Prince Harry said Charles ‘stopped taking my calls’ before the couple announced their step back from the royal family
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In a groundbreaking, tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry said that there was a point when his father Prince Charles started ignoring his calls.
The revelation came after Winfrey asked Harry whether he and Meghan Markle blindsided the queen with their decision to step back from their roles as senior members of the royal family, as had been reported elsewhere.
“No,” Harry said. “I’ve never blindsided my grandmother. I have too much respect for her.”
He said he would guess that the false storyline of the pair completely shocking Her Royal Highness with the news of their exit came from someone inside the institution.
The couple said they had spoken to the queen about their plans to step back several times over a two-year period.
“When we were in Canada, I had three conversations with my grandmother and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls,” Harry said.
Then, Prince Charles asked Harry to put his departure plan in writing. Harry told Winfrey that he wrote it all down with “all the specifics,” which included that the announcement would be made on January 7, 2020.
Harry told Winfrey that he guessed Prince Charles likely stopped communicating with him at that point because he “took matters into my own hands.”
“I needed to do this for my family,” he continued, walking viewers through his thought process at the time. “This is not a surprise to anybody. It’s really sad that it’s gotten to this point, but I’ve got to do something for my own mental health, for my wife’s, and for Archie’s as well, because I could see where this was headed.”
But the two are on speaking terms now. Harry confirmed in the sit-down interview that Prince Charles is currently taking his calls.
“There’s a lot to work through there,” the Duke of Sussex said of his relationship with his father, telling Winfrey that he feels like he’s been let down since Charles went through something similar in his own life. “There’s a lot of hurt that’s happened, and I will continue to try and make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship.”
A representative for Prince Charles at Clarence House didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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