Prince Harry has likened himself to goofy, awkward Friends character Chandler Bing – while revealing that he spent the summer of 2013 binge-watching the hit sitcom as a means of coping with debilitating panic attacks.
The 38-year-old made the comparison between himself and the beloved TV character while opening up about the mental health struggles he began to face when he was around 28 years old in his bombshell new memoir Spare.
In the book – which was accidentally released in Spain yesterday, days ahead of its intended January 10 publication date – Harry writes that, ‘by late summer 2013, he was in a rough patch’ and was experiencing ‘debilitating bouts of lethargy’ and ‘terrifying panic attacks’.
At the time, he says his ‘official life consisted of showing his face in public, appearance before people, giving speeches and talks’, noting that he ‘suddenly found himself almost unable to fulfill these basic functions’, recalling how he’d become drenched in sweat ‘hours before a speech’ and would begin ‘panicking’ as soon as he put on his suit.
Prince Harry has compared himself to awkward, goofy Friends character Chandler Bing, while revealing he used to binge-watch the show in 2013 while struggling with ‘panic attacks’
Chandler, played by Matthew Perry, is the comedian of the fictional friendship group, having developed his sense of humor as a means of coping with trauma from his parents’ divorce
Ultimately, his panic attacks become so severe that he says he ‘had no choice’ but to stay at home and avoid the public eye, revealing that ‘day after day, night after night’, he would ‘sit back, order food, and watch [TV show] 24… or Friends’.
The Duke says ‘it’s possible he watched every episode’ of the ten-season, 236-episode sitcom, which ended in 2004, during that summer – explaining that he eventually ‘decided he was a Chandler’.
Played by actor Matthew Perry, who recently released his own memoir in which he details his years-long struggles with drug abuse, Chandler is known as the ‘comedian’ of the fictional friendship group – having developed his over-the-top sense of humor as a means of coping with the childhood trauma he suffered from his parents’ divorce.
Harry – who was eight when his parents, King Charles and Princess Diana, officially announced their divorce in 1996 – has himself hinted at the struggles he faced as a result of their split, revealing in the 2017 documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, that he found it difficult being shuffled between his father and mother.
‘There was the point where our parents split and the two of us [himself and William] were bouncing between the two of them and we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough,’ he said at the time.
‘There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother, which I would win.
Harry (seen in September 2013) says he started watching Friends while struggling with ’bouts of lethargy’ and ‘panic attacks’, admitting that he became unable to attend public events
The Duke (seen with late mother Diana in 1987) has himself opened up about his struggle to cope with his parents’ 1996 divorce
‘There was all that to contend with. I don’t pretend we’re the only people to have to deal with that, but it was an interesting way of growing up.’
In the Sussexes’ Netflix documentary, Harry also revealed how he and Meghan found common ground in the fact that they were both raised by divorced parents, revealing that the pair felt it was ‘important’ that they ‘don’t repeat the same mistakes that perhaps our parents made’.
‘Being pulled from one place to the other, or maybe your parents are competitive,’ he said. ‘Or you’re in one place longer than you want to be and in another less than you want to be. There’s all sorts of pieces to that.’
Much like Chandler, Harry is also known to have a wicked sense of humor – and even reportedly used to pull pranks on his grandmother the Queen, including giving her joke gifts and once recording a joking voicemail message on her phone.
In Spare, which features several brutal passages about Harry’s bitterness over his role as the ‘spare’ to royal ‘heir’ William, the Duke also writes that he believes that his ‘mission’ within the Monarchy was to ‘offer a source of distraction, entertainment’, bitterly writing that he was ‘brought into the world in case something happened’ to his sibling.
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