Prince Harry, In ‘60 Minutes’ Interview, Says Brother Prince William Shoved Him To The Floor – Deadline

Prince Harry, in a 60 Minutes interview tied to the publication of his memoir this week, described an incident in early 2019 when tensions boiled over with Prince William to the point that his brother shoved him and he cut his back as he fell on a dog bowl on the floor.

Already, there were tensions over Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, who became a target of the British tabloid media. The confrontation occurred at Harry’s cottage at Kensington Palace.

“It was a buildup of frustration, I think, on his part.,” Harry told Anderson Cooper. “It was at a time where he was being told certain things by people within his office. And at the same time, he was consuming a lot of the tabloid press, a lot of the stories. And he had a few issues, which were based not on reality. And I was defending my wife. And he was coming for my wife– she wasn’t there at the time– but through the things that he was saying. I was defending myself. And we moved from one room into the kitchen. And his frustrations were growing, and growing, and growing. He was shouting at me. I was shouting back at him. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t pleasant at all. And he snapped. And he pushed me to the floor.”

“It was a pretty nasty experience,” he said.

Harry said that he cut his back, although he didn’t immediately notice the injury. Prince William apologized, but asked him not to tell anybody. But Meghan saw the cut on his back.

“She goes, ‘What’s that?’ I was like, ‘Huh, what?’ I actually didn’t know what she was talking about. I looked in the mirror. I was like, ‘Oh s***.” Well, ‘cause I’d never s-I hadn’t seen it,’” Harry said.

The interview was Harry’s first with a U.S. outlet in advance of the publication of his book, Spare, on Tuesday. ITV ran an interview with him earlier on Sunday, and he also will appear on Good Morning America and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

He contends that Buckingham Palace has been responsible for leaking to the British tabloids, comparing the press there to the dragons from Game of Thrones.

“This all started with them briefing, daily, against my wife with lies to the point of where my wife and I had to run away from our, my country.”

Harry also described being in London last September for a charity event and getting word that Queen Elizabeth was seriously ill. But he was not invited on a plane with other family members to visit with the Queen before she passed. Instead, he got to Balmoral on his own. But by the time he got there, she was already dead.

When he arrived, he said, “I walked into the hall, and my aunt was there to greet me. And she asked me if I wanted to see her. I thought about it for about five seconds, thinking, ‘Is this a good idea?’ And I was, like, ‘You know what? You can– you can do this. You– you need to say goodbye.’ Um, so I went upstairs, took my jacket off and walked in and just spent some time with her alone.”

“She was in her bedroom…. I was really happy for her. Because she’d finished life. She’d completed life, and her husband was– was waiting for her. And the two of them are buried together.”

He told Cooper that he had not spoken to his brother or his father, King Charles, “for a while.” Asked if he could see ever returning to be a full-time member of the royal family, he said, “I can’t see that happening.”

But he said that he is open to a reconcilation. His worry, he said, has been that any conversation will get leaked to the press.

“The ball is very much in their court, but, you know, Meghan and I have continued to say that we will openly apologize for anything that we did wrong, but every time we ask that question, no one’s telling us the specifics or anything,” he said. “There needs to be a constructive conversation, one that can happen in private that doesn’t get leaked.”

At the end of the segment, Cooper said that 60 Minutes reached out to the palace for comment, but they demanded to see the report before responding “which is something we never do.”