts to be overcome with emotion, tearing up with his voice cracking. He says that they only had time for a “quick cuddle” before having to go out and get on with their royal duties.’
During the series Harry revealed that it was Meghan who pushed him to get therapy during an argument to finally address the trauma he experienced after losing his mother when he was 12. Judi said Harry’s body language during this discussion suggested Meghan ‘really was the one who “save” him at this low point’.
‘He begins to fiddle with his wedding ring,’ she says. ‘Harry slows and becomes calmer when he speaks about Meghan and he appears to mime her side of their conversations, throwing his hands out palms-up to repeat her suggestion that “I think you need to see someone”.
‘Harry uses his body language to role-play both sides in the argument they had, using the open hands and calm of Meghan versus the self-protective fist-shapes as he first thinks “How dare you” about the thought he needed help. His palm-swipe appears to mimic her listing of his problems before he rubs his wedding ring again.’
Meghan first revealed the trauma of the night at the Royal Albert Hall in her March interview with Oprah.