Prince Harry Says He Wants His Father and Brother Back in New Teaser for ‘Spare’ Interview

Prince Harry, Prince William, King Charles

(Image credit: Getty)

published 2 January 2023

To promote his new memoir, Spare, Prince Harry will sit for two interviews: one with veteran CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, which will air on CBS’ 60 Minutes this Sunday, and the other with ITV journalist Tom Bradby, who Harry and Meghan Markle famously spoke to during their 2019 royal tour of Africa.

And bits from both are coming out in teasers, like the 60 Minutes clip, where Cooper asks Harry “One of the criticisms that you’ve received is that well, okay, fine, you want to move to California, you want to step back from the institutional role, why be so public? You say you tried to do this privately.” To which Harry responds, “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.’ But it’s just a motto. And it doesn’t really hold.”

Harry also confirmed to Cooper that there is “endless” complaining and explaining done through leaks: “They will feed or have a conversation with the correspondent, and that correspondent will literally be spoon fed information and write the story, and then the bottom of it, they say that they’ve reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting. So, when we’re being told for the past six years we can’t put a statement out to protect you, but you do it for other members of the family, there becomes a point where silence is betrayal.”

Then, maybe even more explosively, some soundbites from the ITV interview, per The Telegraph: “It never needed to be this way,” “I want a family, not an institution,” “They feel as though it’s better to keep us somehow as the villains,” “They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile,” and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, “I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.”

The two interviews will both air on January 8 and precede the release of Spare on January 10 and come as The Daily Mail reports Harry and brother Prince William’s relationship is “hanging by a thread.”

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.