Prince Harry has spoken of ‘going wild’ as he chatted with a Hollywood star about their own drugs and alcohol problems.
The Duke of Sussex, 36, was speaking on actor Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ mental health podcast when he made the remarks.
Harry was quizzing the star – who is married to Frozen actress Kristen Bell – about the American’s substance use in high school.
The Royal asked him about Shepard’s ‘awareness’ of what sparked his path towards drugs as a teenager.
Harry told him ‘For you it was your upbringing and everything that happened to you – the trauma, pain and suffering.
‘All of a sudden you find yourself doing a s***load of drugs and partying hard.
‘Look how many other people do that as well. They wouldn’t have the awareness at the time.
‘I certainly wouldn’t have had the awareness when I was going wild.
‘It’s like why am I actually doing this? In the moment its like, this is fun. I’m in my 20s – it’s what you’re supposed to do.’
Prince Harry has a drink at a Jubilee Block Party in Belmopan, Belize, in March 2, 2012
Kristen Bell films Dax Shepard talking about dentistry as they both quarantined last year
The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex during a discussion about violent youth crime
Harry himself has been linked to smoking cannabis and drinking.
A recent Channel 5 documentary called Prince Harry: The Troubled Prince featured broadcaster Daisy McAndrew.
She told the programme: “You can really understand how a lonely, privileged unhappy Prince would end up drinking and partying and taking cannabis to fill those hours and hang out with people he thought really liked or even loved him.”
Prince Charles is known to have taken the young Duke aged 16 to a residential centre for drug users for a visit after finding out.
Reformed users at Peckham’s Featherstone Lodge warned him their addictions had started with drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
Harry’s comments came on Shepard’s podcast where he bared his soul on his unhappiness in the Royal family.
He also said he was so desperate to hide his relationship with Meghan when she stayed at Kensington Palace for the first time that they went ‘incognito’ to the supermarket and ‘pretended we didn’t know each other’, texting shopping list items from different aisles.
Speaking with a slight American twang to his British accent, Harry said his life was like The Truman Show – when Jim Carrey’s character discovers his life is a TV drama – as he discussed his emotional state and how he started therapy after Meghan ‘saw he was angry’.
Prince Harry, 36, has compared his life to the Jim Carrey film The Truman Show in new chat
The Duke of Sussex has said he wants to ‘break the cycle’ in the interview with Shepard
Prince Harry: My life is like The Truman Show
Harry admitted his life was like The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey and Natascha McElhone was a huge hit, nominated for three Oscars.
The blockbuster follows a man who is unaware that he is living in a reality show, played by Jim Carrey.
Truman has a job in the insurance business and a wife, but he eventually notices that his environment is not what it seems to be and that everyone in the show is an actor apart from him.
Once he cottons on he is repeatedly thwarted until he manages to escape, saying his catchphrase: ‘In case I don’t see you… good afternoon, good evening, and good night’, bowing to his audience and walking off set to cheers from viewers around the globe.
Shephard asked him what it’s like being in a ‘tiny group’ of royals ‘watched by millions’, to which Harry replied: ‘Yep, it’s a mix between The Truman Show and living in a zoo’.
When asked if he felt ‘in a cage’ while in royal duties, he said: ‘It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early twenties and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mum, how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again’.
He added that his frame of mind was: ‘I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this’, before revealing he had therapy after meeting Meghan, which ‘burst’ a bubble and he decided to ‘stop complaining’.
He added: ‘So living here (in Los Angeles) now I can actually lift my head and I feel different, my shoulders have dropped, so have hers, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free, I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle, I would never have had the chance to do that.’
The royal is understood to have met his friend Shepard more than a decade ago and agreed to support his popular podcast about mental health and ‘the messiness of being human’, including addiction. Harry’s appearance may also be linked to the podcast’s move to Spotify in July because the Sussexes have also signed a multi-million dollar deal with the streaming firm.
Harry, who is currently living in his $14million Californian mansion with his wife and son, said he was born into extraordinary privilege but hinted that he believes this has changed since he quit with Meghan last year, comparing it to Oprah Winfrey’s humble beginnings. He said: ‘I truly believe you can move along the spectrum as well, wherever you were born you may start in one place but that will change over time’.
Prince Harry’s infamous party trip to Las Vegas which saw naked photos of him leaked
Dax Shepard, who is married to actress Kristen Bell, runs the popular podcasts in America
‘You could take your clothes off in Las Vegas’: Moment host Dax Shepard jokes about Prince Harry’s infamous party trip during mental health podcast
Splash Harry: Partying in Las Vegas in 2012 – on the same holiday, leaked pictures saw him playing strip billiards (left). Right: Harry visits a technical school for less privileged students in Nepal in 2016
Prince Harry’s infamous party trip to Las Vegas which saw naked photos of him leaked to the press was brought up by host Dax Shepard in their 90-minute podcast chat.
The Duke of Sussex, 36, laughed nervously after the American actor, who is married to Frozen star Kristen Bell, cracked a joke about it.
In 2012, Harry enjoyed a wild weekend in Las Vegas, where he was snapped in just a necklace while a naked girl hid behind him following a game of strip billiards in his VIP suite.
During Dax’s ‘Armchair Expert’ show, the royal was chatting about how people are more likely to run away and rebel after being told ‘you need help’ when the host mentioned the notorious trip, joking: ‘[Or] take your clothes off in Las Vegas’.
Discussing how his mental health struggles were dealt with when he was a child, Harry said: ‘[I was told] You need help. As a case of, not weakness but “I don’t know how to deal with this. You’re unhinged, you’re not very well, go and seek help”.
He said it had caused him to ‘object and run away’, saying: ‘Everyone of us will try to find some way to mask the actual feeling and try to feel different than how we actually feel.’
The duke added: ‘And it’s well, rule number one is, when you actually want or feel as though someone needs help, telling them to their face “you need help”, is probably the best way for them to go: “Er no, no I don’t. Object, runaway.
‘Delay or these kinds of things or go and drink or take drugs or whatever, you find different ways,’ before Dax adds: ‘Take your clothes off in Vegas.’
The prince also revealed his wife told him of her experience of royal life: ‘You don’t need to be a princess, you can create the life that will be better than any princess’, adding: ‘We got together and she was like ‘wow, this is very different to what my friends at the beginning said it would be’.’
During the 90-minute interview Shepard spoke about his own addiction to smoking crack and alcohol, asked him if he had done ‘mundane things’, such as going to the supermarket.
He said: ‘The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket in London, pretending we didn’t know each other, texting each other from the other side of the aisles. There’s people looking at me, giving me all these weird looks, and coming up to me and saying ‘hi’. I texted her saying ‘is this the right one’, and she said ‘no you want parchment paper’, and I’m like ‘where’s the parchment paper?!’.
He added: ‘I had baseball cap on, looking down at the floor, trying to stay incognito. It’s amazing how much chewing gum you see, it’s a mess’.
Harry did not say which supermarket he visited but in November 2016, Meghan was spotted leaving a Whole Foods store in West London, just a few hundred yards from Kensington Palace. Harry was also a regular, although the high-end food shop is unlikely to have much chewing gum stuck to its floors.
The Duke appearance on ‘Armchair Expert’, hosted by Shepard and Monica Padman, may be linked to its move to Spotify from July. Harry and Meghan have signed a multi-million dollar deal with the streaming firm for their own Archewell Audio channel.
Harry admitted that he was a privileged, but that this can change, pointing to the rise of the couple’s friend Oprah Winfrey, who interviewed them earlier this year.
He said: ‘If Oprah is at one end, I am on the other based on my privilege and upbringing and Oprah’s at the opposite end, then every single one of us is somewhere along there’.
But he added: ‘By the way I truly believe you can move along the spectrum as well, wherever you were born you may start in one place but that will change over time’.
In the interview the Duke says compares his life to the film where every second of a man’s life is scrutinised, filmed, controlled and broadcast to the world.
Discussing how his mental health struggles were dealt with when he was a child, he said: ‘[I was told] You need help. As a case of, not weakness but ‘I don’t know how to deal with this. You’re unhinged, you’re not very well, go and seek help’.
He said it had caused him to ‘object and run away’, saying: ‘Everyone of us will try to find some way to mask the actual feeling and try to feel different than how we actually feel.’
He said as a child he had ‘rejected’ the feelings, saying he had pretended he felt ‘fine.’
At the start of the discussion, Harry explained: ‘I didn’t realise it was an interview. Was I nervous? No I wasn’t so much nervous but I guess on this particular subject around mental health.
‘For me, unfortunately in today’s world it’s quite a sensitive subject, not just for people who are sharing, but ultimately the subject matter itself it has to be handled with care.
‘When it ends up getting weaponised by certain people you can’t predict it. It doesn’t worry me anymore.’
Monica Padman asked him if he felt ‘in a cage’ while in royal duties. She said: ‘When you talk about going to the Commonwealth and empathising with all these people in worse situations than you – but you were in a horrible situation too and had to walk around with a smile and be the person comforting (them) but in some ways those people had more freedom than you did’.
Harry responded: ‘It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early twenties and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mum, how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again.
‘I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this.
‘And then once I started doing therapy it was like the bubble was burst. I plucked my head out of the sand and gave it a good shake off and I was like, you’re in this position of privilege, stop complaining and stop thinking you want something different – make this different – because you can’t get out. How are you going to do these things differently, how are you going to make your mum proud and use this platform to really affect change.
‘Looking back I realise that helping other people, helped me’. He added: ‘Once you’ve suffered you don’t want other people to suffer’, adding: ‘I’m feeling s**t, what am I going to do, I’m going to help my neighbour and have a really good day’.