Prince Harry’s big King Charles mistake in GMA interview
The Duke of Sussex’s latest attempt to patch things up with King Charles and Prince William will only backfire.
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If the Washington Post has a royal desk then I’m sure it is probably housed in a broom cupboard, on the basement level, in a Wi-Fi dead zone and is on a strict pen ration. This is a paper that is more concerned about continually giving democracy mouth-to-mouth than the travails and topsy-turvy fortunes of the world’s most famously dysfunctional, maladapted German immigrants.
Still. Last year one reporter from the Post came up with a pretty wild royal detail: That Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have done roughly 40 hours of media outings and interviews since hitting US soil.
Keep that in mind when I bring you up-to-date with Saturday’s big, breaking Harry news. He did an interview. Yes, another one. (Anyone else getting a certain nihilistic, “Darryl dug a hole” vibe?)
Yes, even after James Corden, after Oprah Winfrey, after Dax Shepherd’s Armchair Expert podcast, after ITV, after The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, after 60 Minutes, after Good Morning America, after the Telegraph, after the Today show and after six trying hours of both he and Meghan narrating their every twinge and feeling for Netflix, Harry circa 2024 still thinks doing an interview is a good idea.
What’s the definition of madness again?
This time around, Harry is back on Good Morning America, being gently probed by interviewer Will Reeve, son of Superman star Christopher Reeve. (Reeve and the GMA cameras have been following Harry and Meghan during their trip to Whistler and Vancouver for an event promoting next year’s Invictus Games.)
The headline news: Harry thinks his father King Charles’ recent cancer diagnosis could help ‘reunify’ the royal family saying, “I think any illness, any sickness brings families together.”
He told Reeve that he was “grateful” to have had time with His Majesty recently (all of 30 minutes, that is), stressing, “I love my family.” The duke plans to see his family “as much as I can” during upcoming trips to or through the UK.
Asked about his “outlook” on father’s illness, Harry said, “That stays between me and him”.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and on a weekend to boot, but good lord.
Does Harry really think that going on camera and chit-chatting with Reeve is a sure-fire way to start mending family bridges like a Bunnings regular who is a dab hand with a hammer?
That his interview will be the spark that will have Charles, back in London and watching his son ventilate his most private feelings from the snowy slopes of Canada on the screen of an aide’s iPhone, decide that all is forgiven?
Even after those 40 hours, here he is, still at it. I’m not sure whether this all makes Harry obtuse or wildly optimistic.
Back in 2021 Harry basically declared war on his family via TV and now he seems to be trying to make up with them … via TV. Turning water into wine would be a lesser miracle by contrast.
The pesky thing about the interviews Harry has given is they have tended to only dig him even deeper into his bespoke hole.
In 2019, Harry and Meghan’s Tom Brady interview confirmed that he and Prince William were seriously on the outs; their Oprah prime time special painted the royal family as biased (or ‘racist’ as we thought at the time until Harry popped up in another interview later to correct us) and cruel; Armchair Expert gave us the duke talking about wanting to “break” the cycle of “genetic pain and suffering”; and Netflix gave us the revelation that Prince William had ‘screamed and shouted’ at Harry during the Sandringham Summit while Charles and the late Queen “quietly [sat] there”.
I could go on and on and on but there are only so many hours of sunlight in the day.
What truly puzzles me is that Harry seems unable or unwilling to accept that every time he opens his mouth and talks about his family, even to this relatively bland, innocuous degree, it has never made an ounce of difference. So too that at the heart of the trans-Atlantic Windsor/Sussex stand-off is the question of trust, and him popping up on breakfast tele only undermines that.
The royal family has never responded positively to any Harry or Meghan interview. Ever. Hell, Buckingham Palace has barely ever acknowledged these outings have happened. (Only one – Oprah, which gave us the line “recollections may vary”.) Yet here is Harry, trying, trying, trying again.
This weekend’s GMA effort also marks a big tonal shift for Harry since his 2023 Spare media blitzkrieg. Gone was the barely-concealed, just-below-the-surface, coiled animosity of that Harry, a righteous truth-wielding warrior taking on The Firm and the British press, and instead we got Harry, the good-natured, cheery bloke.
During the GMA segment, he hugs, he chats, and he positively glows when talking to the wounded and serving veterans training for next year’s Invictus Games. The message, forget about that peevish man from last year, that affronted son of a broken institution and welcome to peppy, charity Harry!
Now we have a “grateful” duke talking about ‘loving’ his family, a far cry from the 2023 version who talked about seeing “red mist” in William when his brother allegedly attacked him in his London kitchen.
Someone, somewhere, in Camp Sussex would seem to have been talking about ‘changing the narrative’ and the need to move on from the Vinegar Years of the Sussexes’ clockwork denunciations of Crown Inc.
Will any of this actually work? It’s dubious.
When Harry spoke to 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper last year, Harry said that he was “trying to speak a language that perhaps [his family] understand.”
Today we have to ask, does the royal family “speak” breakfast TV? And after those 40 hours, are the Windsors at all interested in hearing what Harry has left to say?
Maybe the truth and GMA won’t set the Duke of Sussex free and help him patch things up with father and brother. Maybe the truth will just push him even further away.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Prince Harry’s big King Charles mistake in GMA interview
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