American media reacts to Harry’s ‘lurid and absurd’ public score-settling

American media has reacted to Prince Harry and his duo of televised interviews that aired on Sunday ahead of the release of his tell-all memoir Spare.

The Duke of Sussex spoke to Anderson Cooper in a prime-time interview on CBS’ 60-minutes in the United States, and appeared on Britain’s ITV in an interview with Tom Bradby – two of four television interviews about his controversial autobiography.

In explosive revelations to Cooper on CBS, Harry said he is ‘not texting’ his brother and described Queen Consort Camilla as ‘the villain’, and told ITV’s Bradby he was speaking out in his memoir because ‘silence only allows the abuser to abuse’.

As the impact of the incendiary interviews continued to sink in on both sides of the pond, they were covered across the whole US media spectrum, with Bloomberg noting that Harry reserved ‘real venom’ for his brother William, while the prince ‘skillfully directed and produced his own melodrama’.

American media has reacted to Prince Harry and his duo of televised interviews (pictured) that aired on Sunday ahead of the release of his tell-all memoir Spare

The incendiary interviews were covered across the whole US media spectrum, with Bloomberg noting that Harry reserved ‘real venom’ for his brother William, while the prince ‘skillfully directed and produced his own melodrama’

In an opinion piece for Bloomberg, Martin Ivens compares Harry and William’s feud to other famous warring siblings – both fictional and non-fictional – and particularly  those born from the resentment that comes from a first-born’s right to succeed.

Ivens points to ‘Jacob who outwits a slow-witted, elder brother Esau to win his father’s inheritance’, the Roy siblings in the HBO drama Succession, and the Miliband brothers in the UK who vied for leadership of the Labour party – with the younger of the pair, Ed Miliband, going on to win the position in 2010.

Now, Ivens writes for Bloomberg, Prince Harry is getting ‘his revenge’ by publishing Spare for being made to feel second best by Buckingham Palace – casting doubt on Harry’s insistence he is not trying to hurt his family.

‘Prince Harry has skillfully directed and produced his own melodrama,’ Ivens says.

‘Lacerating detail of his quarrels with William, Prince of Wales, will guarantee the warring brothers a place in history,’ he adds, saying the story resonates with people around the world. The difference, he notes, is that most disgruntled siblings don’t get the chance to air their grievances to Oprah Winfrey.

Ivens notes that during his interviews, Harry reserves the ‘real venom’ for his brother, ‘whom he accuses of ‘parroting’ the Fleet Street newspaper line about Meghan’s alleged high-handed ways’, the piece says.

While fights between boys are ‘commonplace,’ the columnist writes, ‘for two adults to row about whether Harry’s beard should be shaved off for his wedding day seems absurd, if not pathetic.’

But despite all of Harry’s complaints about the Royal Family, Ivens says that the Prince seems reluctant to fully sever his ties. ‘But if it is as rotten to the core as he suggests, why does he still hang on to his title?’ Ivens asks.

‘Possibly, Harry just likes being royal because he is used to it and it suits him and his wife. There is the paradox of the tale: The man who has rocked the monarchy by storming out of it, somehow can’t let the old firm go,’ he speculates. All that being said, Bloomberg notes, Harry’s revelations are ‘going to sell a lot of books’.

In explosive revelations to Anderson Cooper on CBS’s 60-minutes, Harry (pictured) said he is ‘not texting’ his brother and described Queen Consort Camilla as ‘the villain’, and told ITV’s Bradby he was speaking out in his memoir because ‘silence only allows the abuser to abuse’

The Washington Post said in its article on the interviews that Harry has launched ‘a full broadside’ against Buckingham Palace with his latest media appearances, focusing in particular on his comments about his stepmother Camilla

NBC News said that Harry ‘unmasked his emotion and animosity toward Britain’s royal family’ in the interviews that aired on Sunday

Fox News summarizes the ‘Top 5 bombshells’ in Harry’s Sunday night 60 Minutes interview

Harry’s book Spare has sparked a furor over his claims that William physically attacked him, while his admission he killed 25 Taliban members during the Afghanistan war generated protests in Helmand province.

In shock remarks, Harry denied he accused the royal family of racism in his Oprah interview, when wife Meghan Markle revealed an unnamed family member raised concerns about how dark their unborn son’s skin would be.

NBC News says that Harry ‘unmasked his emotion and animosity toward Britain’s royal family’ in the interviews that aired on Sunday.

The network says Harry was ‘taking aim’ at the Royal Family ahead of his ‘bombshell’ memoir, which releases on Tuesday – although it was leaked ahead of time, revealing several new details of the Prince’s claims against the Firm.

The Washington Post says Harry has launched ‘a full broadside’ against Buckingham Palace with his latest media appearances, focusing in particular on his comments about his stepmother Camilla.

Harry said Camilla’s willingness to forge relationships with the British press made her ‘dangerous’ and there would be ‘bodies left in the street because of that’. 

The New York Times notes that Harry was ‘at times emotional’ in his interviews, but otherwise appeared ‘at ease’ discussing his issues with the family.

Harry’s tell-all tales in his book include recounting how he took cocaine and magic mushrooms, and lost his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a busy pub, with the stories have dominating the headlines for days.

The New York Post’s headline focuses on some of these more salacious details from the interviews. ‘Prince Harry admits to ‘drinking heavily,’ using hard drugs on 60 Minutes’ the Post’s headline read on Sunday evening.

The New York Post’s headline focuses on some of these more salacious details from the interviews. ‘Prince Harry admits to ‘drinking heavily,’ using hard drugs on 60 Minutes’ the Post’s headline read on Sunday evening

The Hollywood Reporter says the Prince ‘keeps the royal melodrama going with a series of much-talked-about TV interviews in the U.S. and U.K’

Variety reports on Harry’s criticism of the controversial British TV personality Jeremy Clarkson, who was criticized at the end of last year for a newspaper column he wrote about his dislike of Harry’s wife Meghan

Harry told Cooper that he did this is response to the trauma he suffered as a result of the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a fatal car crash.

Fox News, meanwhile, summarizes the ‘Top 5 bombshells’ in the 60 Minutes interview. These, it says, were Harry asking for proof that Princess Diana had died, that Harry sought experimental treatments for his anger, that Queen Consort Camilla was ‘the villain,’ that he had a physical fight with William, and that Harry is currently not speaking to his father – King Charles – and his brother.

Tabloid Page Six focuses on Harry’s admission that he still has questions about the death of his mother. 

During the interview, Cooper said Harry had written how he had believed his mother was still alive until the age of 23, when he visited Paris for the first time. 

During the ITV interview with Bradby, Page Six reports how Harry told the presenter that ‘there’s a lot of things that are unexplained’ in relation to Diana’s death.   

Harry also revealed how he felt ‘slightly isolated’ and different from his family in his younger years following the death of his mother, but shared joyful times with his great-grandmother the Queen Mother.

The Duke also spoke about the royal family’s mistrust of his wife Meghan Markle – allegedly sparked by her being ‘American, an actress, divorced, black’, before joking: ‘She must be a witch’.

Cooper put it to the duke that his family dynamic was like ‘Game of Thrones without dragons’, but Harry replied: ‘I don’t watch Game of Thrones but there’s definitely dragons – and that’s again the third party that is the British press.’

In his interviews, Harry said Queen Consort Camilla’s (pictured second right) willingness to forge relationships with the British press made her ‘dangerous’

Bloomberg noted that Harry reserved ‘real venom’ for his brother William (seen together in September) while the prince ‘skillfully directed and produced his own melodrama’

On account of Harry’s royal-celebrity status – particularly since marrying his American wife Meghan and leaving the UK for Los Angeles – the couple are also of significant interest to the Hollywood press.

Covering Harry’s Sunday night interviews, The Hollywood Reporter says the Prince ‘keeps the royal melodrama going with a series of much-talked-about TV interviews in the U.S. and U.K.’

‘Certain members of the British royal family may well have been avoiding the television on Sunday,’ THR says, following a week of ‘damaging revelations’.

The magazine’s headline focuses on Harry telling Cooper during the interview in Los Angeles: ‘The saddest thing is that it never needed to be this way’ about the growing separation he feels from his family in London.

Among all the shocking revelations from Spare, THR says ‘the most incendiary revelation’ – which resulted in worldwide headlines – was of the altercation with William in 2019.

Variety, meanwhile, reports on Harry’s criticism of the controversial British TV personality Jeremy Clarkson, who was criticized at the end of last year for a newspaper column he wrote about his dislike of Meghan. ‘[It was] horrific, hurtful and cruel towards my wife,’ Variety quotes Harry as saying in the ITV interview.

Two more interviews are set to be broadcast, with Michael Strahan of Good Morning America on Monday and Stephen Colbert on the Late Show on CBS on Wednesday morning UK time.