Prince Harry has broken his silence regarding his father, King Charles, following the monarch’s announcement of his cancer diagnosis. Despite being in Canada for the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025’s One Year to Go celebrations with his wife Meghan Markle, Harry took the time to speak with Good Morning America’s Will Reeve, son of the late Superman star Christopher Reeve, about his father’s health.
Regarding the moment he learned of his father’s diagnosis, Harry shared, “I spoke to him. I jumped on a plane and went to see him as soon as I could.”
“Look, I love my family. The fact that I was able to get on a plane and go and see him and spend any time with him, I’m grateful for that,” Harry said in the interview, which aired Friday morning.
When asked about his outlook on the state of his father’s health, he said,
“That stays between me and him.”
As for whether King Charles’ diagnosis could have a “reunifying effect” on the royal family, Harry, who is connecting with Invictus Games competitors and their families this week, said:
“Absolutely. Yeah, I’m sure. Throughout all these families, I see it on a day-to-day basis, the strength of the family unit coming together.”
When asked about being physically far from his father during this time, Prince Harry said,
“I have my own family, as we all do. My family and my life in California is as it is. I’ve got other trips planned that would take me through the U.K. or back to the U.K., so I’ll stop in and see my family as much as I can.”
Prince Harry made a brief visit to the U.K. last week, spending approximately a day in his home country to be with his father after Buckingham Palace revealed that King Charles, aged 75, had been diagnosed with cancer.
According to PEOPLE, King Charles personally informed his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, along with other family members, about the diagnosis prior to the public announcement.
Although the specific type of cancer has not been disclosed, the palace confirmed it is not prostate cancer, following Charles’s recent procedure for an enlarged prostate.
It’s understood that the father and son had a short private meeting at Clarence House last Tuesday before King Charles and Queen Camilla departed London for Sandringham.
This reunion marked the first time Prince Harry and King Charles had met since the coronation ceremony in May 2023, where the Duke of Sussex also made a brief solo trip to the U.K.
Following their decision to step back as working members of the royal family in 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan, relocated to Meghan’s home state of California, eventually settling in Montecito. Despite occasional returns to the U.K., Prince Harry seldom reunites with King Charles or other family members.
In his memoir, “Spare,” released in January 2022, Prince Harry openly discussed the strained relationship with his family, exposing the deep-seated rift. A year later, according to author Omid Scobie speaking in the fall, “absolutely nothing has changed.”
The once-hurtful emotions between Prince William and Prince Harry have solidified into a cold and unyielding indifference.
“I saw Harry’s release of Spare as his last attempt at telling his family how he’s felt for years,” said Scobie, who chronicles the breakdown of the royal family in his book Endgame. “Because clearly there’s never been an open enough forum to have these conversations or share these feelings.”
In writing Endgame, “I was talking to a source quite early on in the process, and they called Harry a ‘defector’ and said that was William’s view,” Scobie said. “These were two men who once upon a time were firmly aligned in their outlook. One of them had to move on to also protect the crown.”
