Today show host Karl Stefanovic hinted at trouble in paradise for exiled royals Prince Harry and Meghan Markle while discussing the Duke of Sussex’s latest interview on Friday.
Stefanovic, 46, made a cryptic remark about Harry – who was known for his partying ways before meeting the Suits actress – ‘letting off steam’ sometime in the future.
While he didn’t spell it out, the Nine presenter seemingly implied the red-headed royal won’t be a married man forever and may one day find himself living it up like he did during his bachelor years.
Cryptic remark: Today star Karl Stefanovic hinted at trouble in paradise for exiled royals Prince Harry and Meghan Markle while discussing the Duke of Sussex’s latest interview on Friday
As the Today show aired a gallery of photos from Harry’s twenties – when he was known for his rebellious nature – Stefanovic remarked how he ‘looked happier’ during his partying years before he met wife Meghan.
‘He looks happier, too, when he was partying in Vegas, I’m just saying,’ he remarked, implying the prince has lost some of his joie de vivre since getting married.
‘He did look pretty happy there, didn’t he?’ his co-host Allison Langdon said, to which Stefanovic replied: ‘Imagine when he lets off steam next time…’
While he didn’t elaborate on this comment, his wry tone of voice implied he believes we may not have seen the last of the ‘old Harry’.
Hmm! Stefanovic, 46, made a cryptic remark about Harry – who was known for his partying ways before meeting the Suits actress – ‘letting off steam’ sometime in the future. Pictured with co-host Allison Langdon (left) and Nine’s U.S correspondent Alison Piotrowski (right)
Elsewhere on Friday’s show, Stefanovic said Harry needed a reality check after ‘whining about his childhood’ in an interview with Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast on Thursday.
‘I’m just saying it’s ridiculous how he keeps whining about his childhood. He grew up in privilege – in a palace,’ he remarked.
‘I mean, just give it a rest, bro.’
Karl’s take: While he didn’t spell it out, the Nine presenter seemingly implied the red-headed royal won’t be a married man forever and may one day find himself living it up like he did during his bachelor years. Meghan and Harry are pictured during their Oprah TV interview
Later in the program, Stefanovic criticised Prince Harry again, telling him he should follow his grandmother the Queen’s example by ‘just getting on with it’.
‘The guy doesn’t need to go from his [Californian] mansion and start rabbiting on about how hard life is when he has got enormous privilege, and to keep bagging his family,’ he said.
‘Just get on with it. Just get on with it. Take a lesson out of the Queen’s book and just get on with it. Carry on.
‘I’m not saying anything more about that… it’s really riled me.’
Wedding day: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex married on May 19, 2018, at Windsor Castle. They had announced their engagement in November 2017, after dating for a year and a half
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex married on May 19, 2018, at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. They had announced their engagement in November 2017, after dating for a year and a half.
There is some speculation Meghan, 39, has influenced her husband towards more progressive views, and inadvertently driven a wedge between him and his family.
However, Harry has stated his desire to break free from the Royal Family predated his relationship with the former Deal or No Deal briefcase model.
It comes after The Duke of Sussex on Thursday blasted his father Prince Charles’ parenting as he poured his heart out to a U.S. mental health podcast and said he’d moved to California with his family to ‘break the cycle’ of ‘pain’ he suffered as a member of the Royal Family – and needed to ‘change that for my own kids’.
Harry also admitted he first wanted to quit The Firm in his ‘early twenties’ because of ‘what it did to my mum’ and revealed that his wife, 39, had encouraged him to have therapy and had herself now concluded: ‘You don’t need to be a princess.’
Harry’s extraordinary attack on the Royal Family, two months after accusing them of racism towards his two-year-old son Archie, came as he appeared on Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast.
The show promoted his Apple TV+ mental health series with Oprah Winfrey, The Me You Can’t See, which premieres next Friday – and it was also promoted in a tweet by Dax.
Personality shift: There is speculation Meghan (right) has influenced her husband towards more progressive views, and inadvertently driven a wedge between him and his family
Harry, who is expecting a daughter with Meghan this summer, suggested that Prince Charles had ‘suffered’ because of his upbringing by the Queen and Prince Philip, and that the Prince of Wales had then ‘treated me the way he was treated’, calling it ‘genetic pain’.
During the wide-ranging interview lasting 90 minutes, Harry – who appears to have developed an American twang to his British accent since leaving the UK – said: ‘I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.
‘It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you’.’
He added: ‘I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go ‘OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids’. And here I am, I moved my whole family to the US, that wasn’t the plan but sometimes you’ve got make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.’
The Duke called royal life ‘a mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo’ and said he quit last year to put his family and mental health ‘first’. He also put ‘wild partying’ in his youth down to ‘childhood trauma’, having previously admitted experimenting with cannabis and drinking to excess, and joked about the time he played naked billiards at a party in Las Vegas.
The podcast saw both men share their experiences of past trauma – and Dax, who is married to Frozen star Kristen Bell, spoke about his own addiction to smoking crack and alcohol. Harry asked him what it was like to take a ‘s***load’ of drugs when he was young after suffering sexual abuse as a child – while also speaking about his own experience of ‘pain’ as a senior royal.
Harry asked him if he had ‘an awareness’ whether his abuse of drink and cocaine was fuelled by his childhood, saying: ‘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’.
The Duke described how he started therapy after Meghan ‘saw he was angry’, and 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.’
Baring his soul, 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’.
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’.’
Harry had agreed to support Dax’s popular podcast about mental health and ‘the messiness of being human’, including addiction – with his appearance also possibly linked to the podcast’s move to Spotify in July announced just hours earlier, because the Sussexes have also signed a multi-million dollar deal with the streaming firm.
As the podcast was released today, Harry’s father Charles visited a cancer research centre in London to learn how Covid-19 has affected its funding, while his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate Middleton spent the day in Wolverhampton to learn about projects supporting the wellbeing of the city’s young people.
As Harry took part in another bombshell interview, two months after the Oprah chat on CBS, he also revealed:
- Harry says he was ‘more free’ since his move to LA with Meghan, who he says encouraged him to have therapy because he would get ‘angry’ about things he couldn’t control. He said: ‘She could tell that I was hurting’;
- Meghan advised him: ‘You don’t need to be a princess, you can create your own life better than any princess’
- He suffered ‘vile and toxic abuse’ by trolls, saying he tries to have ‘compassion’ for them but this is ‘really hard when you’re on the receiving end’;
- Harry spoke of ‘going wild’ as he chatted with the Hollywood star about their own drugs and alcohol problems;
- Duke knew in his 20s that he ‘didn’t want the job’ of being a full time royal, also speaking about infamous incident of playing naked billiards in Las Vegas before serving in Afghanistan;
- When asked if people he met on royal trips to poorer areas ‘had more freedom than he did’, he said: ‘It’s the job right? You grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this’;
Bombshell: It comes after The Duke of Sussex on Thursday blasted his father Prince Charles’ parenting as he poured his heart out to a U.S. mental health podcast and said he’d moved to California with his family to ‘break the cycle’ of ‘pain’ he suffered as a member of the Royal Family. Prince Charles was pictured on Thursday meeting Oscar Coulson-Starley, 11, and mother Danni Starley, 45, from Kent, England
Business as usual? The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge laughed during a gardening session at The Way Youth Zone in Wolverhampton, England, on Thursday
The Duke of Sussex confided in Dax that he was so desperate to hide his relationship with Meghan Markle when she stayed at Kensington Palace for the first time in 2016, 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.
Dax 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.’
Before the family rift: Prince Charles, Prince Philip and Prince Harry are pictured during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant in London on June 3, 2012
Family: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are shown here with their son Archie during their royal tour of South Africa on September 25, 2019
Lineage: The Queen and Princess Diana, Harry’s mother, are pictured together in 1989
Star: Dax Shepard, who is married to actress Kristen Bell, runs the popular Armchair Expert podcast that interviews stars in America. It’s been bought by Spotify, the audio streaming company that has also done a deal with the Sussexes. Pictured in May 2008
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.
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’.