In an excerpt from the documentary series dedicated to mental health The me you can’t see, launched this Friday, May 21, Prince Harry confides in Oprah Winfrey about the trauma caused by the death of his mother.
The me you can’t see is a series of interviews broadcast on Apple TV since this Friday and dedicated to mental health. Its creators? Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry, who are also executive producers. On the program? Several celebrities – such as Lady Gaga or Glenn Close – give poignant testimonies about their own struggles. In the first episode, Prince Harry opens up about his experience with anxiety and depression, partly caused by the death of his mother when he was only 12 years old.
In particular, the 36-year-old prince explains how, as a youngster, he fell into drugs and alcohol to cope after Diana’s passing. “I wanted to get drunk, I wanted to do drugs, I wanted to do anything that would allow me to not feel what I felt,” he tells Oprah Winfrey. William’s brother reveals that at one point he was drinking “the equivalent of a week’s worth of drinks in one night, on Friday or Saturday,” noting that he was “not doing it for fun, but because he was trying to cover up something.”
A victim of major panic attacks between the ages of 28 and 32, Harry recalls how difficult it was for him to try to put on a brave face. “Every time I put on a suit, every time I put on a tie, I would put myself in a role and say to myself in front of the mirror, ‘Come on, don’t let it show.’ Before I even left the house, I was sweating like crazy.”
Prince Harry at his mother’s funeral: “I was doing what was expected of me”
An injunction to modesty, inherent in his duty as a member of the royal family, which the prince was already undergoing at the funeral of his mother, Princess Diana. “It was like I was out of my body and doing what was expected of me,” recalls Harry, who was 12 years old at the time. “I was showing a tenth of the emotion that anyone else could show, and yet it was my mom. They, for one, had never met her.”