Anderson Cooper and Michael Strahan each made it clear that they hadn’t compromised with the demands of Buckingham Palace ― or its lawyers ― over recent interviews with Prince Harry.
After Cooper’s interview with the Duke of Sussex aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday evening, the journalist spoke about his communications with King Charles’ team.
“We reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment,” Cooper said in a now-viral clip, now viewed over 1.3 million times on Twitter.
“Its representatives demanded that before considering responding, ‘60 Minutes’ provide them with our report prior to airing it tonight, which is something we never do,” Cooper said.
Strahan issued a similar statement after his sit-down with Harry aired on “Good Morning America” Monday. He revealed that palace lawyers contacted ABC while the interview aired that morning.
“We received a response from the law firm representing Buckingham Palace this morning, while we were on the air, saying that the palace needed to ‘consider exactly what is said in the interview, in the context in which it appears’ and asked that we supply them immediately with a copy of the entire interview, which we do not do as a news organization, as a matter of our policy,” Strahan said.
HuffPost reached out to ITV’s Tom Bradby, whose interview with Harry aired Sunday, to see if the palace also placed demands on the interviewer in order to comment.
A source close to the network told HuffPost on Monday that the palace was not shown the program before it aired. The source added that the palace was “given details of its content and offered the opportunity to respond, but declined to do so on the basis of not having seen the film.”
Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, which represents Prince William and his family, previously asked to see clips before commenting on claims made in Netflix’s recent “Harry & Meghan” docuseries.
A royal source told HuffPost that Netflix made no attempt to contact members of the royal household, but a CNN journalist later revealed that a third-party production company had reached out for comment.
The production company, Story Syndicate, later told Buzzfeed News that the Prince and Princess of Wales’ communication secretary had requested to see footage from the series.
More revelations from Prince Harry’s “Spare” memoir and media tour:
- Prince Harry reveals where his relationship with Queen Camilla stands now.
- The Duke of Sussex denies the royal family was racist for worrying about Archie’s skin color.
- The Duke of Sussex claims that William and Kate Middleton encouraged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a “Native and Colonial” party in 2005.
- Prince Harry blasts Jeremy Clarkson’s “horrific” and “cruel” column about Meghan Markle.
- Prince Harry calls William his “beloved brother and archnemesis” in the book.
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