With his interview with Good Morning America Friday, Prince Harry has already been accused of exploiting King Charles III’s cancer diagnosis for positive headlines about himself.
During Harry’s visit to Canada to prepare for the 2025 Invictus Games, the California-based renegade royal talked to GMA about family reconciliation and even revealed that he has considered becoming a U.S. citizen.
Britain’s King Charles III and Britain’s Queen Camilla wave as they leave by car from Clarence House, travelling to Buckingham Palace, in London on February 6, 2024. King Charles III’s estranged son Prince Harry reportedly arrived in London on Tuesday after his father’s diagnosis of cancer, which doctors “caught early”. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP) (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)
But it remains to be seen whether the younger son of King Charles will get some credit for not going into detail about what he and his father discussed during their short meeting last week. That’s when Harry garnered a fair number of headlines — positive and negative — after he jumped on a plane and flew all the way from California to London to see his father after learning about his cancer diagnosis. Critics accused Harry of pulling a publicity stunt with his mad “dash” to London to see his father for what turned out to be a half-hour meeting.
With Good Morning America, Harry tried to come off as uplifting and surprisingly circumspect on some issues.
“Look, I love my family,” Harry told GMA presenter Will Reeve. “The fact that I was able to get on a plane and go and see him and spend any time with him, I’m grateful for that.”
When Reeve asked Harry about the “outlook” on his father’s health, Harry declined to share any information. In what some would say was a rare moment of discretion, Harry said that his father’s health stays “between me and him.”
But he added, “I’ve got other trips planned that will take me through the U.K., or back to the U.K., and so I’ll stop in and see my family as much as I can.”
For royal observers, Harry’s refusal to say more about what he and his father discussed could be seen as a sign that the Duke of Sussex has finally absorbing some lessons from the furor he unleashed last year when his memoir “Spare” described a number of private moments with the king.
Notably, Harry devoted a chapter to a contentious “secret” meeting he had with his father and brother, Prince William, after he traveled to the U.K. in 2021 to attend the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip. As Harry wrote in “Spare,” the meeting took place in the royal burial ground near Windsor Castle and Harry’s former UK residence, Frogmore Cottage.
Harry tried to “explain my side of things” in his estrangement from his relatives, which dates back to his marriage to Meghan Markle and their acrimonious departure from royal life in 2020. But after William, with his “scowl” and “alarming baldness,” tried to “shut” him down several times, Harry said that he and his brother began sniping.
“It got so heated that Pa raised his hands. Enough!” Harry wrote. Charles, standing between his sons, then said, “Please, boys—don’t make my final years a misery.”
The Daily Mail reported that Harry’s declarations of family love to GMA could have been part of his effort to extend an “olive branch” to his estranged relatives. Indeed, he didn’t say anything negative about them or the monarchy, as he did in “Spare” and in various interviews, including with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
Moreover, Harry expressed hope for a reconciliation. He did so when Reeve, the son of “Superman actor Christopher Reeve, made an apparent references to his late father’s paralysis, saying, “I’ve also found in my own life that sort of an illness in the family can have a galvanizing or a sort of reunifying effect for a family. Is that possible in this case?”
Harry replied: “Absolutely. Yeah, I’m sure. Throughout all these (Invictus) families I see it on a day-to-day basis, again, the strength of the family unit coming together. I think any illness, any sickness brings families together.”
But even with such seemingly kind and not-too-revealing comments, Harry already is being criticized by some friends of the royal family, especialy in regards to what he said about his father, the Daily Beast reported.
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When told of Harry’s comments, one friend of Charles and Queen Camilla, responded: “It seems Harry has taken it on himself to use the diagnosis to publicize his own agenda. If it wasn’t so sickening it would be funny. What really would have helped the family come together would have been if Harry had said he wouldn’t be taking questions about his father.”
Another friend of the family said: “It’s hard to believe that Harry can keep finding ways to make things worse. He just needs to pipe down.”
Actually, it would be unrealistic to expect GMA to not ask Harry about his father’s health, given that the king’s cancer diagnosis was a global news story. Buckingham Palace announced that doctors discovered an unspecified form of cancer when the king was undergoing treatment for an enlarged prostate. Royal reporters have said that the king is optimistic about his cancer treatment because the cancer was caught early, but the king is having to step back from public engagements.
Perhaps, these critics of Harry’s GMA comments thought he shouldn’t have done the interview at all.
The Daily Beast said the interview was recorded to promote the Invictus Games in Canada, and reports say that Harry and Meghan allowed GMA cameras to follow them around during their visit.
But the interview wasn’t just to promote the Invictus Games; it was no doubt timed to take place at the same time that the Sussexes are in the midst of a major rebranding effort.
The Montecito-based couple launched a flashy new website with a royal coat of arms, Sussex.com, that they hope will provide an “umbrella” for news about all their commercial and philanthropic endeavors. But critics say the website tries to capitalize on their royal connections. Harry’s GMA interview also comes the same week that Meghan announced that she had scored a deal to produce new episodes of her Archetypes podcast, which was dropped last year by Spotify.