What did Harry say about Camilla? His comments about the Queen Consort in his book and TV interview are explained

Prince Harry continued to criticize members of the royal family in a series of TV interviews ahead of the release of his long-awaited memoir Spare.

His candid discussions with ITV’s Tom Bradby, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and the US show Good Morning America (GMA) it came after a flurry of sensational claims about the book were revealed when it went on sale earlier in Spain by mistake.

During the interviews, the Duke of Sussex expanded the sections of Spare in which he talks about his stepmother, the Queen Consort – here’s everything you need to know.

What did Prince Harry say about Camilla?

In his memoirs, Harry wrote about how he and his brother Prince William begged their father not to marry Camilla.

Excerpt from Spare reads: “‘We’re rooting for you,’ we said, ‘We’re rooting for Camilla,’ we said. “Please don’t marry her, just be together dad.” He didn’t answer.

But she answered. Immediately. Shortly after our private meetings with her, she started playing the long game. A campaign aimed at marriage and ultimately the crown, with papa’s blessing as we assumed.

During an appearance with Cooper on CNN 60 minutes, the Duke said: “We didn’t think it was necessary. We thought it would do more harm than good.”

Harry added in the interview that Camilla’s desire to build a relationship with the British press made her “dangerous” and there would be “bodies left on the street because of it.”

He explained that the Queen Consort is “the villain, she’s the third person in the marriage” and “needs to rebuild her image”.

The Duke said: “The need for her to rehabilitate her image … it made her dangerous because of the connections she made in the British press.

“And there was an open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her about to become queen consort, there would be people or bodies left on the street because of that.”

GMA co-host Michael Strahan read an extract from Harry’s book that was critical of the Queen Consort: “In a funny way, I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she would be less dangerous if she was happy.

Another excerpt reads: “I have mixed feelings about acquiring a step-parent who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.”

Asked what Camilla had ‘done’ in that moment, Harry replied: ‘I feel a huge amount of compassion for her, you know. Because she was the third person in my parents’ marriage and she had a reputation or image to restore.

“Whatever conversations happened, whatever deals or trades were made in the beginning, she was led to believe that this would be the best way to do it.”

He also stated during the GMA interview that Camilla is not an “evil stepmother.”

In his interview with ITV in the UK on Sunday night, the Duke denied he had been “scathing” about the Queen Consort in the book.

Bradby suggested that Harry had been “pretty consistently scathing” towards Camilla, to which Harry replied: “Snarky?…Snarky to what?”

The interviewer replied, “Well, as you say ‘your interests were sacrificed on her PR altar’ to quote, and you seem to be specifically referring to that. Now her people might say, well, it’s not a crime to go to lunch with journalists.

Harry replied, “Well, I think the book makes it very clear what happened.”

More for Prince Harry

When did Camilla marry King Charles?

In 1994, the then Prince Charles admitted infidelity in a TV interview with broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, but only after his marriage was “irretrievably broken”.

The following year, Diana, Princess of Wales, made some mention of Camilla on the BBC Panorama documentary saying, “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a little crowded.”

Camilla’s public image has changed dramatically in the years since she was cast as the ‘third person’ in Charles and Diana’s marriage.

After Charles and Camilla divorced – and Diana died in 1997 – the duchess’s emergence as the prince’s longtime partner was carefully planned.

Their first public appearance together was outside the Ritz Hotel in London in 1999, dubbed “Operation Ritz”, where the mass of waiting photographers were revealed.

Camilla eventually married Charles in 2005 and spent more than 17 years as a member of the royal family doing charity work.

She was approved by the late Queen as Queen Consort in the run-up to Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee in February 2022.