Prince Harry’s new memoir Spare finally went on sale Tuesday and it has already been picked apart far more than most books in recent memory. And yet, somehow, there was still more to be revealed when the Duke of Sussex sat down with Stephen Colbert for a rare late-night TV appearance on The Late Show Tuesday night.
It wasn’t his first interview about the book, but it was the first one with cocktails.
After the “Harry! Harry! Harry!” chants died down, Colbert asked his guest how he should address him. “You can call me whatever you like at this point,” the prince joked. So with that, the host poured some tequila for them both and got into what ended up being a nearly 40-minute conversation.
ADVERTISEMENT
Asked if he believes there’s an “active campaign” by his own royal family to “undermine” his book as it’s being released, Harry replied, “Of course.” He said, “They’ve told their side of the story, this is the other side of the story” and called the last few days “hurtful and challenging” as excerpts have leaked out and, from his point of view, have been twisted to embarrass him.
“My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous,” Harry added, explicitly accusing his media detractors of putting a target on his head by suggesting he’s done things like boasting about how many enemy combatants he killed in Afghanistan, among other allegations.
Throughout the long sit-down, Colbert was an extremely sympathetic interviewer, commending him at one point for being “emotionally honest” in his writing. But in moments was able to lead Harry towards some introspection—especially when it came to his very public break with his brother William.
“Anyone who suffers from trauma, shock, grief, loss, which we all have and all will, you’ve got to put on a brave face,” Harry said, alluding to the fact that the photos of him and his brother “out there smiling” together did not reflect reality. “But more recently, in the last six years, the fracture of the relationship between me and my brother has very much been pinned on my wife.”
Then Colbert asked a question that elicited something of a revelation from his guest. “If your mother were still alive, have you ever thought about how she might handle this moment?” the host asked.
“We wouldn’t have got to this moment,” Harry replied. “It’s impossible to say where we would be now, where those relationships would be now, but there is no way that the distance between my brother and I would be the same.”
It was not lost on Harry that his mother, Princess Diana, was 36 years old when she was killed and he turned 36 two years ago when all of the drama surrounding him and wife Meghan Markle fully erupted and they said “enough.”
In the book, Harry discusses the fantasies he would have as a child that his mother hadn’t died and instead was “hiding” somewhere, “taking a break” and “plotting” a rescue plan for her two sons. When Colbert presented the idea that he and Markle essentially reenacted that fantasy by “removing” themselves from their “toxic” situation, Harry replied, “Not before trying to make it work. Believe me, we tried. And we’re still trying.”
