King Charles, as the Prince of Wales, gave one TV interview (on ITV in 1994). Diana, Princess of Wales (on BBC One, 1995) and HRH Prince Andrew (on BBC One, 2019) also did the same – and only Diana seems likely to have considered the primetime conversation successful.
But Harry, Duke of Sussex has now made 11 high-profile TV appearances: from Oprah With Meghan and Harry (CBS and ITV, 2021) through the six parts of the documentary series Harry & Meghan (Netflix) to the four British and US interviews this week to promote his memoir Spare. So how well did Harry use the medium, and how well did it use him?
Harry: The Interview (ITV, 8 Jan)
Production Any interview pegged to a painfully revelatory memoir faces the technical hitch of how a person can be expected to ad-lib their tragedies for viewers’ convenience. ITV’s elegant solution was to use extracts from Harry’s audiobook recording to set up discussions.
Harry Beyond those who have objected to Harry from monarchist (disrespect to the crown) or classist (self-pitying super-rich brat) perspectives, those who tuned in open-minded may have been pleasantly surprised to find an articulate, thoughtful, engaging and amusing man. Harry has inherited his mother’s media poise. Only the hardest heart could not feel sympathy for his clearly deep scars – unable to forget his mother’s death or forgive the media for what he sees as their role in it.
Interviewer Under usual media conflict-of-interest rules, Tom Bradby, a longtime friend of both Diana’s sons, should have been exactly the wrong choice. In practice, familiarity allowed him to eschew the sycophancy of US interviewers from Oprah onwards, while Harry was usefully aware that Bradby has his own knowledge of some of the events and people mentioned. Cannily, though, the host also maintained his journalistic rigour, often using a resting sceptical expression. And in the moment interviewers dread – when Harry challenged the host to answer one of his own “complicated” questions – the ITV man calmly delineated, without notes, the intricacies of the prince’s three legal battles in the UK. Against the odds, an already formidable broadcaster emerged with reputation enhanced.
Revelations In this first interview – screened before the book was published – Harry’s disclosure that he has no memories of the period after his mum’s death was startling and poignant. The explanation of some of his interactions with the media will have made some British media uncomfortable, as their coverage of the show possibly reflected.
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The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS, 10 Jan)
Production Harry’s 11th and latest TV interview in American exile was as radical a departure from royal protocol as the first with Oprah. The previous 10 all fell within news/documentary formats. This was the first appearance by a blood royal on a studio talkshow and, moreover, one with a satirical spin. No Buckingham Palace press teams would ever risk a prince doing this, and even commoner spin doctors would judge it high jeopardy.
Harry Either the prince or his handlers had gambled that host Stephen Colbert tends, when faced with a high-ranking newsy guest (the Obamas, Clintons), to drop the satire. Apart from a couple of “comedy bits” – a skit with royal heralds and Tom Hanks, and drinking tequila shots with Colbert – that felt ill-judged, Harry was able to be deeply serious about favoured themes such as mental health, the British media, while also cannily flattering his new home (“America is a great place to live”) and, as the most successful guests on US talkshows do, engaging directly with the studio audience. It has been increasingly hard this week to see any reconciliation with the royals, but this appearance teased a possible future for Harry. There’s a long tradition of hit chatshow guests – Oprah Winfrey, James Corden, Terry Wogan, John Bishop – moving into the main chair. A sharp producer might sign up Harry to host a series of chats for which everyone, from Sir Elton John to President Biden, would surely agree.
Interviewer Mainly eschewing comedy – except for an exchange about a “cock sock” (the C-word bleeped) to prevent frostbite – Colbert was empathic (his father and two brothers died in an accident when he was 10), intelligent and forensic. His solution to the issue of how to transmit the content of the book was to read and internalise it to the extent that he could describe and quote content without notes.
Revelations Even those sympathetic to Harry were thrown by reports that the book “boasted” of his number of Taliban kills in Afghanistan. Prompted and endorsed by Colbert, the prince was able to present those paragraphs in a different light: a reflection on military veterans’ difficulty in living with the knowledge of killings and a plea for more understanding of this haunting to “prevent more suicides”. Harry’s receipt of a round of applause for that line represented a stunningly effective reversal of a media narrative and again showed how, as a smooth media performer, he is completely his mother’s son.
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60 Minutes: Prince Harry (CBS, 8 Jan)
Production Clunkily, host Anderson Cooper read out chunks from a copy of Spare, then asked the prince to parse them, like a college tutorial. The bigger vibe, though, was shrink and client: Cooper, smiling benignly behind expensive spectacles, sometimes seemed at risk of handing Harry a bill and fixing the next session.
Harry Pronouncing “route” in the American way to rhyme with “shout”, the prince will have to watch where his accent ends up, with signs of it splashing into mid-Atlantic like David Frost’s.
Interviewer Cooper’s solemnity blocked off the cheeky side of the prince’s personality that showed in other chats. When Harry mentioned his “aunt” taking him to see HM the Queen’s body, a British presenter would have gathered that he was talking about HRH Princess Anne, fleshing out the anecdote.
Revelations For UK viewers who had seen the Bradby, the content was largely familiar; for US viewers, it would have had the impact of the ITV show. Cooper got more on the depth of royal enmities: Harry hasn’t “for a while” had any contact with his dad or brother. The freshest information was an explanation of why the royals are so obsessed with the press. All the papers are laid out at breakfast, so it’s hard not to know what’s being said about you.
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Good Morning America (ABC, 9 Jan)
Production The closest in format to Diana’s 1995 Panorama interview – a special segment of a news programme – although, unlike his mum, Harry clearly wasn’t blackmailed into doing this. Interviewer Michael Strahan followed the journalistic tradition of taking the content of the book as read and asking more general questions (“Did [HM The Queen] ever express that she was upset with you?”) designed to prise out news stories.
Harry Few politicians – and certainly not the last four UK prime ministers or the two most recent US presidents – could get through such a varied sequence of interviews without significant stumbling or discomfort. After this week, even Harry haters and doubters might have to accept that he is a fluent media performer. Transcripts of the four interviews are remarkably free of the word “um”. To Strahan’s Elizabeth II question, for instance, he denied it (to his gran “nothing came as a surprise”) without giving the direct quotes from the monarch for which the questioner was fishing.
Interviewer Strahan was prepped and sharp but Harry benefited from the tendency of citizens of the republic to become slightly awed in the presence of a British royal.
Revelations Strahan’s direct questioning required the prince to be less euphemistic than elsewhere about family rifts, but there was no scoop.
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