Prince Harry has revealed that he and his brother once believed their mother, Princess Diana, faked her own death.
In an interview with Anderson Cooper for CBS’ 60 Minutes – which aired on Sunday, January 8 – the Duke of Sussex spoke openly about the death of his mother, the late Princess of Wales, when he was just 12.
During their televised chat, the CNN reporter pointed to an excerpt from Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, titled Spare, in which the prince admits to believing his mother faked his death to escape the press.
Harry told Cooper he had believed “for a long time” that Princess Diana had “decided to disappear for a while” but would call her two sons to come join her wherever she was.
“I just refused to accept that she was gone,” he said. “Partly she would never do this to us, but also partly, maybe it’s all part of a plan.”
When Cooper asked her how long he believed she had faked her own death, Harry replied, “Years. Many, many years. William and I also talked about it.
“He had similar thoughts,” Harry said in reference to his older brother Prince William.
The late Princess of Wales was killed in a fatal car accident in Paris, France, on August 31, 1997. In his autobiography, which will be released on January 10, the Duke of Sussex recalls driving through the Parisian tunnel where the Princess Diana died at the same time. speed that his car was traveling before the accident.
In an excerpt from Spare, which was obtained by People, Harry wrote about playing in the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi-final in Paris when he was 23. There, he told his driver about the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris where his mother was driving when her car crashed.
“The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Lights, I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother was…”, he wrote. “I watched his eyes widen in the rearview mirror. The tunnel is called Pont de l’Alma, I tell him. Yes yes. He knew it.
He went on to describe how he instructed the driver to “go through the tunnel” at precisely “65 miles per hour”.
“The exact speed that mum’s car was traveling, according to police, at the time of the accident,” he continued. “Not 120 miles per hour, as the press originally reported.”
“We have arrived at the mouth of the tunnel. We raced ahead, over the edge of the tunnel entrance, the bump that would have swerved Mum’s Mercedes. But the lip was nothing, you could barely feel it,” he wrote.
“As the car entered the tunnel, I leaned forward, I saw the light change to a kind of watery orange, I watched the concrete pillars go by. Fphfff, Fphfff Fphfff. I saw them counted, counted my heartbeats and within seconds we emerged on the other side.
” I sat down. I said quietly, ‘Is that all? It’s nothing, just a straight tunnel. I had always imagined the tunnel to be a treacherous, inherently dangerous passage, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel. There’s no reason for anyone to die inside.
During his interview with Anderson Cooper, Prince Harry also admitted watching videos of Princess Diana in an attempt to make himself cry. The Duke told Cooper he only got to cry once after his mother died, when she was finally buried. His inability to cry had haunted him so much that he watched online videos of his mother “hoping to cry”.
The Duke of Sussex’s candid interview with Anderson Cooper is just one of many interviews Prince Harry has given, leading to the publication of his memoir. Prince Harry also sat down with ITV’s Tom Bradby on Sunday evening for an almost two-hour long chat – titled Harry: The Interview – which aired at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.
During the interview, Harry admitted to feeling “a certain guilt” as he walked among the crowds gathered outside Kensington Palace following his mother’s death.
He told Bradby, “Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died.
“I cried once, at the funeral, and you know I go into great detail about how weird it was and how there was some guilt that I felt, and I think that William also felt it while walking outside Kensington Palace.”
Looking at photos from the car crash that killed his mother, Prince Harry also said he thought the last thing Princess Diana saw before her death was the lights from paparazzi cameras. “I saw the photographs of all the paparazzi’s reflection in the window at the same time,” the Duke of Sussex said. “I saw the back of his blond hair, you know, sagging on the back of the seat.”
Harry also spoke to ITV about other photographs “which would probably show my mother’s face and blood”. He said he assumed these images had been kept from him – something the Duke said he was “grateful” for.
