Prince Harry told Anderson Cooper he was "probably bigoted" before he met Meghan Markle in 2016.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, sat down with the CNN anchor for his first U.S. television interview to promote his memoir Spare, out Jan. 10. He spoke about how he thinks his perspective changed after dating Meghan, who is biracial, in a preview of the interview shared to Twitter Thursday.
"What Meghan had to go through was similar, in some part, to what Kate [Middleton] and what [Queen] Camilla went through — very different circumstances," Prince Harry said of the scrutiny the women faced because of their respective relationships with Prince William and King Charles III. "But then you add in the race element, which was what the press, British press, jumped on straight away," Harry said of what differentiated how Meghan, 41, was mistreated.
"I went into this incredibly naïve. I had no idea the British press were so bigoted," he continued. "Hell, I was probably bigoted, before the relationship with Meghan."
Repeating the statement, Cooper asked, "You think you were bigoted before the relationship with Meghan?"
"I don't know," Harry replied. "Put it this way — I didn't see what I now see."
Prince Harry previously spoke about the racism his wife faced after their relationship was revealed in the fall of 2016 in their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, released in December.
In an interview, Prince Harry recalled how after news of their relationship broke, the Daily Mail ran a story with the headline "Harry's girl is (almost) straight outta Compton."
"I was like, whoa," Harry said.
Meghan was born and raised in Los Angeles, adding in her own interview, "Well, firstly, I'm not from Compton, I've never lived in Compton. So it's factually incorrect. But why do you have to make a dig at Compton?"
"The direction from the palace was, 'Don't say anything.' But what people need to understand is, as far as a lot of the family were concerned, everything that she was being put through, they had been put through as well," Harry said.
"So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like, 'My wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?' " as old footage of his mother Princess Diana, Sarah Ferguson and Princess Kate dodging photographers rolled.
"I said, 'The difference here is the race element,' " Harry said.
