Katie Couric Didn’t Hold Back In Her New Memoir, And She Had Very Strong Words For Prince Harry

This revealing interview was conducted during a game of polo, which took place over in Brazil. The chat was being filmed for use in a special dedicated to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in May 2012. The show was called The Jubilee Queen With Katie Couric, and Harry actually had some very touching things to say about his grandma.

The young prince told Couric, “In a small room with close members of the family, then she is just a normal grandmother. Very relaxed. She obviously takes a huge interest in what we all do, that’s her children as well as her grandchildren. She wants to know which charities we’re supporting, how life is going in our jobs, and such. So you know, she has a vested interest in what we do.”

Perhaps quite tellingly, considering later events, Harry also mentioned there was “not a chance” he’d have been able to deal with the same royal duties the Queen did. He said, “This tour itself has been a brief insight as to what she had to deal with at a very young age… what she’s achieved and what she’s done and at the age of 25… confronted with the world’s media.”

Harry also sang the praises of his grandmother for being able to interact with that media. He told Couric, “She’s managed to get the family to move with the times, and I think that’s incredibly important. You can’t get stuck in a sort of an old-age situation when everything else around you is changing. So you have, you have to go with it.”

And also the prince spoke about his hopes for the future. He said, “I’ve longed for kids since I was very, very young. I’m waiting to find the right person and someone who’s willing to take on the job.” Of course, we know he found that person in Meghan Markle, the mother of his two children.

But Harry was still a long way from settling down back in 2012, which was when Couric interviewed him. Later on that year, he suddenly brought a massive scandal crashing down onto the royal family. In August 2012 he was photographed in some very compromising positions during a wild party in Las Vegas.

All the sordid details soon made it to the front pages. Harry had played strip billiards at the Wynn Hotel after partying all night in a luxurious suite with the alcohol flowing. He clearly never expected any cameras to catch him with his trousers down, but they did — and there was shock all round. Maybe not from Couric, though, who noticed something rather telling about the prince when she interviewed him.

One of the girls Harry had invited to the party spoke to British magazine The People afterward. She described it all as just “fun” and nothing too sordid. And Harry, she said, was “playing air guitar with pool sticks” and “screaming out, ‘Somebody get me a glove! I’m going to do a Michael Jackson impression!’”

Harry returned to Britain with his tail between his legs. The media reported that the royals were seriously unimpressed with his actions. An insider told E! Online in 2016, years after the fact, “The person who took the dimmest view of all was the Queen. She made it abundantly clear that nothing like that would ever happen again. When you get a direct chastising from Granny, you know it’s serious. It was undoubtedly a turning point.”

Harry did actually apologize. Speaking to the media after returning from a tour of duty in 2013, he said he’d been “too much army and not enough prince.” He then told the cameras, “At the end of the day I probably let myself down. I let my family down. I let other people down.”

But Harry did also mention that he didn’t expect to be photographed. He said, “I was in a private area and there should be a certain amount of privacy that one should expect.” Both before that incident and after, Harry has been very outspoken about media intrusion on his life.

There was a debate in the British press, too, about whether the newspapers had overstepped boundaries by publishing the Vegas pictures. The Sun said in a statement that year, “There is a clear public interest in publishing the Harry pictures, in order for the debate around them to be fully informed. The photos have potential implications for the prince’s image representing Britain around the world.”

The statement continued, “Further, we believe Harry has compromised his own privacy. These are not pictures of him and a girlfriend at Balmoral. The prince was in Vegas, the party capital of a country with strong freedom-of-speech laws, frolicking in the pool before inviting strangers to his hotel room for a game of strip billiards. These are hardly the acts of a man jealously guarding his privacy.”

Harry didn’t mention any publications by name during the 2013 press conference, but he did say, “It’s very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the Army. Everyone’s wearing the same uniform and doing the same kind of thing.” But, he said, “My father’s always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that.”

Harry also said he felt like there were three of him. As he put it, “One in the Army, one socially in my own private time, and then one with the family and stuff like that. So there is a switch and I flick it when necessary... I’d like to think that it’s measured and balanced as the way it is. Army comes first, it’s my work at the end of the day.”

But the Las Vegas affair wasn’t the only thing to condemn Harry to his “playboy prince” reputation. In 2014 actor Dominic West — who went on to play Harry’s father Prince Charles in The Crown — went on a polar exhibition with the prince. And he claimed in a press conference there’d been lots of drinking on the trip.

West described Harry as “a really cool guy, very much part of the team.” But he also mentioned that he and Harry had ended up on “a two-day bender” with some truck drivers from Iceland at one point. He added that the prince, “told some eye-wateringly rude jokes, which for a non-soldier like me was pretty shocking!”

Rumor has it Harry was even partying the night before his brother’s wedding. According to an anonymous source who spoke to the Daily Mail newspaper in 2011, Harry had been drinking mere hours before the ceremony. And he even nearly injured his ankle.

The source said, “Harry was with Pippa Middleton and Chelsy Davy, among other friends, for some pre-wedding drinks. He was the life and soul of the party until the early hours. People were surprised to see him there so late before one of the biggest wedding days of the decade, and even more surprised when he jumped off the balcony — and landed with a thump.”

So, if Harry looked a little disheveled at the wedding — and some say he did — maybe that’s why. The source said that after Harry jumped, “He flinched for just a moment before he stood up, rubbing his ankle. Then he looked up, smiled, and waved to a roar of cheers, before disappearing onto the lawn where there was a secret exit.”

The source added, “It was rather foolish, but Harry was loving the attention. It was as if he couldn’t resist a bit of showing off.” As for the Palace, their only comment on the matter was, “Prince Harry had a private dinner with his brother, Prince Charles, and the Duchess of Cornwall. What he did after that is a private matter.”

So, this Prince Harry — the hard-drinking, hard-partying one prone to jumping off balconies — was the one who Katie Couric met back in 2012. And though the prince seemingly conducted himself perfectly fine in the interview that was aired, Couric wasn’t overly impressed with him. She explained why in her tell-all memoir.

The memoir, which was released in the latter half of 2021, is called Going There. And Couric definitely was going there when it came to the various celebrities she’d met and interviewed over the years. She even acknowledged during the press tour that the book might damage her “nice girl” reputation.

The book certainly contained a lot of bombshells. Couric had included details about her own life — her eating disorder, her marriage to Jay Monahan, an allegedly abusive nanny — but she didn’t hold back when talking about other celebs, either. She shared previously unknown tidbits about Louis C.K, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Matt Lauer, and more.

Compared to some of her stories, what Couric had to say about Harry wasn’t completely scandalous — but it wasn’t exactly flattering either. She met him during his “wild-oats sowing phase,” she said in the book, and the smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke seemed to “ooze from every pore.” Ouch.

That does fit in with what we know of Prince Harry during that period of his life. And he hasn’t actually denied that he turned up to the Couric interview smelling of booze. His spokespeople have also maintained radio silence. He has talked a lot about his overall struggle with alcohol, however.

The prince went into detail about it on the 2021 mental health discussion series The Me You Can’t See. He turned to alcohol, he said, to try and escape the pain brought on by the tragic death of his mother Princess Diana. Living with the grief had made him feel, “just all over the place mentally.”

From ages 28 to 32, Harry said, he experienced “a nightmare time” in his life. He began experiencing panic attacks. And as he explained, “I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.”

Harry said, “I would find myself drinking not because I was enjoying it, but because I was trying to mask something.” It was actually Meghan who insisted he check himself in for therapy after they had a big argument. Harry thinks that if he hadn’t gone, he would probably have lost her.

Interestingly, Couric also mentioned Princess Diana’s funeral in her book and made note of the grief Harry was clearly feeling at that time. She remembered, “The casket, laden with lilies, had a simple white card on top that said Mummy — handwritten and placed there by Harry. Mourners wailed at the sight of the princes walking behind the casket, heads bowed.”

Couric continued, “And I realized that what I was seeing was not the passing of the most famous woman in the world; it was two boys who’d lost a parent. And I thought of my girls.” Couric has two daughters named Ellie and Caroline, and they would later also lose a parent when their father died of cancer.

Harry has changed a lot from the days he was masking his grief with alcohol. By all accounts, he’s leading a much healthier life now, both mentally and physically. Meghan reportedly started getting Harry into a healthy plant-based diet as soon as they first started dating, and he stuck with it.

Royal correspondent Katie Nicoll discussed Harry’s life changes with Entertainment Tonight in 2018. She said, “Meghan is a complete fitness fanatic. She loves to run laps around Kensington Gardens, which is just outside Kensington Palace... and she loves her yoga. In fact, she starts most mornings with a yoga ritual and that’s rubbed off on Prince Harry.”

Nicholls went on, “[Harry] likes to start his day with a green juice now, just like Meghan, and his friends all find this very amusing that he’s turned into a bit of a fitness fanatic himself. You’ll often see him visiting the gym, and he’s given up his beloved Marlboro Lights, or at least he’s smoking less and he’s drinking less.”

And leaving the royal family apparently helped, if anything. A source told the Entertainment Tonight website in 2020 that for Harry and Meghan, hiking was “a simple pleasure that they love.” They said, “Their time on Vancouver Island over the holidays helped to confirm that they were making the right decision to step down from royal responsibilities.”

But while Harry is off living a new, more private life, Couric is coming under fire for some of the things she said in her book. Some consider that she went way too far with her comments. One source told the Daily Mail that Couric would “never get a job at any television network or cable channel ever again.”

The anonymous source went on to say, “She’ll be stuck with her newsletter and Instagram Stories for the rest of her working life even though the book oozes of her desperation to be back on network television hosting her own show.” Some of the stories Couric brought up regarding her co-workers seem like they might reopen old wounds.

Chances are Prince Harry isn’t happy at all about what Couric wrote. By all accounts his hatred for reporters has only grown more intense over the years. In 2020 former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt told newspaper The Guardian, “He has grown increasingly into adulthood irritated with media coverage and had an almost unhealthy obsession with it, to the extent he would even read the comments beneath the articles online.”

That could make things very awkward in the future. One of Harry’s new jobs is that of a leader for the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder — and one of his co-workers is Katie Couric. Who knows what might happen next time they meet? Perhaps Harry will write about that interview in his memoir, which is due to be released in the latter part of 2022. If the royal experts are right in their predictions, the prince will shed more light on what’s happened over the last few years. They say there’s one particular royal that probably won’t be painted in an overly positive light.

After they left the U.K., Harry and Meghan gave an explosive tell-all interview to Oprah in March 2021. It was reportedly watched by almost 50 million people and made headlines all over the world. During it, Harry made some pretty pointed claims – including a major one regarding his father: Prince Charles.

Harry claimed, “My family literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford security for us. I’ve got what my mom left me, and without that, we would not have been able to [leave].” And he also said that Charles had stopped taking his phone calls altogether by the time of the interview.

After that, an anonymous source told Vanity Fair magazine, “Charles was quite upset at the suggestion he had cut Harry off. Initially he didn’t, and he went on to provide for some time, but there was a point when Charles decided enough was enough. The bank of dad couldn’t keep handing out indefinitely.”

If things were strained before, the interview definitely seemed to make it even worse. Royal expert Katie Nicholl told the Entertainment Tonight show in March 2021, “William is devastated by this interview. Don't forget that the Duchess of Cambridge is being dragged into this whole saga and William will hate that. And of course, [the] relationship between father and son is… at an all-time low.”

The royal correspondent went on, “I think that the idea that Kate’s being dragged into this will be upsetting for [her]. Behind the scenes [she] has tried really hard to be a peacemaker between William and Harry. [Kate] has been deeply saddened by the brothers’ falling out. Don’t forget she was incredibly close to Harry herself.”

Regarding the Prince of Wales specifically, royal expert Kate said, “Charles certainly does not come out a winner in all of this. Harry has said he felt let down by his father. It must have been a very difficult thing for Harry to say publicly, but even a difficult thing for Charles to hear.”

Musing on how it could have gone so wrong, Kate said, “Certainly, in the run-up to the wedding, Charles was supportive of them. He was thrilled on the day to walk Meghan down the aisle. He and his son, Meghan and [his wife] Camilla, had [such] a close relationship at that time that Charles invited them to come stay with them at the castle in Scotland – a privilege that not many people are afforded.”

In the midst of all this, suddenly the royal family had tragedy to deal with. Prince Philip – Harry and William’s beloved grandfather – died at the age of 99. In the run-up to the funeral, there was lots of speculation about how Harry would be received by the rest of his family when he returned.

According to a source who spoke to the Daily Mirror newspaper, things were “extremely frosty” at the funeral. They said, “Truth be told, Harry didn’t really know what to expect before he came home, which is why he reached out before seeing everyone. He wrote a deeply personal note to his dad to try and set things straight, but tensions are still running high and things haven’t exactly ironed out the way he had hoped.”

The source went on, “Harry didn’t expect everything to be completely back to normal, but his feeling after seeing his family was there is a lot of ground to make up. Whether that is harder or easier to do on the other side of the world remains to be seen. There is a lot of distrust in the camp and everything is still very, very raw.”

In June Harry and Meghan had their second child, Lilibet Diana – the former name in honor of the Queen and the latter after Harry and William’s late mother. But even that happy moment came with a dark cloud of tension. Instead of messaging William about the news he had a niece, Harry allegedly texted Kate and got her to pass the news on.

After having their second child, Harry and Meghan began their attempt to establish themselves as public figures in the United States. One of these things included being photographed at their new California house by Time magazine for its annual TIME 100 list. Though this apparently ruffled a few feathers back home.

In September 2021 royal expert and author Duncan Larcombe dropped a bombshell to OK! magazine. The writer argued that “Kate and William are in danger of being dragged into a transatlantic popularity contest. They will feel anxious over the cover and everything Harry and Meghan do as it always seems to reflect on them.”

Duncan went on, “William and Kate are concerned about absolutely everything that comes out of America in regards to Harry and Meghan – especially Harry’s tell-all warts and all memoir that’s gonna hit the shelves sometime next year. They have no control over the narrative.” Indeed, at the time of writing, no one knows yet what the memoir might reveal.

Some believe Harry might end up taking aim at his stepmother Camilla in the book, though. Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell told Closer magazine in September 2021, “After the reports she was involved in his parents’ marriage and then stepped into Diana’s shoes as Charles’ wife, I suspect Camilla will be in his sights...”

Allegedly, the royal family didn’t want Harry and Meghan to come to the U.K. to christen their new baby, either. NBC royal correspondent Neil Sean claimed in late September, “One of the bigger problems that Meghan really encountered... later is that she wanted her daughter – Lilibet Diana – to be christened in the place she was married alongside her husband Prince Harry.”

Neil said that Harry and Meghan “were very keen to make that return and make sure that christening happened – particularly in front of Her Majesty the Queen.” Though according to one of his sources, “Prince William was the one who basically said, ‘No, we don’t think this is going to work.’”

And some might say a fashion war is brewing between Meghan and Kate. The former’s style has noticeably changed since she left the royal family, and this became obvious when Meghan appeared in New York City come September 2021. Suddenly, she was wearing pants rather than skirts and dressing like a businesswoman rather than a traditional duchess.

But mere days after Meghan’s New York appearance, Kate Middleton arrived at the No Time to Die movie premiere wearing an absolutely stunning golden gown from Jenny Packham. It was one of the sexiest things she had ever worn, and her fans went wild. Though was it a deliberate attempt to upstage Meghan?

Australian journalist Daniela Elser wrote on News.com.au in September 2021, “This frock was a very audible statement, which, to channel the Goopy argot of the Sussexes’ California, [was] about Kate stepping into – and owning – her power.” She also said, “This was a declaration of intent and a very apparent power move on Kate’s part.”

Clearly, things are not going great in the royal relationships we used to know and love. It’s duchess versus duchess and prince against prince! Rumor has it that Meghan may not return to the United Kingdom ever again, and that if she does there’s one person in particular who won’t be welcoming her back.

This particular bombshell came out in 2021, as the dust was still settling on Harry and Meghan’s dramatic exit from royal life. An insider source told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that the whole incident had been “really hard” for Charles. And they added, “I don’t think the duchess will ever forgive Meghan for what she’s done to the Prince of Wales.”

Some might have thought that was surprising coming from Camilla. After all, she was once in a similar position to what Meghan is in now. When she first married into the royal family, Camilla too had to deal with the media scrutinizing her every move.

Admittedly, Camilla started off in a totally different way. She was Charles’ mistress while he was still married to Diana. The prince was in love with her since before the marriage, but allegedly she wasn’t considered a suitable match for the heir to the throne. Diana, on the other hand, very much was.

It was only after Diana died that Charles was able to marry Camilla. But there was controversy over the wedding, because both participants had been divorced. The Church of England – which the Queen is head of – discourages divorce. Meghan faced a similar problem after Harry proposed to her, because she had previously been married as well.

There were some discouraging articles about Meghan leading up to the wedding. In 2017 the Daily Express declared, “[The] last time an American divorcee married a royal it didn’t end well!” This, of course, referred to the time King Edward VIII gave up the throne to marry Wallis Simpson. But the Harry-Meghan wedding went ahead just fine.

Camilla was able to weather her own controversial entrance into the royal family, but it took work. Everyone knew she was the woman Charles had cheated on Diana with, and they initially hated her for it. Someone even allegedly threw bread rolls at Camilla while she was shopping in a supermarket!

Gradually, though, Camilla was able to settle into the royal family and even win a level of popularity within it. After all, people have said that in person she’s a very nice lady. Yet once Meghan had made her stance clear, Camilla seemingly turned her back. Or perhaps there was bad blood between them anyway?

Back in March 2020 the Daily Mirror published a story claiming that Camilla and Meghan had fallen out. This was apparently down to Meghan breaking a “pledge not to steal the limelight from a long-planned domestic violence speech.” Royal family insiders filled journalists in on the alleged feud, and it seemed like a bad one.

Apparently, Camilla had been planning an important speech about domestic violence for the 10th anniversary of the Women of the World Festival. But on the day she delivered it, photos of Meghan at the theater appeared in the press – upstaging Camilla. And it’s claimed that Meghan had ordered for the photos to be published on purpose after promising not to.

An insider told the paper, “Camilla’s work is very important to her and her decision to highlight the scourge of domestic violence at the 10th anniversary of Women of the World was a carefully thought-out plan. They added, “Of course, it was known Harry and Meghan would be doing engagements this week, some privately, but everyone was in agreement that Camilla’s speech should take precedence. Unfortunately, some people had other ideas.”

Yet things weren’t always like that between the two women. Another anonymous insider told Vanity Fair magazine back in 2018, “They clearly really like each other. There is real warmth and support. Camilla has been very helpful to Meghan.” The latter and Harry also “very much felt and appreciated” Charles and Camilla on their wedding day.

Allegedly, in those early days Camilla actually got along better with Meghan than she once did with Kate. In May 2019 a source told the International Business Times, “[Camilla] was warm and welcoming from the start, and as a result, [she] seems to have a slightly better relationship with Meghan than with Kate.”

And Camilla was apparently supportive when Meghan first revealed that she was struggling as a member of the royal family. In the 2019 ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, the Duchess of Sussex revealed that she had been left “not really okay” by the constant press intrusions and attacks.

A source told Vanity Fair magazine at the time, “I think Camilla was probably just as surprised as anyone else when the documentary came out and perhaps didn’t realize how much Harry and Meghan were suffering.” They went on, “[Camilla] doesn’t want to see anyone struggling and she is fond of Meghan and she could be a very good ally, too.”

Royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith also told the magazine, “Meghan could learn an enormous amount from Camilla. I think Camilla is genuinely a kind person and while there are many differences between the two of them, they have both been on the receiving end of some very negative press. The thing Camilla learned was how to cultivate a relationship with the press.”

Sadly, all that seems to be ancient history now. Some are convinced that Harry will outright slam his stepmother in the book he has coming out. Paul Burrell told Closer magazine, “He’s already said he enjoys [TV show] The Crown, which painted Camilla as the ‘wicked stepmother’ in a way. Charles will be livid if he does go there.”

An anonymous source seems to think so, too. They told the Daily Mail newspaper in July 2021, “Let’s be honest, Harry has never been close to the Duchess of Cornwall. If he documents their fraught relationship in the book, it could be very damaging at a time when Charles is laying the groundwork for her to become Queen.”