Prince Harry on Oprah Winfrey: my worry of Diana history repeating

The Duke of Sussex, who shocked Britain when he and his wife, Meghan, stepped back from royal duties, has told the US interviewer Oprah Winfrey that he had worried about history repeating itself.

CBS has released two brief clips from Winfrey’s interview of the couple, which is scheduled to air on 7 March. It is the first TV interview they have given since making California their home last year.

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“My biggest concern was history repeating itself,” Harry said, apparently referring to his mother, Diana, who died at age 36 in a car crash in Paris while being pursued by paparazzi.

In the Winfrey clips Harry, 36, was seated next to Meghan, 39, and holding her hand. The couple have announced they are expecting their second child.

“I’m just really relieved and happy to be sitting her talking to you with my wife by my side,” Harry said. “Because I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her [Diana], going through this process by herself all those years ago.

“It’s been unbelievably tough for the two of us, but at least we had each other.”

In the clips, Winfrey said that no subject was off limits and at one point tells the couple “you have said some pretty shocking things here” including that their situation had been “almost unsurvivable”.

Before they moved to California, the couple had complained about the British tabloids’ treatment of Meghan – whose father is white and mother is African-American – some of which they said amounted to bullying or racism.

This month Buckingham Palace announced the couple would not be returning to their lives as working members of the royal family.

In an interview with James Corden for the US programme The Late Late Show last week, Harry said he minded the intrusions of the media into his family’s life much more than the miniseries The Crown, which was “obviously fiction”.

He said the British press created a “difficult environment” that was destroying his mental health but insisted he “didn’t walk away” from the royal family. “It was stepping back rather than stepping down.”

He said: “So I did what any husband, what any father would do. It’s like: ‘I need to get my family out of here.’ But we never walked away.” He added: “I will never walk away. I will always be contributing.”

With Reuters