Prince Harry's Ghostwriter Reveals What It Was Like To Work With Him

Moehringer knows what he is talking about, too. He has ghostwritten for other high-profile stars including Andre Agassi and Phil Knight; he was reportedly paid $1 million for his work on Spare. A ghostwriter, just in case, is someone who writes the text for a work credited to another person. So during the intense process of creating Harry's memoir, Moehringer got to know the prince very well indeed. And in May 2023 Moehringer wrote about the experience in magazine The New Yorker.

Moehringer opens the article by describing an intense fight with Harry. "Harry was no longer saying anything," he wrote. "He was just glaring into the camera." The pair were fighting over whether they should include a comeback the royal had uttered during a training exercise with the military. Moehringer said they didn't need it; Harry said they did. They were at loggerheads, and they had started shouting at each other.

"Some part of me was still able to step outside the situation and think, 'This is so weird,'" Moehringer wrote. "I’m shouting at Prince Harry." And what was no doubt stranger was that Harry was shouting back. Moehringer described how the prince's "cheeks flushed and his eyes narrowed." The writer feared he'd be kicked off the book. And as Harry looked down, Moehringer was forced to think that he might have just wasted the last two years of his life.

This was not a terribly new situation for Moehringer. "One of a ghostwriter’s main jobs is having a big mouth," he wrote. But the thing that was different about this disagreement was that Moehringer thought he'd stepped over a line. "I was questioning the heat with which I’d [gone after Harry]," he wrote. "I scolded myself: It’s not your comeback. It’s not your mother... it's not your... book." But perhaps the relationship he'd cultivated with Harry would save him?

Moehringer and Harry had first connected in mid-2020. It had all started with a simple text, followed by a Zoom call. "I was curious, of course," Moehringer explained. "Who wouldn’t be? I wondered what the real story was." But the writer also wasn't sure whether they would get along. After all, if they were going to write a book together, they were going to be spending a lot of time in each other's company. But there was "a surprising reason" why they almost immediately bonded.

The ghostwriter revealed that his mother Dorothy had passed away not long before his first meeting with Harry. And even though Harry's mother, Princess Diana, had died some 23 years prior to this, the fact that they had both lost a parent bonded the pair. "Our griefs felt equally fresh," said Moehringer. Yet even though they had this common ground, the writer was still unsure whether he wanted to continue working with the prince.

Part of the concern was that the prince didn't know what, if anything, he wanted to put down in writing about his life. Moehringer had dealt with this kind of uncertainty in potential authors before; it usually ended with the authors deciding to not bother writing a memoir at all. But bigger than this problem was the simple fact that he was dealing with a controversial royal. "I knew that whatever Harry said, whenever he said it, would set off a storm," Moehringer reported. And he was certainly right about that.

Yet Moehringer found a way to get past his worries. There were three things that seemingly convinced him to get on board. The first was that this was not going to be a rush job: they would have the time to craft the story they wanted to tell. The second thing was easy: "I just liked the dude," Moehringer said. He added, "I found his story, as he outlined it in broad strokes, relatable and infuriating." But the third factor was arguably the strongest reason to carry on.

"I think I selfishly welcomed the idea of being able to speak with someone, an expert, about that never-ending feeling of wishing you could call your mom," Moehringer said. With that settled, then, Moehringer got to work putting pen to paper. "The way he'd been treated, by both strangers and intimates, was grotesque," the writer explained. And for the rest of that year, things seemingly progressed well.

The coronavirus pandemic defined much of 2020, of course, and Moehringer and Harry — like a lot of people — were forced to start their work over Zoom. But as the wider world had no idea what was going on between them, the pair had time to create trust between them. Harry even began to connect Moehringer with people in his "inner circle" so that Moehringer could build a complete picture of the prince. And then, finally, the team got to meet face-to-face.

Over the course of their working relationship, Moehringer visited Harry's home in Montecito three times. On one of these occasions, the writer was able to bring his wife and kids. "Harry won the heart of my daughter, Gracie, with his vast “Moana” scholarship," Moehringer explained, "his favorite scene, he told her, is when Heihei, the silly chicken, finds himself lost at sea." The writer got to meet Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, during his solo visits, too.

Moehringer explained that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex allowed the writer to stay in their guesthouse while he was visiting them. "Meghan and Archie would visit me on their afternoon walks," Moehringer said. "Meghan, knowing I was missing my family, was forever bringing trays of food and sweets." But Moehringer didn't linger on his conversations with Meghan. He was there, after all, to tell the prince's story.

The prince and Moehringer eventually talked so much — and trusted each other so much — that "no subject was off the table." Moehringer wrote, "I felt honored by his candor, and I could tell that he felt astonished by it. And energized." But Moehringer was not content to be, as he put it, "a glorified stenographer." He seemingly had to remind the prince that this book was not "a rebuttal to every lie ever published about him" as Harry seemingly wished it to be..

Yet Harry was aware that anything he put down on paper would become a news story. He also knew that many of his followers would be horrified at the thought of a royal writing a book at all. "Why on Earth would Harry talk about that?" they would think. "But he had faith that they would soon see: because someone else already talked about it, and got it wrong," Moehringer revealed. And Harry was happy about this... until their bubble burst.

Somebody, somewhere, told the press about Harry writing a memoir with Moehringer. So now their perfectly private little bubble was broken. "Along with pretty much anyone who has had anything to do with Harry, I woke one morning to find myself squinting into a gigantic searchlight," Moehringer reported. And Moehringer seemingly got a taste of how Harry had lived up until this point. Because, he said, new articles would be published around the clock, each one claiming something false about the writer.

"My fee was wrong, my bio was wrong, even my name," Moehringer said of the leaks. He said the British press was claiming, for instance, that Harry and Moehringer had been introduced through George Clooney. This was probably because Clooney was directing a movie — The Tender Bar — based on Moehringer's own memoir. But the writer said he'd never once met Clooney and was becoming annoyed by all the misinformation being spread. Harry's reaction? You can probably guess.

"[Harry] tilted his head: Welcome to my world, dude," Moehringer said of the prince's not-so-sympathetic response to the writer's frustrations. But this brouhaha wasn't the last time that the prince and his ghostwriter had to deal with leaks in the press. Just one week before Spare was officially released around the world, a store in Madrid, Spain, accidentally started selling Spanish-language versions of the book early. This led to more frustrations for Moehringer.

The ghostwriter said that the media worked quickly to "reverse-engineer the book from Spanish to English." The rushed-out results, he noted, "read like bad Borat." One example that Moehringer seemed particularly amused by was a translation that had Harry saying, "I mounted her quickly." "I can assert with 100 percent confidence that no one gets 'mounted,' quickly or otherwise, in Spare," Moehringer quipped in The New Yorker. But the leak did prove problematic.

After the book was released, Moehringer said, the press went into overdrive. "Facts were wrenched out of context, complex emotions were reduced to cartoonish idiocy, innocent passages were hyped into outrages, and there were so many falsehoods," the writer complained. He was particularly aggrieved that the focal point of all this bad press seemed to be "that Harry's memoir, rigorously fact-checked, was rife with errors." Moehringer had to do something.

Unfortunately for the writer, though, his next course of action was perhaps ill-advised. Moehringer took to Twitter to retweet "a few quotes from Mary Karr about inadvertent error in memories and memoir, plus seemingly innocuous quotes from Spare about the way Harry’s memory works." And as you can probably guess, these quotes were picked up by the press and, according to Moehringer "deliberately misinterpreted." The writer had seemingly made a bad situation even worse.

Moehringer also became a target of some members of the press in the real world. He described how a photographer "stalked" him to try to get a picture as he took his son to pre-school. There was also the moment when a journalist from British newspaper The Mail on Sunday arrived unannounced at a window of his home. Moehringer said the experiences left him "feeling fragile," so he turned to the only person he thought could understand.

"Harry was all heart," Moehringer reported. "He asked if my family was okay, asked for physical descriptions of the people harassing us, promised to make some calls, see if anything could be done." The writer was glad for the prince's empathy, but he also had "some regret." Moehringer said that it made him realize that he hadn't truly appreciated the hardships Harry had endured for most — if not all — of his life. The experience left him wanting to rail against the media once more.

So it was likely with some trepidation that Moehringer attended a book party for the release of Spare. The party was put together by a friend of the prince's, and Moehringer was there with his wife. "As we walked into the house, I looked around, nervous, unsure of what state we’d find the author in," the writer said. "Was he, too, feeling fragile?" Then Harry "appeared, marching toward [him], looking flushed." Moehringer may have been reminded of his shouting argument with the royal while they had been writing the book.

Back then, you'll remember, the pair had been fighting over a line of dialog to include in the memoir. Moehringer had worried that he'd shouted too loud at the prince and would lose his job. But in that instance, the situation had a happy ending. Harry eventually saw things Moehringer's way and agreed to leave the line out. He'd even joked to the writer, "I really enjoy getting you worked up like that." Would things have changed after the publication of the book?

At the book party, Harry was looking flushed, sure — but that turned out to be a good thing, too. Moehringer reported that the prince was smiling as he hugged the writer and his wife. Then again, why wouldn't he be smiling? Spare had just set a Guinness World Record for becoming the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever. He was going to be an even richer man! But there was more to Harry's smile than just dollar signs.

Moehringer reported that the real reason for Harry's joyous mood was that people were actually reading his book. They weren't reading the misleading headlines or the out-of-context news clippings; they were engaging with his message. "Their online reviews were overwhelmingly effusive," said Moehringer. "Many said Harry's candor about family dysfunction, about losing a parent, had given them solace." The prince was a happy man.

Later in the party, Moehringer got to see just how happy Harry was. Everybody at the event was ushered into a reception room where speeches were given to celebrate the book and its named author. Moehringer reported that there were a few toasts that heaped praised upon the prince. But it was when Harry stepped up to make his own speech that the writer was truly moved.

"I'd never seen him so self-possessed and expansive," Moehringer said. Harry began by thanking the people who'd helped bring the book to life, including, of course, Moehringer himself. He then said how he was especially happy that he'd listened to Moehringer's advice to "trust the book." And the prince choked up when he told the gathered crowd that it felt good to finally feel "free." Moehringer said he'd choked up, too.

It was only later that Moehringer realized that he disagreed with what the prince had said. The writer said that Harry felt "free" when he met and fell for Meghan and that he felt "free" when he decided, with his wife, to step back from royal duties. But now that the prince had got his truth out into the public, Moehringer believed that "free" was not the most apposite word for how Harry was feeling. Moehringer thought "heard" was a more appropriate term for his current state.

Moehringer compared Harry's willingness to speak out to the so-called Windsor motto, "Never complain, never explain." The writer said that his wife believes that the royal family's "omertà" — or code of silence — "might have prolonged Harry's grief" after his mother passed away. "His family actively discourages talking, a stoicism for which they're widely lauded," Moehringer said. But he thinks Harry's way is better.

"If you don't speak your emotions you serve them, and if you don't tell your story you lose it — or, what might be worse, you get lost inside it," Moehringer reported. "Telling is how we cement details, preserve continuity, stay sane. We say ourselves into being every day, or else." But then the writer also confessed that he always has to remind himself that it is not his book: it is Harry's.

And Harry was seemingly thrilled to be getting his words in front of people. "My hope has been to turn my pain into purpose, so if sharing my experience makes a positive difference in someone's life, well, I can't think of anything more rewarding than that!" he told People magazine ahead of the publication of Spare. He had also taken the advice of Moehringer to heart: he had left nothing on the table in his efforts to speak his truth.

"I don't want to tell anyone what to think of it, and that includes my family," the prince told People. "This book and its truths are in many ways a continuation of my own mental-health journey. It's a raw account of my life: the good, the bad, and everything in between." And Harry also seemed to confirm what Moehringer had suggested: that he was still grieving for his late mother.

"I struggled for years to accept or even speak about my mother's death," Harry told People. "I was unable to process that she was gone. I'm not sure anyone can ever truly have closure when they lose a parent, or anyone for that matter, especially when that grief may be the only thing left of them. The healing process has allowed me to get to a place where I now feel the presence of my mom more than ever before. She's with me all the time: my guardian angel."

Harry also seemed keen to be a good example for veterans all over the world who are haunted by their experiences. "I know from my own healing journey that silence has been the least effective remedy," he told People. "Expressing and detailing my experience is how I chose to deal with it, in the hopes it would help others." And he appeared to be hopeful that his confessions in the book wouldn't separate him from his family forever.

"I've said before that I've wanted a family, not an institution, so of course, I would love nothing more than for our children to have relationships with members of my family, and they do with some, which brings me great joy," he said. And while Harry did seem to be comfortable in the presence of Princess Eugenie at Charles' coronation in May, his lack of contact with his brother and father suggested that all may not be forgiven just yet.

Regardless of that situation, though, Harry was aware of his other privileges. "I have a beautiful and blessed life, one that comes with a platform, and with it responsibility that Meghan and I plan to use wisely," he told People. "I feel I am exactly where I am meant to be and exactly where we [my family] are meant to be. I don't think I could have written this book otherwise."

And there's no saying that there might not one day be another book from Harry. After all, he told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that there was plenty more material to use. "The first draft was different," he said. "It was 800 pages, and now it's down to 400 pages. It could have been two books, put it that way. And the hard bit was taking things out." Moehringer agreed in his New Yorker piece that "half the art of memoir" is "leaving stuff out." So what more was there to tell?

"There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don't want the world to know,” the prince said. "Because I don't think they would ever forgive me." Of course, it still remains to be seen whether Harry's attempt to "save [the royal family] from themselves" will ever work out.

But what did Prince Harry admit in the book that was so controversial? From his fractured relationship with his brother to the life-changing moment his mother died, the memoir revelations expose the hushed details of royal life that were, for so long, shielded from the public, starting with Harry's 'spare' status.

"The heir and the spare" — one has a front seat to history, and the other a footnote. It’s Harry’s lifetime spent as the “spare,” and the negative connotation associated with the title, that frames his memoir, Spare. In the book, Harry opens up about how this nickname defined him from birth. On the day he was born, Harry claims, his father told Diana, “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an heir and a spare – my work is done.”

A joke? Sure, but it’s clear that Harry isn’t laughing. In an interview about the memoir on Good Morning America, he claimed it was a title that had been “used against” him over the years. So, he searched for some other way to define himself for much of his early life, a search he talks about in Spare.

Son, student, soldier, boyfriend, athlete – Harry’s attempts to define himself as something other than an “extra” went on for years. In fact, it was his role of “son” that may have provided him with the most meaning. You see, even if Harry’s father saw him as a “spare,” his mother made it her mission to show him just how loved he was.

It was no secret how Diana chose to raise her boys far more “normally” than the royals that came before them. Although William and Harry had nannies, they were often spotted out and about with Diana, as well. In a rare clip shown on the 2022 Netflix series Harry & Meghan, Princess Diana is seen walking right up to paparazzi and telling them to leave her kids alone. 

Princess Diana never shied away from showing her love for her sons, so when she was killed in a car accident in 1997, it undoubtedly left a hole in William and Harry’s lives. William, aged 15, and Harry, aged 12, were stoic symbols of strength as they walked behind their mother’s casket on live TV. But according to Harry, the cameras didn’t show how he really felt that day.

“I was numb,” he said on Good Morning America, and he recounted how he couldn’t cry about Diana’s death for years. In Spare, he also describes the moment his father told him how his mother had died. Charles “sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand on my knee,” Harry recalled. 

Then Charles said, “My dear son, mum has had a car accident. There have been complications. Mum has been seriously injured and has been taken to hospital, my dear son.” Looking back on the moment, Harry wrote, “[Charles] would always call me ‘dear son,’ but he was repeating it a lot. He spoke quietly. It gave me the impression he was in shock.” 

To Good Morning America, Harry said how “As a dad, I would never ever want to have to break that news. Ever. So I have a huge amount of sympathy and compassion and understanding now about how ill-equipped my dad was – how ill-equipped anybody would be in that situation.” In the wake of his mother’s death, Harry turned to the only person who understood how he felt. 

At this time, William and Harry were bonded by their shared loss. It seemed to be them against the world: or, more accurately, them against the onslaught of the British press, whose access to the boys was no longer blocked by Princess Diana. They also stuck together in the face of a huge change: Charles’ marriage to Camilla. 

“I had complex feelings about gaining a stepparent who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal P.R. alter,” Harry writes in Spare. As “the other woman,” Camilla spent years trying to rehabilitate her image to the British people, which Harry feels may have come at the expense of his and his brother’s own wellbeing, and perhaps even of his mother’s reputation. 

Harry and William didn’t want Charles to marry Camilla, who they also saw – at least at that time – as “the other woman,” or the person whose presence directly led to the breakdown of their parent’s marriage. Apparently, Harry feared that Camilla would be “cruel to me… like all the wicked stepmothers in the stories.” 

Nowadays, Harry’s feelings for Camilla are much different. “I have a huge amount of compassion for her,” he said on Good Morning America. “We haven’t spoken for a long time, [but] I love every member of my family, despite the differences…so when I see her, we’re perfectly pleasant with each other.” Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his relationship with William. 

Harry’s relationship with Camilla thawed while his relationship with his brother got colder and colder. As they aged, they undoubtedly felt more confined by the roles of “heir” and “spare”, and the never-ending scrutiny from the press didn’t help. Perhaps one of the most shocking statements in Spare is when Harry refers to William as his “beloved brother and archnemesis.” 

“There has always been this competition between us,” Harry said on GMA. But this competitiveness between the “heir” and the “spare” seems to have snowballed into full-on resentment in recent years, in part due to how William and the rest of the royals handled the press’ treatment of Harry and Meghan. 

In Spare, Harry describes a shocking incident in which he and his brother came to blows over insulting statements William made about Meghan. According to Harry, their argument began when William called Meghan “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive.” That was the moment, Harry claims, when he started to see his brother in a new light. 

“I looked at Willy, really looked at him, maybe for the first time since we were boys, I took it all in: his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me, his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own, his famous resemblance to mummy which was fading with time, with age.” It wasn’t long before their altercation turned physical. 

Harry says that William “came at” him. “He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.” It’s only one of the moments that shows just how much the brotherly relationship has shattered. 

“My brother and I love each other… there has been a lot of pain between the two of us,” Harry told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. Although Harry emphasizes his love for his brother, in Spare, he details how alone he felt as a teenager following his mother’s death. With no one to help him work through his grief, Harry entered a troubled time in his life. 

In his 20s, he was always in the press for something: for partying too hard, for being too reckless, for wearing a Nazi costume to a party, a decision that Harry says in Spare was in part made with Will and Kate’s support. He also opens up about his drug use at that time, saying that he experimented with cocaine, magic mushrooms, and marijuana. 

Harry wrote how in his teens and 20s, he’d done “anything that altered the pre established order,” mainly because he felt so confused and angry about his mother’s death and the intrusive role of the press in his life. There was part of him, he claims, that didn’t even believe that his mother had actually died. 

“I’d often say it to myself first thing in the morning: maybe this is the day,” Harry wrote, referring to his younger self’s hope that his mother’s death was a ruse, and that she’d one day come back for him. He needed closure, so at 23 years old, he did one of the most reckless things he’d ever done. 

While in Paris, he told his driver to go through the same tunnel his mother had died in, and at the same speed. “I’d had plenty of bad ideas in my 23 years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I’d told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn’t really…instead, that was the night all doubt fell away.” 

He knew, then, that his mother wasn’t coming back. “I got the closure I was pretending to seek. I got it in spades. And now I’d never be able to get rid of it.” It was like losing his mother all over again. Luckily, it wasn’t long after this that Harry finally sought out a therapist to help him work through his grief. 

Of course, a hugely healing part of Harry’s life was when he first met Meghan. It seems unbelievable now, but there was a time when the press dubbed Harry, Meghan, William, and Kate as the “Fab Four” – a happy group brought together by real friendship. Of course, this flattering nickname wasn’t used for long. 

While Harry and William’s relationship reached a breaking point, Meghan and Kate’s didn’t fare much better, especially in the press. Just as the “heir” and the “spare” were pitted against each other, so too were their wives. There were quite a few tabloid headlines that claimed Meghan made Kate cry, something Harry addresses directly in his memoir. 

Not long after Kate gave birth to her third child, Meghan made a comment about Kate having “baby brain,” which seemed to upset Kate and William. Harry claims that Meghan apologized, but that William said “It’s rude, Meghan. These things are not done here,” while pointing his finger in Meghan’s face.

Harry alleges that Meghan responded to William by saying, “If you don’t mind, keep your finger out of my face.” This tense moment may not seem too destructive in the long run, but it only added fuel to the Kate vs. Meghan fire. And according to Harry, some of the “catty” stories that circulated in the tabloids weren’t even true, but were planted by other royals. 

On GMA, Harry claimed that there are “many” examples of when false stories were given to the press in order to harm Meghan’s reputation, including a “petty” one about bridesmaids dresses. “All of [these stories] involved my wife supposedly making numerous people within my family cry, which just simply wasn’t the case,” he said in the interview. 

Needless to say, the years following Harry and Meghan’s marriage were tense for the royals, but especially for William and Harry. As Harry edged closer to leaving royal life behind and William prepared to one day be king, the distance between them grew, and it didn’t go unnoticed – not by the public, and especially not by their own father. 

In Spare, Harry recounts a heartbreaking moment shared between him, his brother, and his father at his grandfather’s gravesite. According to Harry, Charles asked his sons not to make his “final years a misery.” It’s hard to know exactly what Charles meant by this, but if his sons staying in line was part of the plan, it’s safe to say that Harry did not comply. 

Harry has refused to stay silent about the factors that contributed to his mother’s death – especially the presence of the paparazzi – and about the dysfunction within the characteristically-stoic royal family. As the black sheep of the family, Harry hasn’t been afraid to speak candidly about his mental health or his grief. 

In his memoir, he wonders how Diana would feel about the direction in which he’s taken his life. Still, when he got in touch with a psychic medium, he didn't expect the reading to help him heal. The psychic allegedly told him, “You’re living the life [Diana] couldn’t. You’re living the life she wanted for you.” 

Nowadays, Harry’s life is spent thousands of miles away from the family he was taught to serve. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t willing to drop everything to be with his grandmother on her deathbed. “My grandmother and I had a very good relationship,” he said on GMA. Naturally, he rushed to be by her side – but what happened next may not have been accurately reported by the press.

When Queen Elizabeth passed away on September 8th, 2022, many news outlets reported that Harry was informed of her death by his father. But in Spare, Prince Harry makes a different claim. “When the plane started to descend [into Scotland] I saw that my phone lit up…I looked at the BBC website. My grandmother had died. My father was King.” 

While talking about his memoir on Good Morning America, Harry said, “As far as I see it, the divide [in my family] couldn’t be greater.” But that doesn’t mean that his memoir has to worsen the divide. In fact, Harry hopes being honest with the world about his experiences as a royal will help his family start to heal. 

“I don’t think that we can ever have peace with my family unless the truth is out there,” Harry said. And as Harry continues to reveal more shocking information about his time as a working royal, the royal family will undoubtedly have to face the accusations – and speak up – eventually.