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Next year, in an unprecedented development for the British royal family, once the epitome of buttoned-up, stiff upper lip reserve, Prince Harry will appear on a new TV show focusing on mental health with Oprah Winfrey.
There’s going to be feelings everywhere.
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Will Harry actually weep on Oprah’s sofa? Maybe not, but only a fool would bet against watery eyes: Earlier this week Harry told the Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon that the show with Oprah—for Apple’s streaming service—was in part inspired by the response to a podcast he recorded with Gordon in which he discussed how he came close to having a breakdown as a result of not adequately processing the trauma that resulted from his mother’s death.
“It made me realize what an impact sharing my story could have, and what an impact other stories can have for so many who are suffering silently,” he said. “If the viewers can relate to the pain and perhaps the experience, then it could save lives, as we will focus on prevention and positive outcomes.”
“Pain... experience... my story”. It all looks very like Harry is going to talk about his feelings in a way that just a few years ago would have been unimaginable.
The multi-part series, Harry said, will focus on stories of the “human spirit fighting back from the darkest places.”
While Sarah Ferguson was much-mocked in the U.K. for sitting down for several (well-paid) heart-to-hearts with Oprah, one imagines that Harry’s Oprah debut will receive a warmer reception from the public at large.
This will be testament, of course, in part to his astonishing popularity, but it’s also a function of British society becoming more comfortable with the idea of doing exactly what Harry is advocating: talking about how you feel.
And the very changed emotional weather is down, to a not insignificant degree, to the influence of Oprah, and her many TV imitators both at home and abroad.
It seems impossible to imagine that Harry, as co-producer and passionate advocate for mental health, won’t be sharing at least some of his own story.
That prospect is already causing palpitations at the palace, not least because no less a figure than Prince Charles himself is said to have deep misgivings about the advisability of the royals opening up so publicly.
But for Harry and Meghan, the buzzword is impactfulness, and for this mammoth and ambitious project to really have an impact, for millions of people to sit down and watch the series, they know that it won’t be enough for Harry to act out some celebrity interviewer role, or merely append his name to the production credits.
Although the palace declined to give any details of the new show to The Daily Beast, it would be to risk a major damp squib if Harry did not have the full sit-down Oprah experience as the cornerstone of the show.
While the prospect may make Prince Charles queasy—“Charles is not at all keen on all the public emoting by his sons,” a well-placed source told The Daily Beast—for Harry, an interview with Oprah would be a natural, televised progression from the interview he recorded with the Telegraph for its ‘Mad World’ mental health podcast.
In that podcast, he memorably spoke about how his life descended into chaos due, he believes, to a failure to properly process his mother’s death.
Although he did not call out his father by name there was plenty of implied criticism of Charles—another reason, perhaps, why Charles is so deeply uneasy about Harry publicly laying out his demons.
Alongside the greater global good, Harry may have another motivation to make sure the show is as impactful and attention-grabbing as possible; behind the scenes a nasty tussle has been going on between William, Kate, Harry and Meghan as they try to divvy up areas of influence.
When they had a joint charitable foundation, the issue of who represented what could be fudged to an extent, but since the formal split into two separate foundations, they divvied up areas of influence.
On mental health, however, it appeared no solution could be found and sources briefed that they would ‘all’ lobby for mental health.
Long-term, of course, that’s no solution and the reality is that Meghan and Harry are making it very clear they have no intention of surrendering the turf to William and Kate.
For this reason, expect next week’s tour to Africa (Harry, Meghan and Archie land in South Africa on Monday) to emphasize the importance of mental health awareness at every possible occasion.
The first day of the tour will begin in a township in Cape Town where with a workshop that provides self-defense classes and female empowerment training to young girls in the community, and the following morning, they will visit ‘Waves for Change’, an NGO which trains and supports local surf mentors to provide mental health services to young people.
Indeed, the biggest photo-op of the entire tour is being actively linked to mental health: Harry will be returning to Huambo in Angola, where his mother was famously photographed walking through a landmine field in 1997, just months before her untimely death.
After recreating that iconic image, Harry will visit a center that helps landmine victims with their mental and physical rehabilitation.
Of course, Harry couldn’t visit Africa without calling in on his charity Sentebale. The palace says he will be visiting a new project by the organization “which focuses on improving the mental health of young people affected by HIV.”
Meanwhile, a parallel campaign to own the mental health activism zone is being waged on social media: just this week, Harry and Meghan posted an inspirational quote from the Dalai Lama on their Instagram page.
Posting positive decals apropos of absolutely nothing may be entirely normal for celebs in the US, but it’s still liable to provoke a rolling of the eyes in cynical old Britain.
Meghan and Harry’s focus on mental health is nothing less than utterly laudable. However, the tension between Meghan’s natural, Californian tendency to get it all on the table, coupled with Harry’s desire to un-button up, contrasted against the Brits and older royals’ historic reluctance to let the light in, may yet lead to some interesting fireworks behind palace walls.
