BRITAIN’S PRINCE HARRY has said he wants his father and brother back during an ITV interview due to be released this Sunday, two days before his memoir is published.
But in a separate interview with CBS News, set to air the same day, Harry also criticises Buckingham Palace over an alleged failure to defend him and his wife, Meghan Markle, before they stepped down as senior royals.
Both broadcasters have released snippets of the duke’s conversations ahead of the full interviews being televised.
In a series of clips from the Duke of Sussex’s ITV conversation, Harry tells presenter Tom Bradby: “It never needed to be this way,” and refers to “the leaking and the planting” before adding “I want a family, not an institution”.
He also says “they feel as though it is better to keep us somehow as the villains” and “have shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile”, although it is unclear who he is referring to.
Harry: The Interview, an exclusive in-depth discussion with Tom Bradby.
— ITV (@ITV) January 2, 2023
Watch on ITV1 or stream on ITVX at 9pm on Jan 8. @tombradby #ITV #ITVX pic.twitter.com/MrFjLSCb9o
Filmed in California where the duke now lives, ITV said that Harry: The Interview will go into “unprecedented depth and detail” about his life in and outside the royal family.
Bradby, a former royal correspondent and current presenter of ITV News at Ten, is a friend of the Sussexes and previously interviewed them for a documentary about their 2019 Africa tour.
Meanwhile, Harry tells CBS’s Anderson Cooper of the “betrayal” by Buckingham Palace while speaking on the 60 Minutes programme.
Prince Harry tells @andersoncooper he was the target of press leaks after private conversations with members of the Royal Family. https://t.co/0xN8FdapYV pic.twitter.com/FRKfp8AVKp
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 2, 2023
In a one-minute extract, Harry says: “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.
“The family motto is ‘never complain, never explain’, but it’s just a motto.
“They (Buckingham Palace) will feed or have a conversation with a correspondent, and that correspondent will literally be spoon-fed information and write the story, and at the bottom of it, they will say they have reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.
“But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting.
“So when we’re being told for the last 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 when silence is betrayal.”
CBS has described the full interview as “revealing” and Harry’s book as “explosive”.
The duke’s autobiography Spare, which is expected to give details about his disagreements with the Prince of Wales, is being released on 10 January.
It comes after the duke claimed in his Netflix documentary that William broke a promise to him never to leak stories or brief against one another after witnessing the fallout of such actions in their father’s office.
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