9 Days After That Blistering Interview, Prince Harry Has “Started Conversations” With His Brother & Father
A little over a week after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's incendiary sit down with Oprah Winfrey, the Duke of Sussex has been been touch with his father Prince Charles and his older brother, Prince William, with whom he said he had previously been estranged.
According to CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King, who called the couple to see how they were doing, Prince Harry was finally able to begin talking again to his family. “Harry has talked to his brother and he has talked to his father, too,” King said. “The word I was given was those conversations were not productive. But they are glad that they have at least started a conversation.”
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"What's still upsetting to them is that the palace keeps saying they want to work it out privately, but all these false stories that are very disparaging about Meghan are coming out still," King continued.
.@GayleKing checked in with Prince Harry & Meghan this weekend:
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 16, 2021
“Harry has talked to his brother and he has talked to his father, too. The word I was given was those conversations were not productive. But they are glad that they have at least started a conversation.” pic.twitter.com/fe0ATukkYw
During the interview with Winfrey, Prince Harry admitted that his relationship with his father had pretty much dissolved following his and Markle's decision to step back from their roles as senior members of the royal family in 2020.
"When we were in Canada, I had three conversations with my grandmother and two conversations with my father," he said, "before he stopped taking my calls."
As for his older brother, Harry described their current relationship as "space." On March 11, Prince William made his first public appearance since the headline-making interview and told reporters the royals were "very much not a racist family" and said he planned to speak to his brother.
However, according to King, though inroads are starting to be made with Harry's relationship with his family, nobody has reached out to Markle yet. In fact, Buckingham Palace recently announced that they have hired an external law firm to look into allegations from royal aides that Markle bullied them.
King concluded that the pair only seek to repair and move forward, but can only truly do so if the royal family supports them. "I think it's frustrating to them to see that it's a racial conversation about the royal family, when all they wanted all along was for the royals to intervene and tell the press to stop with the unfair, inaccurate false stories that definitely have a racial slant," she said. "And until you can acknowledge that, I think it's going to be hard to move forward. But they both want to move forward with this. And they want healing in this family. At the end of the day it's Harry's family."