There were so many amazing, heartbreaking and incredible moments in Prince Harry’s 60 Minutes interview. I’m so glad 60 Minutes posted the entire interview on YouTube (you can see below). It starts on a great note, with Anderson Cooper reading the passage from Spare where Harry wrote that William’s baldness was “alarming” and Will’s resemblance to Diana had faded. Like, we started the interview with “William is bald and ugly.”

My overall opinion on Harry and how he came across on 60 Minutes is that he’s being incredibly honest about his own damaged backstory, how grief warped him, his “years of magical thinking” where he believed his mother was still secretly alive into his early adulthood. He went harder on Camilla than I was expecting, but he went easier on William than I was expecting. Harry even admits that he wouldn’t have told Meghan about William’s assault if Meghan hadn’t seen the cuts on his back. Some particular quotes:

On William’ ugliness: “I don’t see it as cutting at all. Um, you know, my brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years. None of anything I’ve written, anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family. But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.

On greeting people at KP after Diana’s death: “I think it’s bizarre, because I see William and me smiling. I remember the guilt that I felt. The fact that the people that we were meeting were showing more emotion than we were showing, maybe more emotion than we even felt. There was a lotta tears. I talk about how wet people’s hands were. And I couldn’t understand it at first. Their hands were wet from wiping their own tears away. I do remember one of the strangest parts to it was taking flowers from people and then placing those flowers with the rest of them. As if I was some sort of middle person for their grief. And that really stood out for me.

Why he wanted to see photos from the Paris crash scene: “Mainly proof. Proof that she was in the car, proof that she was injured and proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones taking photographs of her lying half dead in the back seat of the car. All I saw was the back of my mom’s head, slumped in the back seat. There were other more gruesome photographs. I will be eternally grateful to him [his secretary] for denying me the ability to inflict pain on myself by seeing that. That’s the kind of stuff that sticks in your mind forever.

He visited the tunnel in Paris where his mother died when he was 23: “I wanted to see whether it was possible driving at the speed that Henry Paul was was driving that you could lose control of a car and plow into a pillar killing almost everybody in that car. I need to take this journey. I need to ride the same route. William and I had already been told, the event was like a bicycle chain, if you remove one of those chains the event would not have happened. The paparazzi chasing was part of that. Yet everybody got away with it. William and I considered reopening the inquest because there were so many gaps and so many holes in it, because it didn’t add up, it didn’t make any sense.

Whether he would still like to reopen the investigation into Diana’s death: “Truth be known, no. Do I need any more than I already know? No, I don’t think it would change much.

On not wanting his father to marry Camilla: “She was the villain, she was the third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image. We thought that [the marriage] was going to cause more harm than good. If he was now with his person, surely that’s enough. Why go that far when you don’t necessarily need to? We wanted him to be happy and we saw how happy he was with her.

Camilla’s propaganda machine: “The need for her to rehabilitate her image made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. There was open willingness on both sides to trade information. With a family built on hierarchy and with her on the way to being queen consort there was going to be people or bodies left on the street because of that…If you are led to believe as a member of the family that having positive stories written about you is going to improve your reputation or increase your chances of being accepted by the British public, then that’s what you’re going to do.

On his family’s reaction to Meghan: “Right from the beginning before they had a chance to get to know her and the UK press jumped on that. [The mistrust was based on] the fact that she was American, an actress, divorced, Black, biracial with a Black mother. Those are just four of the typical stereotypes that becomes a feeding frenzy for the British press. My family reads the tabloids, it’s laid out at breakfast when everyone comes together. If you have that judgment based on a stereotype right at the beginning it’s very very hard to get over that. A large part of it for the family but also the British press was like “He’s changed, she must be a witch” as opposed to yeah, I did change and I’m really glad I changed because rather than getting drunk, falling out of clubs, taking drugs I’ve now found the love of my life and I have the opportunity to start a family with her.

William assaulting him in 2019: “He was being told certain things by people within his office. At the same time he was consuming a lot of the tabloid press. He had a few issues which were based not on reality. I was defending my wife. He was coming for my wife, she wasn’t there at the time, but through the things that he was saying. I was defending myself. We moved from one room into the kitchen. His frustrations were growing, he was shouting at me, I was shouting back at him. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t pleasant at all and he snapped and he pushed me to the floor. He knocked me over, I landed on the dog bowl. I cut my back, I didn’t know about it at the time. He apologized after. I wouldn’t have [told Meghan] until she saw my back.”

[From CBS’s transcript & CB’s transcript]

Every part of his statements about Diana were heartbreaking. I didn’t know that he still believed she was alive well into his 20s, that every day he woke up thinking “maybe today will be the day she’ll call.” What’s left unsaid is that his family’s need to clam up and carry on like nothing happened reinforced Harry’s trauma – he wasn’t allowed to process anything in his childhood, so he would drink and take drugs and fall out of clubs. As for Camilla… “With a family built on hierarchy and with her on the way to being queen consort there was going to be people or bodies left on the street because of that.” Yiiiikes.

A few more things – Harry talked about the Jeremy Clarkson mess in both his 60 Minutes interview and his ITV interview. In 60 Minutes, he was like “thank you for proving our point” about how the misogynistic and racist British media treated Meghan. Cooper also asked Harry about “”renouncing” his titles and Harry’s cold line delivery of “And what difference would that make” was brilliant. He’s right – it would make no difference.

And finally, the Palace “demanding” a copy of the 60 Minutes interview – what an utter clownshow. It just shows how the Windsors think nothing of their open collusion with the media, to the point where they think they have the right to “demand” advanced copies of interviews or Netflix series. As utter clownshow.

60 Minutes reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. Palace representatives demanded that before considering commenting we provide them with our report prior to it airing, which is something 60 Minutes does not do. https://t.co/JK98Zzaopk pic.twitter.com/VylhJ7SIz9

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 9, 2023

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, CBS.