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Sitting down with Anderson Cooper for the 60 Minutes interview, Prince Harry talked about why he and Meghan Markle have decided to go public with their experience within the British royal institution. Since stepping down as senior members of the family, the Duke of Duchess of Sussex had a bombshell interview with Oprah in March 2021 and released a Netflix documentary late last year before Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, releases this month.
On the topic of the upcoming book, Cooper asked the royal: “One of the criticisms that you’ve received is that okay, fine, you want to move to California, you want to step back from the institutional role. Why be so public? Why reveal conversations you’ve had with your father or with your brother? You say you tried to do this privately.” Prince Harry responded: “Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain. But it’s just a motto.”
According to the father-of-two, there is, however, a lot of complaining and explaining done “privately” and “through leaks” to the British tabloids, which the royals read daily. “My family read the tabloids, you know? It’s laid out—at breakfast when everyone comes together,” he said. The tabloids are also what he blames for his brother Prince William’s opinion of Markle, which led to their argument in 2019 where the Prince of Wales allegedly physically attacked him. “It was at a time where he was being told certain things by people within his office,” Prince Harry remembered. “And at the same time, he was consuming a lot of the tabloid press, a lot of the stories. And he had a few issues, which were based not on reality. And I was defending my wife.”
He went on to say that going on record with his and Markle’s experience by “trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand,” is the only way to share their reality. “So now, I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalizes its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids,” Prince Harry said.
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