Prince Harry’s “constant sniping” is proving increasingly wearisome for the Royal Family, an insider has warned – while he and Meghan Markle’s publicity campaign is turning into a “media circus”, royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams has said. Harry and Meghan unveiled their latest Netflix series, Live to Lead, on New Year’s Eve – and Harry’s book, Spare, hits the shelves in exactly a week.
Prior to that, the Prince has conducted high-profile interviews with Anderson Cooper on CBS and Tom Bradby on ITV, with clips released yesterday featuring him saying he wants to “get his father and brother back” and accusing the Palace of briefing against him and his wife.
One unnamed royal insider told the Mirror: “It all feels very repetitive.
“Harry’s constant sniping is rather draining and he knows full well it is highly unlikely they will engage in a tit-for-tat battle of words.”
Meanwhile, Richard Fitzwilliams, a regular commentator on royal affairs, warned ultimately their approach could backfire on the US-based couple, who stepped down as frontline royals at the start of 2020.
The interview Harry and Meghan gave on Oprah had inflicted “very considerable damage to the Royal Family” he stressed, particularly the claims of racism and issues related to the ex-Suits actress’s mental health.
Mr Fitzwillams said: “Over the last month, counting the new trailers about his forthcoming interviews about his memoir, Harry and Meghan have appeared in a two-part six-episode docuseries for Netflix and no less than seven trailers, two for the first docuseries, three for the second and now two more.
“The first overshadowed the second day of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s trip to Boston which was outrageous. This resembles a publicity circus which looks rather desperate.”
Mr Fitzwilliams added: “Harry might like to ‘get his brother back’ and ‘…his father back’, but must surely know giving this catalogue of woes even more exposure, is not the way to do so.”
Further accusations of stories being planted against them by the Palace demonstrated how “bitter” the pair were – but eventually, there would come a time when the media would tire of providing the current levels of publicity Meghan and Harry currently command, Mr Fitzwilliams stressed.
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He also suggested Mr Cooper and Mr Bradby would give them less of an easy ride than Oprah, and emphasised that they would not have Netflix editors to fall back on, as they did with their recent six-part reality series, which dropped on December 8.
He said: “Oprah never probed and the interview was notorious for the way ‘their truth’ and the truth were conflated. The Netflix docuseries was hagiographic.
“Will Anderson Cooper on CBS and Tom Bradby for ITV subject Harry to serious, detailed questioning? That would be well worth seeing!
“Harry says in the trailer for the CBS interview, referring to the Palace’s inability to protect them from false reports, that ‘there comes a point when silence is betrayal’.
“There is also a point, if they wish any relationship, however distant, with the Royal Family, when silence is common sense. When will the Sussexes learn this?”
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In a trailer for his interview with Mr Cooper, Harry said: ‘Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife.
“The family motto is never complain and never explain – it’s just a motto.”
He continues: “They will feed or have a conversation with a correspondent, and that correspondent will literally be spoon-fed information and write the story, and at the bottom of it, they will say they have reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.
“But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting.”
Express.co.uk has approached the Sussexes for comment via Archewell.
