Prince Harry has claimed he was chased “30 or 40 times” by photographers as a young man.
During the first episode of the Netflix documentary series, titled Harry & Meghan, the British royal reflected on the paparazzi attention he was subjected to in his late teens and early twenties.
“Not every story was false, but there was a lot of typical exaggeration and rehashing,” he said. “There’s a difference between having to accept, ‘O.K., we have this position in this family and therefore there’s going to be a level of interest,’ and being swarmed by paparazzi and chasing you in cars through red lights and then chasing you down the road on foot. Which probably happened 30 or 40 times when I was younger. It was too much.”
Referring to newspaper stories showing him lashing out at photographers outside of nightclubs and drinking underage with friends in the mid-2000s, Harry went on to explain that he was dealing with a lot of emotions at the time – especially in relation to the death of his mother Princess Diana at the age of 36 in 1997.
“Everything that was happening in the U.K. was so intense. I was trying to balance the whole experience of being a young boy who was trying to deal with the loss of his mum without much support or help or guidance. It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem fair,” the 38-year-old continued.
However, Harry noted that meeting Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2004 was a bright spot.
After bonding over losing their mothers, the royal noted that he and Seeiso quickly became “like brothers”.
“Lesotho gave me the space and the freedom to breathe, to live, and to grow,” he added of visiting the African nation.
The first volume of Harry & Meghan is now available to stream on Netflix. The second volume will drop on 15 December.
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