Trying to plan ahead? Both 60 Minutes and Good Morning America revealed that when asked for comment on Prince Harry’s interviews, Buckingham Palace requested the footage before the programs aired.
“We reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment,” Anderson Cooper revealed at the end of his interview with the Duke of Sussex, 38 on Sunday, January 7. “Its representatives demanded, before considering responding, 60 Minutes provided them with our report prior to airing it tonight, which is something we never do.”
Michael Strahan, who spoke to Harry on GMA on Monday, January 9, shared a similar message. “We received a response from the law firm representing Buckingham Palace this morning, while we were on the air, saying that the palace needed to ‘consider exactly what is said in the interview, in the context in which it appears’ and asked that we supply them immediately with a copy of the entire interview, which we do not do as a news organization, as a matter of our policy,” he said.
Both of these interviews were about the release of the Invictus Games founder’s upcoming memoir, Spare, which comes out on Tuesday, January 10. Harry’s debut book includes his perspective on being the “spare” to William’s “heir” to the throne, the loss of their mother, Princess Diana, falling in love with Meghan Markle and their decision to exit the royal family.
During the ABC morning show segment, Harry told the former New York Giants player, 51, that he hopes to one day mend bridges with his family.
“I don’t think that we can ever have peace with my family unless the truth is out there,” he said during the Monday morning segment. “There’s a lot that I can forgive, but there needs to be conversations in order for reconciliation, and part of that has to be accountability. … I just hope that there’s a way that we can have a conversation that is trusted within that conversation that isn’t then spilled to the British press.”
While speaking to Cooper, 55, Harry revealed he tried to speak to the royal family privately about their issues. “And every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is ‘never complain, never explain,'” the England native said on 60 Minutes. “But it’s just a motto. And it doesn’t really hold.”
Meanwhile, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the memoir has already caused some damage amongst the BetterUp CIO and his royal brood. “The Palace isn’t publicly commenting about Spare, but relationships between the royals and Harry have been torn to shreds,” the insider told Us on January 8, also noting that Harry’s father, King Charles III, “does not want this drama.”
