'Spare' came out in January.
Prince Harry's ghostwriter is speaking out. In an essay for The New Yorker, J.R. Moehringer recalls one argument he had with the Duke of Sussex while working on the royal's memoir, Spare, which was released in January.
The disagreement came as the men were on a late-night Zoom session, discussing a training exercise Harry underwent while in the military.
"Harry, at the close of grueling military exercises in rural England, gets captured by pretend terrorists. It's a simulation, but the tortures inflicted upon Harry are very real," Moehringer writes. "He's hooded, dragged to an underground bunker, beaten, frozen, starved, stripped, forced into excruciating stress positions by captors wearing black balaclavas. The idea is to find out if Harry has the toughness to survive an actual capture on the battlefield."
Eventually, "Harry’s captors throw him against a wall, choke him, and scream insults into his face, culminating in a vile dig at -- Princess Diana?"
Shortly thereafter, those participating in the exercise seemed to realize that bringing up Harry's mother, who died in a car accident in 1997, had broken "an inviolate rule" and was "out of bounds."
When one of the participants apologized over the comment, Harry responded with "a comeback" that struck Moehringer "as unnecessary." And thus the argument began.
"I was exasperated with Prince Harry. My head was pounding, my jaw was clenched, and I was starting to raise my voice," Moehringer writes. "And yet 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.'"
The argument had been going on for months, with Moehringer repeatedly crossing out the comeback and Harry "pleading for it to go back in."
"Although this wasn't the first time that Harry and I had argued, it felt different; it felt as if we were hurtling toward some kind of decisive rupture, in part because Harry was no longer saying anything," Moehringer writes. "He was just glaring into the camera."
Even after Harry explained that he wanted to include the comeback because "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," Moehringer refused, telling the duke that the memoir "isn't about you."
"It's a story carved from your life, a particular series of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest range of people, and at this point in the story those people don't need to know anything more than that your captors said a cruel thing about your mom," Moehringer recalls telling Harry.
"After what seemed like an hour, Harry looked up, and we locked eyes. 'OK,' he said. 'OK?' 'Yes. I get it.' 'Thank you, Harry,' I said, relieved," Moehringer writes. "He shot me a mischievous grin. 'I really enjoy getting you worked up like that.' I burst into laughter and shook my head, and we moved on to his next set of edits."
Despite their disagreement, Moehringer looks back fondly on his experience ghostwriting with Harry, with whom he had "chemistry" for "a surprising reason."
"Princess Diana had died 23 years before our first conversation, and my mother, Dorothy Moehringer, had just died, and our griefs felt equally fresh," Moehringer writes, before noting that he also "just liked the dude."
"I called him dude right away; it made him chuckle. I found his story, as he outlined it in broad strokes, relatable and infuriating," he writes. "The way he'd been treated, by both strangers and intimates, was grotesque. In retrospect, though, I think I selfishly welcomed the idea of being able to speak with someone, an expert, about that never-ending feeling of wishing you could call your mom."
Eventually, Moehringer traveled to Montecito, California, to meet with Harry in person. While there, Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, put Moehringer up in their guest house.
"Meghan and Archie would visit me on their afternoon walks. Meghan, knowing I was missing my family, was forever bringing trays of food and sweets," Moehringer writes, later noting that Meghan sent his children toys.
When ET's Kevin Frazier spoke to royal expert Katie Nicholl, she reflected on Moehringer's essay.
"Really interesting timing," Nicholl noted of the essay being publicized shortly after King Charles III's coronation, which Harry attended, despite a rift with his family.
"There were several [disagreements between Harry and Moehringer]," Nicholl said. "When someone else is writing your story it's such a personal experience, I suppose that is inevitable."
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