Prince Harry admits he wanted to quit royal life in his early 20s
Though Prince Harry shocked the world when he announced that he and wife Meghan Markle would step back as senior royals in January 2020, for the 36-year-old it seems that the decision was a long time coming.
Prince Harry recently spoke to US actor, director and writer Dax Shepard and Emmy-nominated Monica Padman as part of their podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. And he recalled wanting to quit royal life in his early 20s, comparing his life at the time to the film The Truman Show. He also explained how he realised he 'did not want the job' of being a royal long before he met his wife Meghan.
Dax told Harry: "You're in the tiniest in-group of all time, there’s the whole country and then there’s you guys. You’re standing in one direction and they're standing in another direction looking at you. I was likening it to The Truman Show - have you seen that movie?'
Harry responded: 'Yep, yep. It's a mix between The Truman Show and living in a zoo.'
Discussing how he felt in his early 20s and wanting to step down as a working royal, he said: 'It’s the job right, grin and bear it. Get on with it.
'In my early 20s, I was just, "I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mum. How am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and a family when I know that it’s going to happen again?"'
Harry added: 'I've seen behind the curtain, I've seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don't want to be part of this'. He then went on to reveal he had therapy after meeting Meghan, which 'burst' a bubble and lead to his decision to 'stop complaining'.
The Duke of Sussex, who now lives in Santa Barbara and is expecting his second child with Meghan in the summer said it was a relief to have left the UK: 'Living [in California] now I can actually lift my head and actually I feel different, my shoulders have dropped…you can walk around feeling a little bit more free. I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle. I never had the chance to do that.'
With speculation still rife about the frosty relationship between Harry and the other UK royals, it's nice to hear he's doing so much better.
Listen to Prince Harry's Armchair Expert episode in full here
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