Prince Harry’s ghostwriter recalls shouting at the Duke of Sussex while working on his memoir, Spare.
J.R. Moehringer shared about his experience working with the royal. The memoir was released earlier this year. Working on the memoir wasn’t always easy and there was a time he screamed at the prince during a Zoom call at 2 a.m.
He said in essay published by The New Yorker on May 8, “I was exasperated with Prince Harry. My head was pounding, my jaw was clenched and I was starting to raise my voice.”
The 58-year-old writer thought he’ll get fired, saying, “Some part of me was still able to step outside the situation and think, ‘This is so weird. I’m shouting at Prince Harry.’ Then, as Harry started going back at me, as his cheeks flushed and his eyes narrowed, a more pressing thought occurred: ‘Whoa, it could all end right here.'”
J.R, explained the argument was about an anecdote where the prince recalled how he was captured by pretend terrorists. He explained, “He’s hooded, dragged to an underground bunker, beaten, frozen, starved, stripped, forced into excruciating stress positions by captors wearing black balaclavas.”
Based on his memoir Prince Harry wrote that his pretend kidnappers hurt him physically and insulted him. But what triggered him the most was how they took a dig at his late mom, Princess Diana. According to J.R., Harry wanted to include what he said back at the attackers, but the writer wasn’t convinced about adding it to the book.
The Pulitzer Prize winner wrote, “Harry always wanted to end this scene with a thing he said to his captors, a comeback that struck me as unnecessary and somewhat inane.”
During their Zoom meeting, Harry explained why he wanted to include that part. J.R. said, “He exhaled and calmly explained that, all his life, people had belittled his intellectual capabilities and this flash of cleverness proved that, even after being kicked and punched and deprived of sleep and food, he had his wits about him.”
However, he stood his guard and told him he won’t include it with the Prince eventually telling him, “‘I really enjoy getting you worked up like that.'”
Aside from the disagreements they had, the writer wrote that working with the royal was a positive experience for him. He also got to sped time with harry and his wife, Meghan Markle at their home in Montecito, California. He said that Meghan and their four-year-old son Archie would visit him while he was staying at their guest house.
Their efforts were worth it, with the prince paying a tribute to him during his book party.
According to J.R., “He mentioned my advice, to ‘trust the book,’ and said he was glad that he did, because it felt incredible to have the truth out there, to feel—his voice caught—‘free.’ There were tears in his eyes. Mine, too.”
