While Prince William and Prince Harry continue to keep their distance from one another, William acknowledged his younger brother in his documentary about their late mother, Princess Diana.
In the new two-part documentary Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, the Prince of Wales recalls a transformational childhood event with Harry. A preview video published on Saturday shows the royal discussing how he got involved in charitable work and finding answers to the homeless situation. He stated his mother introduced him and Harry to the Passage, a homeless charity in the United Kingdom, when they were small boys.
“My mother accompanied me and Harry to the Passage. “I was probably 11 or 10 years old at the time,” William recalls. “I had never been to anything like that before, and I was a bit anxious about what to expect.”
He says, “My mother went about her usual business, making everyone feel at ease, laughing and joking with them. At the time, I remember thinking, ‘Well, if everyone doesn’t have a home, they’ll all be extremely sad.’ However, it was astonishing how cheerful the setting was.
William thinks the visit provided him some perspective and made him conscious of his privilege.
“I remember having some good conversations, playing chess, chatting, and that’s when it dawned on me that there were other people out there who don’t have the same life as you do,” he shares. “You know, when you’re young, you simply think life is what you see in front of you, and you don’t really have a concept to look beyond. It’s when you meet somebody, as I did then, who give you a new perspective and says, ‘Well, I was living on the street last night,’ and you go, ‘Whoa.’ “I recall that happening.”
While brief, his account of the encounter with Princess Di and Harry is the first time William has spoken publicly about his brother since their estrangement. The brothers fell out after Harry decided to step aside as a prominent member of the royal family and relocate away from England with wife Meghan Markle. Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary and Harry’s 2023 memoir Spare, in which he wrote of being regarded second-best to William, exacerbated the breach.
Still, Harry has expressed hope that he and his older brother would be able to reconcile in the near future, bringing their families closer together.