Prince Harry’s Answer to Loved Ones’ ‘How Could You?’ Question After Oprah Interview
“How could you?” That’s the question some of the people closest to Prince Harry asked following his and Meghan Markle’s tell-all 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview. The Duke of Sussex shared how he’d responded in his Spare memoir.
Harry’s family friends and a former nanny asked about the Oprah interview
In Spare, Harry revisited the Oprah interview, writing how he’d fielded questions about it from not only some close friends of his but also friends of the royal family.
They included one of Hugh and Emilie van Cutsem’s four sons—elsewhere in the book, Harry recalled how he and Prince William would often spend time with the family on school breaks—and Tiggy Pettifer, he and the now-Prince of Wales’ “favorite” nanny growing up.
“Several close mates and beloved figures in my life,” Harry wrote, “including one of Hugh and Emilie’s sons, Emilie herself, and even Tiggy, had chastised me for Oprah,” (via Newsweek).
“‘How could you reveal such things? About your family?’” they’d asked him.
Harry didn’t see how the Oprah interview differed from what other royals had ‘done for decades’
Harry continued, recalling how he responded to the “How could you?” question. In short, he saw it as an “honest” version of what other royal family members had been doing for years.
“I told them that I failed to see how speaking to Oprah was any different from what my family and their staffs, had done for decades—briefing the press on the sly, planting stories.”
The Duke of Sussex, 39, went on to compare his and the Duchess of Sussex’s Oprah interview to his father, now-King Charles III’s 1994 authorized biography written by Jonathan Dimbleby and his stepmother, now-Queen Camilla’s “collaborations” with a former British tabloid editor.
“And what about the endless books on which they’d cooperated, starting with Pa’s 1994 crypto-autobiography with Jonathan Dimbleby?” Harry wrote. “Or Camilla’s collaborations with the editor Geordie Greig?”
“The only difference,” he reasoned, “was that Meg and I were upfront about it. We chose an interviewer who was above reproach.”
“And we didn’t once hide behind phrases like ‘Palace sources,’” he added. “We let people see the words coming out of our mouths.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Oprah interview recap
Here’s a refresher for those who may not remember tuning in on March 7, 2021, to see Harry and Meghan sit down with Oprah. The broadcast lasted more than two hours and included many bombshells.
Some were good—the couple revealed they were expecting a baby girl, now 2-year-old Princess Lilibet—and others were bad.
The most memorable claims involved everything from Kate Middleton bringing Meghan to tears over Princess Charlotte’s flower girl dress to being financially cut off by then-Prince Charles.
Meghan revealed that, at one point during her pregnancy with now 5-year-old Prince Archie, she had thoughts of suicide.
She also shared there’d been “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.” (This particular claim returned to headlines in 2023 with the release of Omid Scobie’s Endgame book.)
Elsewhere during the interview, Harry discussed how the ease with which Meghan navigated royal tours and greeting crowds led to jealousy among family members.
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