Prince Harry says his life is ‘like Truman Show’ in the royal family in candid podcast interview
‘He’s treated me the way he was treated’: Harry claims he moved family to LA to ‘break cycle’ of ‘genetic pain and suffering’ passed on from Charles, the Queen and Philip – and ‘wanted to quit as royal in early 20s’ because of ‘what it did to mum’
- Harry, 36, appeared on Dax Shepherd’s podcast before to promote Oprah Apple show and Spotify deals
- Compared his royal life to ‘the Truman Show’ or being an animal being watched in a zoo before he quit
- Describing LA life he said: ‘I can actually lift my head, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free’
- Duke revealed he and Meghan Markle, 39, met secretly in supermarket when she first visited him in London
- Harry spoke about mental health and having therapy after advice from Meghan who saw he was ‘angry’
- When asked if he was ‘in a cage’ as a royal he said: ‘It’s the job right? You grin and bear it. You get on with it’
- Duke told ‘Armchair Expert’ show that in his 20s that he ‘didn’t want the job’ of being a full time royal
- Describes the ‘genetic pain’ of being a royal, saying Charles had ‘suffered’ and he had done the same to Harry
Prince Harry today blasted Prince Charles’ parenting as he poured his heart out to a US mental health podcast and said he moved to California with his family to ‘break the cycle’ of ‘pain’ he suffered as a member of the Royal Family – and needed to ‘change that for my own kids’.
The Duke of Sussex also admitted he first wanted to quit The Firm in his ‘early 20s’ because of ‘what it did to my mum’ and revealed that his wife Meghan Markle had encouraged him to have therapy and had herself now concluded: ‘You don’t need to be a princess’.
Harry’s extraordinary attack on the Royal Family, two months after accusing them of racism towards his two-year-old son Archie, came as he appeared on Dax Shepherd’s ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast in another big Hollywood moment for the Duke. The show promoted his Apple TV+ mental health series with Oprah Winfrey, The Me You Can’t See, which premieres next Friday – and it was also promoted in a tweet by Dax today.
Harry, who is expecting a daughter with Meghan this summer, suggested that Prince Charles had ‘suffered’ because of his upbringing by the Queen and Prince Philip, and that the Prince of Wales had then ‘treated me the way he was treated’, calling it ‘genetic pain’.
During the wide-ranging interview lasting 90 minutes, Harry – who appears to have developed an American twang to his British accent since leaving the UK – said: ‘I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.
‘It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you’.’
He added: ‘I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go ‘OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids’. And here I am, I moved my whole family to the US, that wasn’t the plan but sometimes you’ve got make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.’
The Duke called royal life ‘a mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo’ and said he quit last year to put his family and mental health ‘first’. He also put ‘wild partying’ in his youth down to ‘childhood trauma’, having previously admitted experimenting with cannabis and drinking to excess, and joked about the time he played naked billiards at a party in Las Vegas.
The podcast saw both men share their experiences of past trauma – and Dax, who is married to Frozen star Kristen Bell, spoke about his own addiction to smoking crack and alcohol. Harry asked him what it was like to take a ‘s***load’ of drugs when he was young after suffering sexual abuse as a child – while also speaking about his own experience of ‘pain’ as a senior royal.
Harry asked him if he had ‘an awareness’ whether his abuse of drink and cocaine was fuelled by his childhood, saying: ‘For you it was your upbringing and everything that happened to you – the trauma, pain and suffering. All of a sudden you find yourself doing a s***load of drugs and partying hard’.
The Duke described how he started therapy after Meghan ‘saw he was angry’, and when asked if he felt ‘in a cage’ while in royal duties, he said: ‘It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early twenties and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mum, how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again’.
He added that his frame of mind was: ‘I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this’, before revealing he had therapy after meeting Meghan, which ‘burst’ a bubble and he decided to ‘stop complaining’.
He added: ‘So living here (in Los Angeles) now I can actually lift my head and I feel different, my shoulders have dropped, so have hers, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free, I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle, I would never have had the chance to do that.’
Baring his soul, 36-year-old Harry, who is currently living in his $14million Californian mansion with his wife and son, said he was born into extraordinary privilege but hinted that he believes this has changed since he quit with Meghan last year, comparing it to Oprah Winfrey’s humble beginnings. He said: ‘I truly believe you can move along the spectrum as well, wherever you were born you may start in one place but that will change over time’.
The prince also revealed his wife told him of her experience of royal life: ‘You don’t need to be a princess, you can create the life that will be better than any princess’, adding: ‘We got together and she was like ‘wow, this is very different to what my friends at the beginning said it would be’.’
Harry had agreed to support Dax’s popular podcast about mental health and ‘the messiness of being human’, including addiction – with his appearance also possibly linked to the podcast’s move to Spotify in July announced just hours earlier, because the Sussexes have also signed a multi-million dollar deal with the streaming firm.
As the podcast was released today, Harry’s father Charles visited a cancer research centre in London to learn how Covid-19 has affected its funding, while his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate Middleton spent the day in Wolverhampton to learn about projects supporting the wellbeing of the city’s young people.
As Harry took part in another bombshell interview, two months after the Oprah chat on CBS, he also revealed:
- Harry says he was ‘more free’ since his move to LA with Meghan, who he says encouraged him to have therapy because he would get ‘angry’ about things he couldn’t control. He said: ‘She could tell that I was hurting’;
- Meghan advised him: ‘You don’t need to be a princess, you can create your own life better than any princess’
- He suffered ‘vile and toxic abuse’ by trolls, saying he tries to have ‘compassion’ for them but this is ‘really hard when you’re on the receiving end’;
- Harry spoke of ‘going wild’ as he chatted with the Hollywood star about their own drugs and alcohol problems;
- Duke knew in his 20s that he ‘didn’t want the job’ of being a full time royal, also speaking about infamous incident of playing naked billiards in Las Vegas before serving in Afghanistan;
- When asked if people he met on royal trips to poorer areas ‘had more freedom than he did’, he said: ‘It’s the job right? You grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this’;
(From left) Dax Shepard, his co-host Monica Padman and Prince Harry pose in a photograph for the Armchair Experts podcast
Prince Harry, 36, has compared his life to the Jim Carrey film The Truman Show in a new interview with a podcast that has been bought up by Spotify,
The Duke of Sussex has said he wants to ‘break the cycle’ of the ‘pain and suffering’ of his upbringing with his own children, with a second baby, a daughter, due this summer
Meghan Markle wass pictured at Whole Foods store on Kensington High Street when she was staying with Harry at his palace
Prince Charles is pictured today meeting Oscar Coulson-Starley (11) and mother Danni Starley (45) from Kent during a visit to the the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre in London, 21 years after he formally opened the research centre
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge laugh during a gardening session at The Way Youth Zone in Wolverhampton today
The Duke of Sussex confided in Dax that he was so desperate to hide his relationship with Meghan Markle when she stayed at Kensington Palace for the first time in 2016, that they went ‘incognito’ to the supermarket and ‘pretended we didn’t know each other’, texting shopping list items from different aisles.
Speaking with a slight American twang to his British accent, Harry said his life was like The Truman Show – when Jim Carrey’s character discovers his life is a TV drama.
Dax asked him if he had done ‘mundane things’, such as going to the supermarket.
He said: ‘The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket in London, pretending we didn’t know each other, texting each other from the other side of the aisles. There’s people looking at me, giving me all these weird looks, and coming up to me and saying ‘hi’. I texted her saying ‘is this the right one’, and she said ‘no you want parchment paper’, and I’m like ‘where’s the parchment paper?!’.
He added: ‘I had baseball cap on, looking down at the floor, trying to stay incognito. It’s amazing how much chewing gum you see, it’s a mess’.
Harry did not say which supermarket he visited but in November 2016, Meghan was spotted leaving a Whole Foods store in West London, just a few hundred yards from Kensington Palace. Harry was also a regular, although the high-end food shop is unlikely to have much chewing gum stuck to its floors.
The Duke appearance on ‘Armchair Expert’, hosted by Shepard and Monica Padman, may be linked to its move to Spotify from July. Harry and Meghan have signed a multi-million dollar deal with the streaming firm for their own Archewell Audio channel.
Harry admitted that he was a privileged, but that this can change, pointing to the rise of the couple’s friend Oprah Winfrey, who interviewed them earlier this year.
He said: ‘If Oprah is at one end, I am on the other based on my privilege and upbringing and Oprah’s at the opposite end, then every single one of us is somewhere along there’.
But he added: ‘By the way I truly believe you can move along the spectrum as well, wherever you were born you may start in one place but that will change over time’.
In the interview the Duke says compares his life to the film where every second of a man’s life is scrutinised, filmed, controlled and broadcast to the world.
Discussing how his mental health struggles were dealt with when he was a child, he said: ‘[I was told] You need help. As a case of, not weakness but ‘I don’t know how to deal with this. You’re unhinged, you’re not very well, go and seek help’.
He said it had caused him to ‘object and run away’, saying: ‘Everyone of us will try to find some way to mask the actual feeling and try to feel different than how we actually feel.’
He said as a child he had ‘rejected’ the feelings, saying he had pretended he felt ‘fine.’
Prince Charles, Prince Philip and Prince Harry appear during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant in London on June 3, 2012
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex with their son Archie during their royal tour of South Africa on September 25, 2019
The Queen and Princess Diana, Harry’s mother, are pictured together in 1989
Dax Shepard, who is married to actress Kristen Bell, runs the popular podcasts that interviews stars in America. It’s been bought up by Spotify, who have done a deal with the Sussexes
Prince Harry, 36, has revealed that Meghan Markle gave him words of advice on Royal life and told him: ‘You can create the life better than any princess’
Harry, pictured in Chelsea, London, said his life was like being in The Truman Show
At the start of the discussion, Harry explained: ‘I didn’t realise it was an interview. Was I nervous? No I wasn’t so much nervous but I guess on this particular subject around mental health.
‘For me, unfortunately in today’s world it’s quite a sensitive subject, not just for people who are sharing, but ultimately the subject matter itself it has to be handled with care.
‘When it ends up getting weaponised by certain people you can’t predict it. It doesn’t worry me anymore.’
Monica Padman asked him if he felt ‘in a cage’ while in royal duties. She said: ‘When you talk about going to the Commonwealth and empathising with all these people in worse situations than you – but you were in a horrible situation too and had to walk around with a smile and be the person comforting (them) but in some ways those people had more freedom than you did’.
Harry responded: ‘It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early twenties and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mum, how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again.
‘I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this.
‘And then once I started doing therapy it was like the bubble was burst. I plucked my head out of the sand and gave it a good shake off and I was like, you’re in this position of privilege, stop complaining and stop thinking you want something different – make this different – because you can’t get out. How are you going to do these things differently, how are you going to make your mum proud and use this platform to really affect change.
‘Looking back I realise that helping other people, helped me’. He added: ‘Once you’ve suffered you don’t want other people to suffer’, adding: ‘I’m feeling s**t, what am I going to do, I’m going to help my neighbour and have a really good day’.
Prince Harry talks about ‘going wild’ in his youth in frank discussion about Dax Shepard doing ‘s** loads of drugs’ and ‘partying hard’ on podcast
Prince Harry’s infamous party trip to Las Vegas which saw naked photos of him leaked to the press was brought up by host Dax Shepard in their 90-minute podcast chat. Pictured, Prince Harry, left, in 2012
Prince Harry has spoken of ‘going wild’ as he chatted with a Hollywood star about their own drugs and alcohol problems.
The Duke of Sussex was speaking on actor Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ mental health podcast when he made the remarks.
Harry was quizzing the star – who is married to Frozen actress Kristen Bell – about the American’s substance use in high school.
The Royal asked him about Shepard’s ‘awareness’ of what sparked his path towards drugs as a teenager.
Harry told him ‘For you it was your upbringing and everything that happened to you – the trauma, pain and suffering.
‘All of a sudden you find yourself doing a s***load of drugs and partying hard.
‘Look how many other people do that as well. They wouldn’t have the awareness at the time.
‘I certainly wouldn’t have had the awareness when I was going wild.
‘It’s like why am I actually doing this? In the moment its like, this is fun. I’m in my 20s – it’s what you’re supposed to do.’
Harry himself has been linked to smoking cannabis and drinking.
A recent Channel 5 documentary called Prince Harry: The Troubled Prince featured broadcaster Daisy McAndrew.
She told the programme: ‘You can really understand how a lonely, privileged unhappy Prince would end up drinking and partying and taking cannabis to fill those hours and hang out with people he thought really liked or even loved him.’
Prince Charles is known to have taken the young Duke aged 16 to a residential centre for drug users for a visit after finding out,
Reformed users at Peckham’s Featherstone Lodge warned him their addictions had started with drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
Meghan told Prince Harry: ‘You don’t need to be a princess, you can create the life that will be better‘
Prince Harry has revealed that Meghan Markle gave him words of advice on Royal life and told him: ‘You can create the life better than any princess.’
The Duke of Sussex, 36, told Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ show about his wife Meghan’s ‘most amazing explanation’ as he spoke about life as a ‘fairytale’ royal compared to the reality.
Speaking in a 90-minute interview on the podcast, Prince Harry was asked by the US host, who is married to Frozen star Kristen Bell, about what it was like growing up as a royal – and how it compared to the portrayal of princes and princesses in movies.
‘My wife had the most amazing explanation,’ the duke explained. ‘You don’t need to be a princess, you can create the life that will be better than any princess.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (pictured) walk down the west steps of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in Windsor, on May 19, 2018
‘It’s something like that. And that’s coming from her own lived experience.’
Prince Harry went on to say how he would watch Disney films growing up just like other young children.
Host Dax went on to say how that must’ve been ‘bizarre,’ especially when the ‘ultimate prize was to become royalty’ but in reality, it actually didn’t feel ‘all that euphoric’.
The Duke of Sussex responded: ‘I do think that the old way of thinking – of the prince and princess – with all these little girls reading these wonderful fairytales going ‘all I want to be is a princess.”
However, Harry went on: ‘and I’m thinking…’ before squirming – as the host jumps in adding ‘It’s not so rad!’
Harry: I want to break the cycle of pain and suffering for my own children
Harry told the podcast: ‘I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle, I would never have had the chance to do that.’
The Duke of Sussex has said he wants to ‘break the cycle’ of the ‘pain and suffering’ of his upbringing with his own children.
Harry, who is expecting a daughter with wife Meghan and is already father to son Archie, aged two, compared his life to ‘a mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo’.
Speaking on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, he said: ‘There is no blame. I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.
‘It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you’.’
He added: ‘It’s hard to do but for me it comes down to awareness. I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go ‘OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?’
‘And here I am, I moved my whole family to the US, that wasn’t the plan but sometimes you’ve got make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.’
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle met up in a SUPERMARKET and pretended not to know each other
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ‘went to a supermarket and pretended not to know each other’ when she first visited the royal in London, he has revealed.
The Duke of Sussex appeared on Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast today, and said that the couple tried to stay ‘incognito’ during her first trip to stay with him at at Kensington Palace.
The 36-year-old, who is currently living in his $14million Californian mansion with his wife and son Archie, two, said: ‘The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket in London, pretending we didn’t know each other, texting each other from the other side of the aisles’.
Meghan Markle was pictured at Whole Foods store on Kensington High Street when she was staying with Harry at his palace in 2016
‘There’s people looking at me, giving me all these weird looks, and coming up to me and saying ”hi’. I texted her saying ‘is this the right one?,’ and she said ‘no you want parchment paper,’ and I’m like ‘where’s the parchment paper?!’.
He added: ‘It was nice. I had baseball cap on, looking down at the floor.
‘I don’t know how many times you’ve done that when you’re trying trying to stay incognito, and you’re like woah – sign post.
‘It’s amazing how much chewing gum you see and how many people’s shoes you see, it’s a mess’.
Harry did not say which supermarket he visited but in November 2016, Meghan was spotted leaving a Whole Foods store in west London, just a few hundred yards from Kensington Palace. Harry was also a regular, although the high-end food shop is unlikely to have much chewing gum stuck to its floors.
Harry says it is hard to forgive trolls who gave him ‘vile and toxic abuse’
During the interview, he also said he and Meghan Markle first met up in a supermarket – and ‘pretended’ they didn’t know each other to avoid attracting attention
Elsewhere in the interview, Harry said he had been on the end of ‘vile, toxic abuse’ online, saying he asked himself about trolls: ‘What made you want to come at me like that, when clearly we’ve never met?’
He called hatred a ‘form of project’ which came from ‘unresolved pain’, saying: ‘ultimately there’s a source to it.’
He added that there was ‘certain corners of the media’ who questioned ‘if he is privileged how could he be suffering’.
He said: ‘[People say] How bad can it be? You had people running around and doing this and that…
‘I was born into privilege but it gave me a front row seat – my education was not in school but was in meeting people across the Commonwealth.’
Harry said: ‘I know people are looking at me saying, you’re a prince, you’re from a palace, where’s your crown and where’s your cape?
‘The reality is, meeting people from all around the world puts it into context.’
He said he doesn’t see sharing his mental health struggles as ‘complaining’, and said he was determined to ‘have a positive impact on somebody’s life.’
He explained: ‘You have to listen to your body, otherwise you’re just cruising around with your fingers in your ears, ‘lalalaa.”
He said: ‘To me it’s so fascinating to hear of someone’s struggles…and then tracing it back to, what happened to you, not what is wrong with you.’
Prince Harry went on to speak about the pressures he felt as a royal living in the UK, saying: ‘Just because I’m a well known person, I can’t go outside.
‘It’s really really sad and their argument is from the paparazzi and everyone else, if you’re in a public space it’s absolutely fine for us to do.
‘So what is our human right, as an individual and a family if you’re saying from the moment we step out of our house, that it’s open season and free game – what, because of public interest?
‘There’s no public interest in you taking your kids for a walk down the beach. Nothing, it’s not news. This is my issue with it, news should stay is news.
‘What is happening in today’s world is that news has been hijacked and used to commercially benefit a small group of people, so this sort of rabid, feeding frenzy, and going back to the kids point, it’s absolutely true, these kids don’t get a choice, they don’t get a say in it and if it becomes any worse, then what you’re basically accepting is, anyone with a talent… let’s punish people who have got a talent and have literally worked their asses off to get to a point where yes they’re making money, their fans are contributing that but they’re bringing entertainment value to society.’