Prince Harry Shared How He Really Feels About Living In The U.S.

Kotb interviewed Harry at The Hague, where he was celebrating the Invictus Games, a sporting event for wounded military personnel that he himself started. The estranged royal seemed to be doing interviews mostly for the sake of promoting the games, but of course there were plenty of questions about his personal life in there.

Harry did of course give one very high-profile interview after leaving the royal family. He and Meghan Markle sat down with Oprah and revealed their side of the story. It made headlines around the world and sparked massive controversy. Would the interview with Kotb do the same?

Plenty has happened for Harry and Meghan in between those interviews. The biggest thing, as you may already be aware, was the birth of their second child. Lilibet, named after the Queen’s childhood nickname, came along in June 2021. Obviously, looking after their young children was the couple’s first priority.

It was because of Meghan’s pregnancy that she didn’t attend the funeral when Prince Philip passed away that April. Prince Harry did go to pay his respects to his grandfather, though, and that was actually the first time he’d been back to England since stepping away from his former royal duties.

He did return again, though, and this time he brought Meghan with him. On April 15, 2022, the Associated Press reported that the couple had visited the U.K. together for the first time since leaving, and they had gone to see the Queen. They were en route to the Invictus Games, so they didn’t stay long, but they were there.

And that small secretive visit was one of the things Harry talked about in his interview with Kotb. He said, “To be able to see her in some element of privacy was nice. I hadn’t had the chance to go back to the U.K. for a couple of years apart from those two times. One for my grandfather’s funeral and one for unveiling a statue of my mum.”

At first he gave fairly generic answers about the meeting, saying, “Being with her, it was great. It was just so nice to see her. She’s on great form. She’s always got a great sense of humor with me.” But then he dropped a line which sparked controversy, saying, “I’m just making sure she’s protected and has got the right people around her.”

Who were these “right people?” Some British journalists were furious at the implication. Russell Myers, editor of newspaper the Daily Mirror, wrote, “Prince Harry’s comments about ensuring the Queen is ‘protected’ are deeply damaging and insulting to his grandmother and senior royals around her.”

Myers went on, “People around the world, including the royal family, will be waiting with interest to hear the wider context of Harry’s protection comment. Is he making comments about Palace staff and the Queen’s trusted aides? Or is there a deeper, more sinister meaning — an attack on his father and brother?”

Harry did indeed mention his father and brother in the interview — well, sort of. Kotb brought them up. She asked the prince if he had missed his family over the past couple of years, and he confirmed that he had. Then she asked about Charles and William specifically.

Harry sort of dodged the question by bringing up the Invictus Games. He said, “For me at the moment, I’m here focused on these guys [the competitors] and these families and giving everything that I can, 120 per cent to them to make sure they have the experience of a lifetime. That’s my focus here. And when I leave here, I get back and my focus is on my family who I miss massively.”

Body language experts had plenty to say about that part of the interview. One of them, Dr. Lillian Glass, spoke to British newspaper the Daily Express about it. She claimed that the prince’s body language when speaking about his dad and brother wasn’t remotely positive, and hinted at emotional turmoil.

She said that Harry gave off a “signal of deception” and explained, “He answers a question with a question and gets defensive and looks tense and gestures expansively.” Dr. Glass went on to note that his physical movements suggested he was feeling “both sad and angry,” observing that the royal had “pursed his lips at the end as well.”

Harry seemed more upbeat when talking about his own experience of being a parent. When Kotb asked him, “What do you love about fatherhood?” he answered, “All of it. The chaos, the learning, the reminder of just every element of yourself, your soul, right? When you are not a parent you can get sucked into all sorts of different stuff and you can maybe sometimes forget who you are.”

He told Kotb that Archie was at the age where he was “asking all the questions.” He said, “He’s into the ‘Why?’stage. Why this? Why that? Why that? And instead of just trying to move it on, I give him the most honest answer I can. And then it goes on and on and on until he’s satisfied.”

Harry also spoke about his late mother Princess Diana, whose presence still looms large over the royal family. She died in a car crash when Harry was 12, and a mere two weeks away from turning 13 and becoming a teenager. Her death naturally shaped the course of his entire adult life.

Kotb asked Harry if he’d told his son about Diana “now he’s old enough.” Harry answered, “Yeah, yeah. Very much so. I don’t tell him all the stuff that happened. But certainly that this is, you know, grandma Diana and we’ve got a couple of photos [of her] up in the house.”

And, Harry added, he always felt Diana’s presence. Referencing William again, he said, “For me it is constant. It has been over the last two years. More so than ever before. And it is almost as though she’s done her bit with my brother and now she’s very much, like, helping me.”

Diana’s spirit had “got [William] set up,” he believed, “and now she’s helping me set up. That’s what it feels like, you know? He’s got his kids. I’ve got my kids, you know the circumstances are obviously different. But now, I feel her presence in almost everything that I do.”

Throughout her adult life Diana was very dedicated to public service. She was actually the president or patron of over a hundred charities, and she traveled the whole world visiting hospitals and hospices. Prince Harry has been following in her footsteps with initiatives such as the Invictus Games, and he wants to do more.

Harry told Kotb, “There is just so much to be happy about in the outside world, but there is also so much to worry about. My sort of mantra now every day, and it is a dangerous one, because I need to make sure that I don’t have burnout, but [am] trying to make the world a better place for my kids.”

He’d clearly been thinking a lot about this, because he told Kotb, “Otherwise what is the point of bringing kids into this world? It is a responsibility I feel as a parent you probably feel as a parent as well. And we can’t fix everything. We know that. But what we can do is be there for each other.”

So did Harry feel more able to do that in America, rather than Britain? It certainly seemed so; after all, he’s barely been back to the country of his birth since he left it. And he seems to have settled into the Californian lifestyle Meghan once enjoyed, even wearing a “California” baseball cap at one point.

Harry told Kotb, “Home for me now is, you know, for the time being, it’s in the States.” And even though he threw the “for the time being” in there, he certainly didn’t seem keen to leave. He said, “We’ve been welcomed with open arms. And we’ve got such a great community up in Santa Barbara.”

Despite Harry not really dropping many bombshells during the interview, beyond the “right people,” comment, royal insiders were apparently not happy about its content. One told the Daily Mail newspaper, “[The Queen] just doesn’t deserve this. I have no idea what intention he may or may not have had in saying this, but Harry needs to start thinking before he opens his mouth.”

Others, including body language experts, questioned whether Harry really was as happy in America as he claimed. Royal biographer Duncan Larcombe, who’s met Harry personally, told Closer magazine, “While Harry is claiming he’s happy in his new life, his face looked totally at odds with what he was saying — he seemed bitter and empty.”

He went on, “I imagine anyone watching who used to know him will be worried about him after that interview. He just seemed desperate to justify his betrayal and convince the world — and himself — that it was worth it and he’s now happy.” Larcombe suggested the estranged royal couple had fundamentally opposing positions, observing, “I imagine Meghan’s really happy, but Harry looks more lost than ever.”

And apparently he wasn’t the only expert who thought so. Body language analyst Louise Mahler told the Australian TV show Sunrise, “Prince Harry is always trying to disappear into himself. My favorite thing there is he’s leaning forward, but his back is crinkled. This means that his breath isn’t working.”

She went on, “And he opens his arms, but he immediately snaps them in. And then you notice that he puts his hands on the inside of his knees and sort of tries to withdraw. They call that turtling — trying to go back into your shell… The man wants to disappear. He’s not comfortable.”

Yet other experts disagreed. Judi James told the Daily Express, “Comparing his smiles and his relaxed posture now to the very haunted-looking facial and eye expressions of the man we saw during the last few months in the U.K., it looks clear that he has not just found his feet in the U.S. but that he is loving every minute of the life.”

She went on, “[Harry] might have claimed to want a more private life in the U.S. but with his own camera crews in tow and control over the scenes and the content he looks at his most upbeat. He also seems to enjoy the status he has in the U.S. He seems to be a powerful force in his own right out there, rather than being the ‘spare to the heir.’”

Another interesting side-effect of the interview was a new rumor. There were whispers that Netflix was angry with Harry for doing it, because he and Meghan had signed a million-dollar deal with the web-streaming service, yet they were talking to other networks. To make matters worse, Netflix had even had cameras around at the same time Harry was talking to NBC.

A couple of insiders talked to the Daily Mail about it. One said, “There was a real sense of annoyance that [the comments] were made to another broadcaster.” Another said, “Netflix is paying them millions and they’re giving all their best interviews to other networks. Do they expect Netflix to be happy about that?”

And then there’s the issue of what the royal family makes of Harry’s comments. So far, it’s been silence from them. In the days after the interview, as William and Kate climbed into their car, one reporter shouted, “Sir, does the Queen need protecting?” He ignored the question.

It’s hard to know if the rift between Harry and his family members will be mended any time soon. Stepping away from his royal duties and going on to do so many personal interviews has clearly put a huge dent in many close interpersonal relationships, and some people think the wounds will never fully heal.

Larcombe told Closer, “The state of the royal rift is looking incredibly tragic. The interview made it clear that Harry still harbors a lot of anger towards Charles and William. And he’s got his book coming out this year, which will be hanging over the royals, and make it impossible for any bridges to be built any time soon.”

But at the same time, Harry’s words in the interview speak for themselves. At one point Kotb brought up his mental-health struggles, something about which he’s always been open. While he was still part of the royal family, Harry spoke about how he’d suffered a lot over his mother’s death and William had convinced him to seek therapy.

Harry told Kotb, “I think everyone ends up feeling lighter, I think is the best way to describe it. For so many people it is about management. You know the things that trigger you, therefore you try and stay away from that. But what I do know is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for absolutely everybody.” Including him, it seemed.

He then tied it back to the Invictus Games by saying, “When your life becomes really hard, it can be, for some, harder to find the compassion for other people. But what I've learned over the years is, certainly for myself, I find healing in helping others. And I think that what’s we should really be focusing on.”