ITV Studios has announced a predictable raft of sales on its interview with Prince Harry.
The 90-minute special, entitled “Harry: The Interview,” sees the Duke of Sussex discussing some of the revelations in his new memoir, “Spare,” with journalist and ITV News at Ten presenter Tom Bradby. The interview covers Harry’s past drug use, the fractured relationship with his father, King Charles, and brother Prince William, and his problems with the British tabloid press.
“Harry: The Interview” has now aired in 77 territories across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada and Brazil. It first aired on Sunday night in the U.K. where it scored an average audience of 4.2 million viewers.
Filmed in California, where Harry now lives, the special went on air in the U.K. two days before “Spare,” on Tuesday, hit the shelves in British bookstores.
In the ITV interview, Harry said it was “important to acknowledge” his drug-taking, which he details in the book, but side-stepped a question from Bradby about whether his taking cocaine as a member of the publicly-funded royal family was a matter of public interest, with British newspapers covering it in the early to mid 2000s.
The duke also insisted that he had not written his memoir with the intention of hurting his brother and father, despite the many intrusive and potentially damaging revelations within it. “Nothing I’ve done in this book or otherwise has ever been [with] any intention to harm them,” he told Bradby. But he claimed his family had “got into bed with the devil” by cooperating with the British tabloid press and suggested this was his opportunity to right the record.
ITV Studios has sealed deals on the Price Harry special with: TF1 for France; RTL for Germany and The Netherlands; Discovery for Italy; TV2 for Denmark; DPG for Belgium; TV4 for Sweden; MTV3 in Finland; VGTV Norway and CMore for Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Network Seven has taken rights for the interview in Australia; TVNZ for New Zealand; Paramount+ in Canada; Globo in Brazil; Now TV in Hong Kong; Discovery in Poland; VMI in Ireland and DBS in Israel. A pan-African deal with M-Net sees the interview available in 54 territories and a pan-regional deal for CEE with CME Nova covers Czech Republic, Slovak, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria.
ITV Studios says it hopes to finalize more sales on “Harry: The Interview” across the globe in coming days.
“We have been thrilled to give our global buyers the chance to show Tom Bradby’s extraordinary interview with Prince Harry so soon after its original broadcast, and for their viewers to experience the story behind the headlines firsthand,” said Ruth Berry, managing director of global distribution at ITV Studios, in a statement.
Harry’s interview on ITV in the U.K. was followed on Sunday by a “60 Minutes” interview that aired in the U.S. on CBS with Anderson Cooper, in which the prince covered much of the same ground.
