There are a couple of episodes in the current season of The Crown that deal with the interview Princess Diana gave with Martin Bashir of the BBC in 1995. One scene that caught my attention was a discussion leading into the interview where Bashir and his producer discuss convincing Diana to speak to the BBC. The producer asks why Diana wouldn’t go to an American outlet or one of the non-government British networks, and Bashir replies that the BBC is trustworthy.
Her son, Prince Harry, is set to do an interview of his own, and he’s taking a different tack. Instead of speaking to someone with BBC News, Harry has gone to competitor ITV for an interview that will air next Sunday, two days before Harry’s tell-all book Spare releases to the public. Interestingly enough, the prince who wanted out of royal duties so that he could avoid the media is also doing an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Go figure.
ITV released a preview of its conversation between Harry and interviewer Tom Bradby, and it shows how the prince wants to have it both ways: he wants to be able to trash the royal family while maintaining relationships within that family.
“It never needed to be this way,” he told Bradby. “The leaking…the planting, I want a family, not an institution.”
“They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile,” he said, referring to the royal family. “I would like to get my father back; I would like to have my brother back.”
“Harry and his wife Meghan, officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, stepped down from royal duties in March 2020, saying they wanted to forge new lives in the United States away from media harassment,” reports Reuters.
Related: Hear Me Out: We Need More Men Like Prince Harry
The funny thing is that, while trying to avoid the media, Harry and Meghan both have proven that they’re not shy about giving interviews. They’ve chosen to pal around with Oprah on multiple occasions, they partnered with Netflix to produce a docuseries about themselves (that selectively edited a speech from Queen Elizabeth II to make her sound racist), and then there are Harry’s dual interviews on either side of the Atlantic coming up Sunday.
Granted, the British tabloid media is a cruel behemoth that makes the U.S. media look tame by comparison, and, as PJ Media’s own Paula Bolyard put it last week, we can’t fault Harry for protecting his family from that UK media monster. The problem with all of that is that Harry and Meghan don’t want to leave the media spotlight completely, especially when they can control the coverage.
It’s admirable of Harry to want to pursue reconciliation with King Charles III and Prince William, but can he do it while constantly trashing the “family business”? The London tabloid The Sun claims that Harry’s book isn’t going to help. The Sun claims that Spare is “set to go further than his £80million Netflix docuseries and give a detailed blow-by-blow account of their falling out” and reports that William has barely spoken to his younger brother in about three years.
Harry needs to understand how selfish it is for him and Meghan to want it both ways. They can’t hide behind “muh privacy” only when it’s convenient, and Harry can’t whine about his dad and brother not speaking to him while he trashes the royal family. But if there’s one thing we know about Harry, it’s that he won’t stop trying to straddle the fence with both the royals and the media.
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