Prince Harry didn’t give a direct answer when asked whether, now he lives California, he missed his dad, Prince Charles, and brother, Prince William.
“For me, at the moment, I am here to focus on these guys [Invictus Games athletes] and these families and giving everything that I can, 120 percent, to them to make sure they have the experience of a lifetime,” he told NBC Today co-anchor Hoda Kotb in a new interview. “That’s my focus here and when I leave here and go back [to America] my focus is my family who I miss massively.”
He added that, “like most people,” he had missed the opportunity to see family over the last couple of years because of the pandemic.
ADVERTISEMENT
Harry said he feels the presence of his mom, Princess Diana, who died in 1997, as a “constant. It has been over the last two years. More so than ever before.”
“It is almost as though she has done her bit with my brother [Prince William], and now she is very much helping me… and now she is helping me set up,” Harry told Kotb. “He’s got his kids and I’ve got my kids. The circumstances are obviously different, but I feel her presence in almost everything that I do now, but definitely more so in the last two years than ever before, without question. She is watching us.”
Kotb said she was sure Diana was proud of Harry. “I’m sure she is,” Harry replied. He said he doesn’t tell Archie “all the stuff that happened” around “Grandma Diana,” but there were pictures of her in their home.
Harry was speaking to Kotb at the event in the Netherlands, which he founded for ill and wounded service veterans in 2014. En route, he and Meghan Markle had visited his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, for tea.
“Being with her, it was great,” Harry told Kotb. “It was just so nice to see her, you know, she’s on great form. She’s always got a great sense of humor with me and I’m making sure she’s protected and got the right people around her.” To see the queen “in some element of privacy was nice.”
Harry said he most appreciated the queen’s “sense of humor and her ability to see the humor in so many different things. We have a really special relationship. We talk about things she can’t talk about with anybody else.”
Diana Princess of Wales, Prince William, and Prince Harry visit the Thorpe Park Amusement Park.
Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty ImagesAfter reports this week that Harry and Meghan had been invited to stand on the Buckingham Palace balcony during the queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Harry said he didn’t know if he would attend the event, citing “lots of things, security issues and everything else.” He is “trying to make it possible so I can get my kids to meet her.”
“She’s had a few jubilees… But I’m sure she’s looking forward to it,” he said of the queen herself.
Harry said home, for now at least, was Montecito in California, where he lives with Meghan, son Archie, and daughter Lilibet. “You know, home—home for me, now, is, you know, for the time being, in the States,” he said. Santa Barbara had proved to be “such a great community,” he said, adding the family had been “welcomed with open arms” there.
Kotb asked about Harry and Meghan’s life, after leaving their roles as senior royals. “The focus is very much the same,” Harry said. “Certainly from my wife’s point of view, for the two of us, this is a life she signed up for that we are committed to doing as a couple forever. Because of circumstances, we’ve moved back a life of service to the States and continue to do what we’re doing before, so in that regard nothing has changed for us. It’s just a little bit more complicated to have to restart.”
Daily life revolved around his family, Harry told Kotb. Working from home “is not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said, with Archie merrily interrupting Zoom calls.
Did Archie share Harry’s cheekiness, Kotb asked. “I think so,” Harry responded. “I always try and keep that. I think cheekiness keeps you alive.”
On what he loved about fatherhood, Harry said, “All if it. The chaos, the learning, the reminder of every element of yourself, your soul. When you’re not a parent… maybe sometimes you forget who you are.” Archie was now asking “why” to everything, Harry said, who attempts to give his son as many honest answers as he can. “I love every part of it. I always wanted to be a dad, always wanted to have my own kids, and now I have two little people I am responsible for.”
Asked if living in the U.S. felt peaceful, Harry said, “I don’t know how many people feel truly peaceful. At times, I feel massively at peace.” But the biggest issue people wrestled with was “helplessness.”
“Human beings are compassionate people, but when your life becomes really hard, it can be harder for some to find compassion from other people,” Harry said. “I find healing in helping others. And that’s what we should really be focusing on.”
“There’s so much to be happy about in the outside world,” Harry said, “but also so much to worry about.”
On his own and others’ mental health, Harry said it was “about management. You know the things that trigger you, therefore you try and stay away from that. But what I do know is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for absolutely everybody.”
Trying to ensure he does not suffer from “burnout,” Harry said his mantra was to “try to make the world a better place for my kids, otherwise what’s the point of bringing kids into this world?... We can’t fix everything, we know that, but what can do is be there for each other.”
Harry said it “feels amazing” to hear wounded veterans like one Kotb had spoken to say the Invictus Games had saved their lives, “but it makes me incredibly sad to hear that was how dark it was for them.”
