MANHASSET, NEW YORK: JR Moehringer, the celebrated ghostwriter behind Prince Harry’s ‘Spare’, revealed about a fight he and the Duke of Sussex had via Zoom in the summer of 2022. He narrated, “I was exasperated with Prince Harry. My head was pounding, my jaw was clenched, and I was starting to raise my voice. 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.”
Moehringer said the argument occurred while they were discussing a passage of the book where Harry was tortured as part of a military training exercise and one of his fellow soldiers made a "vile dig" at Princess Diana. The fellow soldier later apologized to him. "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. Good for Harry that he had the nerve, but ending with what he said would dilute the scene’s meaning: that even at the most bizarre and peripheral moments of his life, his central tragedy intrudes. For months, I’d been crossing out the comeback, and for months Harry had been pleading for it to go back in. Now he wasn’t pleading, he was insisting, and it was 2 am, and I was starting to lose it. I said, 'Dude, we’ve been over this,'" as per The New Yorker.
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He further wrote, "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. He was just glaring into the camera. Finally, 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. 'Oh,' I said. 'O.K.' It made sense now. But I still refused."
'He shot me a mischievous grin'
“'Why?' Because, I told him, everything you just said is about you. You want the world to know that you did a good job, that you were smart. But, strange as it may seem, memoir isn’t about you. It’s not even the story of your life. 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 explained and further added, "After what seemed like an hour, Harry looked up, and we locked eyes. 'O.K.,' he said."
"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," wrote Moehringer. Moehringer and Harry began collaborating on the memoir in 2020, with the writer even staying at Harry and Meghan Markle's guesthouse on two occasions.
'Our griefs felt equally fresh'
Moehringer also said in his essay that he and Harry bonded while writing 'Spare', specifically over the mutual loss of their mothers. “I wondered if we’d have any chemistry. We did, and there was, I think, a surprising reason. Diana, Princess of Wales, had died 23 years before our first conversation, and my mother, Dorothy Moehringer, had just died, and our griefs felt equally fresh,” he wrote.
Details about 'Spare'
The book, which was released on January 10, 2023, included explosive details about Harry’s life as a royal, his relationship with his father, King Charles, and his issues with the British press. He also mentioned an attack by his brother Prince William during an argument in 2019, which left Harry with injuries to his back. "William called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor," the book read, states Hello! The book made history, selling over 1.4 million copies in the US, UK, and Canada on its first day, reports Good Morning America.
