Prince Harry's Spare ghostwriter reveals blazing 2am row over Diana story after becoming exasperated with duke
9 May 2023, 05:54 | Updated: 9 May 2023, 06:41
Prince Harry's ghostwriter has revealed a blazing 2am row with the duke over a story involving Diana during the making of the bombshell memoir Spare.
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Pulitzer prize winner J R Moehringer said he became exasperated and feared he would get sacked after he refused to add a comeback Harry said he gave to military "captors" during an exercise.
The duke was taken by mock terrorists as part of his resistance training and held in an underground bunker where one of the instructors made a dig at Diana.
Harry wanted to add in the comeback but Mr Moehringer refused during a heated exchange over Zoom in the summer of 2022.
Writing in The New Yorker, the 58-year-old said: "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.'"
He revealed the two had a back-and-forth about the comeback for months.
"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," the author said.
"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 2am and I was starting to lose it."
The two had argued before but this time "it felt different", Mr Moehringer said, and with Harry stopping talking and "glaring into the camera", he believed they were "hurtling toward some kind of decisive rupture".
"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," he said.
But the writer continued to stand his ground, saying a memoir is "not even the story of your life... [it is] a particular series of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest range of people".
Eventually Harry agreed, smiling and telling him "I really enjoy getting you worked up like that".
The writer was approached to work on Spare by text in 2020 and bonded with Harry over losing a mother. Mr Moehringer's had died not long before they spoke.
He would travel to the Sussexes' home and Meghan brought him sweets, he said.
Harry was briefly in the UK for the King's Coronation but is thought to have spent no more than about 30 hours in the country.
He missed a private gathering where the King toasted Archie for his fourth birthday.
