Prince Harry has revealed he will not be bringing wife Meghan Markle back to the UK because of “real concerns” for her safety.
The king made the claims in a new interview for an ITV documentary, Tabloids on Trial, which aired in the UK on Thursday night.
The meeting with British journalist Rebecca Barry was Prince Harry's first TV interview about the High Court ruling that he was hacked and that his private information was obtained by the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) titles.
During their conversation, Harry said he “won't be bringing my wife back to this country” because of “real concerns” he has.
He explained that he feared negative press coverage of the couple might motivate a member of the public to target them.
“All it takes is for one actor who reads these things to act on what he's read,” he said.
“And whether it's a knife or acid, those are things that are real concerns for me. It is one of the reasons I will not bring my wife back to this country.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Harry confirmed that his determination to fight the tabloids formed a “centrepiece” of his rift with his family.
“It's a difficult question to answer because anything I say about my family leads to a torrent of abuse from the press,” he told Ms Barry.
“I made it very clear that it was something that had to be done and it would be good if we did it as a family. From a service standpoint, in a public role, I think this should be done for the greater good.”
“For me, the mission continues. But it caused, as you say, a rift,” he continued.
Harry called the court's decision a “monumental victory” and told Ms Barry he felt the ruling had “vindicated” what had earlier appeared to be paranoia about his personal information being leaked.
“Same with my mother: there is evidence to suggest she was hacked in the mid-90s, probably one of the first people to be hacked. And yet, even today, the tabloid press takes great delight in painting her as paranoid. But she wasn't paranoid, she was absolutely right about what was happening to her and she's not here today to find out the truth,” he said.
Asked if his mother motivated him in this legal battle, Harry offered that “there are all kinds of things that motivate me.”
ITV's Tabloids on Trial also included interviews with British actor Hugh Grant, singer Charlotte Church and former professional footballer Paul Gascoigne.
The program comes months after the Duke was awarded around £140,600 ($270,000) in damages by the High Court in London after it was found that he was the victim of phone hacking and other illegal information gathering by to journalists.
The judge ruled that the practice had become “widespread and commonplace” at Mirror Group Newspapers' (MGN) titles in the late nineties and that Harry's own phone had been hacked “to a modest extent”.
“To go in there and come out and have a court ruling in our favor was obviously huge,” Harry told Ms Barry in the documentary.
“But for him to go as far as he did in terms of, you know, that wasn't just individual people. This went all the way to the top… these were lawyers, these were senior executives. And to be able to achieve that in a trial, that's a monumental victory.”
Although the Duke was not present for the decision in December, his lawyer released a statement on his behalf, describing the outcome as “vindictive”.
“Today is a great day for truth as well as accountability,” he said, in part. “I was told that killing dragons will burn you. But in light of today's victory and the importance of doing what is necessary for a free and fair press – it's a price worth paying. The mission continues.”
He is the most senior member of the royal family to be questioned in court since the 1890s.
During his ITV interview, the Duke also spoke about how he carried with him “paranoia, fear, worry, worry”, as well as a general distrust of people, because of his private invasions.
“There's a big difference between what's in the public interest and what's in the public interest,” he said.
Harry is still embroiled in legal action against News Group Newspapers (NGN) over alleged privacy breaches and two separate issues with Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL).
The documentary Tabloids on Trial covers the scandal over two decades, from when the allegations first emerged until around 2012 – a year after Britain's News of the World was forced to close after being accused of hacking.
During evidence at his trial against the publisher of The Mirror last year, Harry spoke passionately about the impact media intrusion had on his life.
“I was a child, I was at school. These articles were incredibly invasive. Every time one of these articles was written, it had an impact on my life, on the people around me,” he told the court.
“Each of these items played an important role, a destructive role, in my growth.
“As a child, in my teenage years, I was under the invasion of the media most of my life, to this day.”
Last month, Harry was ordered to explain how potential evidence in his lawsuit against NGN disappeared after a lawyer for the publisher claimed in court that he deliberately destroyed text messages sent between him and the ghostwriter of his bombshell memoir, Spare .
Harry's lawyer denied the claims, accusing the publisher of “a transparent, old-fashioned fishing expedition,” according to court documents.
“The tactical and slow approach to NGN disclosure completely undermines the deliberately sensationalist claim that [the Duke of Sussex] did not properly carry out the disclosure exercise,” argued David Sherborne.
“This is untrue. In fact, the plaintiff has already stated that he conducted extensive searches, exceeding his obligations.”
