I was trapped but I didn’t know that, says Harry

New York - British prince tells Oprah Winfrey that his father stopped taking his calls

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, aired on a US channel, Britain’s Prince Harry said he wouldn’t have been able to step away from the royal family if it had not been for his wife Meghan.

“I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped. Like the rest of my family are, my father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave and I have huge compassion for that.”

“It’s a very trapping environment that a lot of them are stuck in. I didn’t have anyone to turn to.

“For the family they very much have this mentality of ‘This is just how it is, this is how it’s meant to be, you can’t change it, we’ve all been through it.

“What was different for me was the race element, because now it wasn’t just about her. It was about what she represented.”

Harry, asked whether he told his family about his plans to step away from his royal roles and about a newspaper story that they had “blindsided” the queen with their decision:

“I’ve never blindsided my grandmother, I have too much respect for her.”

Asked where the story came from, he said: “I’d hazard a guess that it probably could have come from within the institution.

“I had three conversations with my grandmother, and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls. And then he said, can you put this all in writing?”

Asked why Prince Charles had stopped taking his calls, Harry said: “By that point I took matters into my own hands, it was like, I needed to do this for my family. This is not a surprise to anybody. It’s really sad that it’s got to this point, but I’ve got to do something for my own mental health, my wife’s and for Archie’s as well.”

On media behaviour echoing that his mother Princess Diana faced before her death in a Paris car crash in 1997, Harry said his biggest concern was history repeating itself. "I’ve said that before on numerous occasions, very publicly. And what I was seeing was history repeating itself, but more perhaps more definitely far more dangerous because then you add race in, and you add social media and when I’m talking about history repeating itself I’m talking about my mother.”

Harry, on the royal family failing to speak out about the racist articles written about Meghan:

“The saddest parts I guess was over 70 members of parliament, female members of parliament, ... came out and called out the colonial undertones of articles and headlines written about Megan, yet no one from my family ever said anything over those three years.”

“That hurts, but I also am acutely aware of where my family stand and how scared they are of the tabloids turning on them.”

• UK