Following a week of headline-generating revelations from his memoir Spare, Prince Harry keeps the royal melodrama going with a series of TV interviews in the U.S. and U.K.

Following a week of unprecedented and hugely damaging revelations taken from Prince Harry’s memoir Spare — which accidentally went on sale early — a series of much-hyped interviews with the Duke of Sussex ahead of the book’s official launch on Tuesday began airing, with the prospect of more fuel being thrown onto his now very public rift with his family.
I Do Not Want to be Single Dad
never want to be in that position — part of the reason why we are here now — I never ever want to be in that position,” Harry, 38, said during his ITV interview on Sunday, January 8, referring to his mother’s death in 1997 following a car crash.
“I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad. And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father.”
The Duke of Sussex, who shares Archie, age 3, and Lili, 19 months, with Meghan, 41, made headlines in 2020 when they announced their plans to step away from their roles in the royal family.
One year later, they confirmed that the decision was made permanent and moved to California ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic
“I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better,” Harry told Tom Bradby for Britain’s ITV, the first of the interviews to be shown.
Discussing the “sibling rivalry” with his brother, Harry claimed that he had been on “different paths” with William since the death of their mother, Princess Diana. He also asserted that Kate Middleton and Markle didn’t get on from the start. “I thought the four of us would bring me and William together… but I don’t think they ever expected me to get into a relationship with someone like Meghan, who had a very successful career.”
He said that much of his family were reading the press (even going so far as to accusing Queen Camilla as leaking private conversations to the papers) and that they were “living in the tabloid bubble rather than the reality.
His brother and sister-in-law were taking on board what was being written about Markle and the stereotypes of her being an “American actress, divorcee, bi-racial.”
He later said it soon became “Meghan versus Kate” with Middleton threatened by a “new kid on the block stealing the limelight.”
Harry asserted that his brother’s team spent years “trashing” the image of him and Meghan in the media, and that their eventual decision to leave to the U.S. was spun into a false narrative that they were doing so simply to make money. “We were dedicated to a life of service,” he claimed.
Despite everything said and done and the damning details in both the book and interview, Harry said he was “100 percent” confident of reconciliation with his family. But he said it could only happen if the “chief antagonist” that had created the divide — the British tabloid press — had nothing to do with it.
“I hope that reconciliation between my family and us will have a ripple effect across the entire world,” he added.
Agoraphobia
“I was an agoraphobe. Which was nearly impossible given my public role,” Harry writes in his memoir, “Spare.”
He recalls “one speech, which couldn’t be avoided or canceled, and during which I’d nearly fainted” and writes that his older brother, Prince William, came backstage afterwards laughing at him for being “drenched.”
“Him of all people. He’d been present for my very first panic attack. With Kate. We were driving out to a polo match in Gloucestershire, in their Range Rover. I was in the back and Willy peered at me in the rearview. He saw me sweating, red-faced,” Harry writes.
“‘You all right, Harold?’ No, I wasn’t. It was a trip of several hours and every few miles I wanted to ask him to pull over so I could jump out and try to catch my breath.”
Speaking to Anderson Cooper for CBS’ 60 Minutes: Prince Harry Interview — the first with the royal in the U.S. about Spare — Harry explained that he was now speaking publicly because “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.”
In a clip released before the hour-long TV special aired, Harry claimed that journalists had previously been “spoon-fed information” by Buckingham Palace, who would then refuse to put out a statement to protect him and Meghan Markle. “There become a point when silence is betrayal.”
A third interview with Michael Strahan for Good Morning America will be broadcast on January 9.
The TV appearances come after several days of extremely personal claims and incidents of family discord were taken from early readings of Spare.
Losing Virginity at 17
He described how he lost his virginity in a field behind a pub to an “older lady” when he was 17, apparently.
Harry also described various episodes of drug-taking, including reportedly trying magic mushrooms at a party held at the home of Courteney Cox.
In a passage that sparked widespread criticism, Harry said that, as an Apache helicopter co-pilot in Afghanistan, he killed 25 Taliban soldiers, a claim that military veterans said could increase his personal security risk.
Fight with Brother William Over Meghan
The details from Spare come just weeks after Netflix’s Harry & Meghan docu-series, in which the prince first took aim at the royal family with accusations that William’s team had provided stries about the Sussexes to the British press in order to distract from negative attention the then-Cambridges were receiving.
So far there has been no comment from Buckingham Palace.