Prince Harry is sharing some never-before-heard stories about his life in London.
The Duke of Sussex joined Dax Shepard and Monica Padman on The Armchair Expert podcast where he got candid about his royal upbringing, describing it as “a mix between ‘The Truman Show’ and being in a zoo.”
“The biggest issue for me was that being born into it you inherit the risk, you inherit the risk that comes with it — you inherit every element of it without choice and because of the way that the UK media are, they feel an ownership over you” he added.
“Literally — like a full-on ownership — and then they give the impression to some, well most, of their readers that that is the case, but I think it’s a really dangerous place to be if you don’t have a choice. But then of course people, quite rightly, will turn around and go, ‘So what if you didn’t have a choice? It was privilege.’”
However, Harry had already known for years that it wasn’t something he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
“It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early 20s and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this,” he said. “Look what it did to my mum. How am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family, when I know it’s going to happen again?”
“I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this,” Harry said.
He also revealed how his wife, Meghan Markle, helped him realize he needed therapy.
“It was a conversation that I had with my now-wife. And she saw it. She saw it straightaway,” he shared. “She could tell that I was hurting and that some of the stuff that was out of my control was making me really angry. It would make my blood boil.”
“And then once I started doing therapy it was like the bubble was burst,” he continued. “I plucked my head out of the sand and gave it a good shake off and I was like, ‘You’re in this position of privilege, stop complaining and stop thinking you want something different — make this different — because you can’t get out. How are you going to do these things differently, how are you going to make your mum proud and use this platform to really affect change?’”
Prince Harry also got candid about dating while trying to avoid the spotlight, sharing a hilarious anecdote from when he and Meghan first started seeing each other.
“The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket in London, pretending we didn’t know each other, texting each other from the other side of the aisles,” Harry said. “There’s people looking at me, giving me all these weird looks, and coming up to me and saying ‘hi.’ ”
“I had baseball cap on, looking down at the floor, trying to stay incognito. It’s amazing how much chewing gum you see, it’s a mess!’ ” he added.
