In the first episode, Harry opens up about grappling with his royal duties in the aftermath of Diana’s fatal car crash in 1997 and the pressure that was put on him and Prince William.
“When my mom died, we had two hats to wear,” he explains. “One was two grieving sons, wanting to cry, grieve, and process that grief because of losing our mom. And two was the royal hat, show no emotion, get out there, meet the people, shake their hands.”
Harry continued, “The UK literally swept me and William up as their children,” and, along with that, came, “an expectation to see myself and William out and about was really hard for the two of us.”
And when Harry began attending Eton College at the age of 13, the same paparazzi attention that had been focused on his mother “started happening to us,” he said, going on to reference the negative tabloid stories about his partying and dating.
“There’s a difference between having to accept, okay, we have this position in the family and therefore there’s going to be a level of interest and being swarmed by paparazzi, chasing you in cars through red lights,” Harry says. “And then chasing you down the road on foot, which probably happened about 40 times when I was younger. It was too much. Everything that was happening in the UK was so intense. I was trying to balance the experience of being a young boy who was trying to deal with the loss of his mom without much support or help or guidance. It didn’t seem right, it didn’t seem fair.”
