Pulitzer Prize winner J R Moehringer, who spent months putting together the explosive book, admits his 'jaw was clenched' and he was 'starting to raise my voice' while working on the memoir with the prince.
- May 9, 2023
AceShowbiz - Prince Harry's ghostwriter says he ended up "exasperated" and in a heated argument with the royal while working on his memoir "Spare". J R Moehringer, who spent months putting together the book, said they stayed up in the early hours rowing over its contents.
The Pulitzer Prize winner revealed in an article he wrote for the New Yorker magazine, "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.' "
The 58-year-old author said the row came in the summer of last year, when the pair hit a "difficult passage" of the book about Harry's time in the British Army. The ghostwriter said at the end of a military exercise, the royal was "captured" by "pretend terrorists", with the simulation ending with one of his trainers making a dig about the late Princess Diana, for which he later apologized.
J R continued, "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… (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."
J R added the row "felt different" and as if they were "hurtling toward some kind of decisive rupture." But he admitted he "burst into laughter" over the incident before going back to editing the book, which was released in January and is said to have widened Harry's rift with the royal family.
His recollection comes after Harry was in Britain for only a day at the weekend to see his dad King Charles' coronation on Saturday, May 6 before he traveled back to his home in LA to be with his wife Meghan Markle and celebrate their son Archie's fourth birthday.
