The thing I tend to forget about James Corden is that he actually is a good interviewer, and he’s good at getting people loose enough to actually chat about real sh-t. The thing I tend to forget about Prince Harry is that he’s really very normal, and he’s really good at stuff like obstacle courses and Army-training kind of crap. Those two energies were joined for Corden’s interview with Harry, which aired last night. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air part went on for far too long, but I laughed my ass off when the tea cart fell on Harry, and I chuckled at the obstacle course and how great Harry was at it while James was… not.

Around the 4:50 mark, James gets his hands on Harry’s phone, where Meghan is listed under “M.” Meghan and James FaceTime and we learn that Meghan called Harry “Haz.” It’s very cute and she looked gorgeous on FaceTime. Around the 6:20 mark is the bulk of the actual interview. Harry talks about his courtship with Meghan, how he knew by the second date that this was the real deal, and how they spend their regular “nights in” with Archie now in Santa Barbara. Corden didn’t shy away from asking him how bonkers it was to walk away from the UK, and Harry had this to say:

Airing just days after it was announced the couple was officially no longer working royals, the Prince made it clear that he “will never walk away” from his family or waver in his dedication to helping others.

Harry told Corden: “My life is always going to be about public service. Meghan signed up to that, and the two of us enjoy doing that, trying to bring compassion, trying to make people happy and trying to change the world in the small way that we can.”

“It was never walking away, it was stepping back rather than stepping down,” he told host James Corden as the pair did a tour around Los Angeles. “It was a really difficult environment as I think a lot of people saw. We all know what the British press can be like. It was destroying my mental health. This is toxic, so I did what any husband and what any father would do, which is ‘I need to get my family out of here’ but we never walked away.”

“Whatever decisions are made on that side I will never walk away,” Harry said in reference to the Royal Family. “I’ll always be contributing. My life is public service so wherever I am in the world it’s going to be the same thing.”

[From People & The Guardian]

Harry left some things unsaid and Corden didn’t press him to, like, slam his family. Harry laid the blame for the toxicity at the feet of the British media, which… I mean, fair enough, but so many in the British media were getting their talking points, narratives and lies from somewhere. Royal reporters weren’t making it all up on the fly. There was an actual campaign and the media were merely one toxic part of that campaign.

Interestingly enough, Corden also asked Harry about The Crown. Harry said: “It’s fictional. But it’s loosely based on the truth. Of course it’s not strictly accurate.” Harry said The Crown gives people a “rough idea” of the pressures of “putting duty and service above family and everything else…I am way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing stories written about my family or my wife. That [The Crown] is obviously fiction, take it how you will. But this is being reported on as fact because you’re supposedly news. I have a real issue with that.” Well well well. Oh, and he wants Damian Lewis to play him on The Crown! Lewis is too old, tbh.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Backgrid.