Prince Harry has said he’s making sure his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, is “protected” and that he talks with her “about things that she can’t talk about with anybody else.”
In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Today show, the Duke of Sussex shared that he and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, dropped in to visit with his grandmother last week on their way to the Invictus Games in the Netherlands.
He said his visit allowed him to make sure the Queen, 95, has “the right people around her.”
He also discussed his grandmother’s sense of humour, saying it’s his favourite thing about her.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex pose for a group photo at the Queen’s Young Leaders Awards Ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London on Tuesday, June 26, 2018.
John Stillwell / Pool via The Canadian Press
“She’s always got such a great sense of humour with me and I’m just making sure she’s protected and got the right people around her,” he said.
The Duke dodged questions about his strained relationship with his brother, Prince William, and father, Prince Charles.
When Hoda Kotb asked the prince if he misses his family, Harry deflected saying that his focus is on his family with Markle and his work with the Invictus Games.
Harry is a founder and patron of the international sports competition for wounded military veterans.
Harry and his wife announced they were stepping back from their royal duties in 2020 and moved to the U.S., citing the unbearable pressure of their roles and racist attitudes of the British media.
In a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey the following year, Harry admitted to a strained relationship with his brother.
However, he told Kotb that his family has settled into their new life in Santa Barbara, Calif., quite nicely, explaining that they’ve “been welcomed with open arms” and that they’ve got a “great community” surrounding them.
He also shared that he, like so many others, has had to juggle working from home amid the pandemic while parenting his two young children, Archie, 2, and Lilibet, 10 months.
“Archie spends more time interrupting our Zoom calls than anybody else,” he said with a laugh.
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When asked if he will return to the U.K. for the Queen’s upcoming Platinum Jubilee, Harry said he very much wants to, but warned that “security issues” might prevent that from becoming a reality.
“I don’t know yet. There’s a lot of things, with security issues and everything else.”
He did say, however, that he wants his children to spend time with their grandmother and get to know his home country.
When asked by Kotb whether he talks with Archie about his mother, Princess Diana, Harry replied: “Very much so.”
“I don’t tell him all the stuff that happened, but certainly that this is, you know, Grandma Diana, and we’ve got a couple of photos up in the house,” he said.
Harry said he feels Diana’s presence “in almost everything that I do now.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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