Prince Harry offered more details on his physical fight with Prince William — revealing he only told Meghan Markle after she noticed “scrapes and bruises” on his back.
“It was a buildup of — frustration, I think, on his part. It was at a time where he was being told certain things by people within his office. And at the same time, he was consuming a lot of the tabloid press, a lot of the stories,” the Duke of Sussex, 38, said during a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, January 8. “And he had a few issues which were based not on reality. And I was defending my wife. And he was coming for my wife — she wasn’t there at the time but through the things that he was saying. I was defending myself.”
He added: “And we moved from one room into the kitchen. And his frustrations were growing and growing and growing. He was shouting at me. I was shouting back at him. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t pleasant at all. And he snapped. And he pushed me to the floor.”
According to Harry, his brother, 40, attempted to make amends after the confrontation, saying, “[William] apologized afterwards. It was a pretty nasty experience.”
Earlier this month, Harry broke his silence about the 2019 incident in his upcoming Spare memoir. In the excerpts, the U.K. native claimed the argument started after the Duke of Cambridge called Meghan, 41, “difficult” and “rude” before knocking him to the ground.
“It all happened so fast. So very fast,” Harry detailed. “He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dogs’ 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.”
Harry and William’s personal issues continued after the BetterUp CIO moved to California with his wife in 2020. At the time, the couple shocked people with their decision to step down from their senior duties.
While filming his Netflix docuseries, Harry discussed how a meeting with his family took a turn amid his exit plans.
“[I] went in with the same proposal that we’d already made publicly [about stepping down as senior working members]. But once I got there, I was given five options,” he explained in the December 2022 episode, noting that Meghan was not invited. “One being, all in, no change. Five being, all out. I chose option three in the meeting. Half in, half out.”
Harry continued: ”It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that just simply weren’t true, and my grandmother [Queen Elizabeth II] quietly sit there, and sort of take it all in. But you have to understand that — from the family’s perspective — especially from hers, there are ways of doing things, and her ultimate sort of mission, goal, slash responsibility is the institution.”
