Meghan Markle Encouraged Prince Harry to Open Up About Diana

The Duke And Duchess Of Sussex Attend WellChild Awards

(Image credit: WPA Pool)

published 4 November 2019

Prince Harry has become more and more open about his own mental health and struggles with grief in recent years—and it seems we have Meghan Markle to thank for that.

One of Harry's first big interviews about the struggles he's faced in dealing with his mother's death came in April 2017, when he joined journalist Bryony Gordon as a guest on her podcast, Mad World.

In a recent piece for The Daily Telegraph, Gordon revealed that Meghan played a huge role in convincing Harry to appear on the podcast.

"It was Meghan who encouraged her then boyfriend to do the podcast about his mental health with me," she wrote.

On the podcast, Harry opened up about seeking help in his late twenties to cope with his mother, Princess Diana's, tragic death in 1997.

"It never occurred to me that Prince Harry might be more nervous than I was about our interview," Gordon said in a quote on the website for Heads Together, the mental health initiative Harry launched with his brother, Prince William. "Like a small child who doesn’t understand that the spider is just as scared of them as they are of it, I simply hadn’t entertained the notion that the fifth (now sixth) in line to the throne might be experiencing some pre-interview jitters too."

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Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.