‘I was bitter’: Prince Harry’s ghostwriter JR Moehringer talks about the tensions between them while working on Spare and reveals their relationship became so fraught that he yelled at the royal row at 2am
Tensions between the Duke of Sussex and the rest of his family are so high that Mike Tindall once publicly joked that the royals would be happy to throw a few punches at him.
Now Prince Harry’s ghostwriter JR Moehringer has revealed that their relationship became so fraught while they were working on the book Spare that at one point he started yelling at the King’s youngest son.
“I was annoyed with Prince Harry,” Moehringer admits, “my head was pounding, my jaw was clenched and I started to raise my voice.
And yet part of me was still able to step outside the situation and think, ‘This is so weird. I shout to Prince Harry.”
“As Harry started to go back to me, his cheeks reddening and his eyes narrowing, a more urgent thought came to me: ‘Whoa, it could all end here’.”
Prince Harry’s ghostwriter, JR Moehringer (pictured), has revealed that their relationship became so fraught while they were working on the book Spare that at one point he started yelling at the king’s youngest son.
Ghostwriter, JR Moehringer claims his dispute with Harry (pictured at his father’s coronation on Saturday) arose when they discussed an incident where the Duke of Sussex was captured by would-be terrorists during military exercises
Last summer’s incident is recalled in a new article Moehringer has written for the New Yorker magazine.
He explains that the dispute arose when they discussed an incident where the Duke of Sussex was captured by alleged terrorists during military exercises.
Harry’s captors shouted insults at him, “culminating in a vicious dig at Princess Diana.” One of the participants later apologized to him.
“Harry always wanted to end this scene with something he said to his captors, a comeback that seemed unnecessary and somewhat nonsensical to me,” reveals Moehringer.
“For months I had crossed off the comeback, and for months Harry had begged to let it back in. Now he didn’t beg, he insisted, and it was 2am and I was starting to lose it.
‘While this wasn’t the first time Harry and I had argued, it felt different; it felt like we were headed for some kind of decisive breakup, partly because Harry stopped talking. He just stared into the camera.
Finally, he exhaled and calmly explained that all his life people had belittled his intellectual abilities, and this flash of cleverness proved that even after he had been kicked and beaten and deprived of sleep and food, he was sane.
” ‘Oh,’ I said. “OK” It made sense now. But I still refused. “Why?” Because, I told him, everything you just said is about you.
“You want the world to know that you did a good job, that you were smart. But strange as it may seem, memoirs are not about you.
Prince Harry’s telling autobiography Spare was officially released in January this year
‘It’s not even the story of your life. It’s a story carved out of your life, a certain sequence of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest variety of people, and at this point in the story those people don’t need to know anything more than that your captors have a cruel thing to say about your mom.
After finally accepting the writer’s explanation, he gave me a mischievous grin. “I really enjoy turning you on like this.”
“I burst out laughing and shook my head, and we moved on to his next set of edits.”