He’s putting that rumor to rest. Princess Diana’s former lover James Hewitt opened up about long-standing rumors that he’s Prince Harry’s real dad in a new interview, denying the claims outright.
“Are you Harry’s father?” Australia’s Sunday Night host Melissa Doyle asked Hewitt, now 58, point-blank.
“No, I’m not,” he replied in the interview that aired on Sunday, March 12. Asked why he thought the rumors of Harry’s paternity have persisted over the years, the former tank commander responded, “It sells papers. It’s worse for [Harry], probably, poor chap.”
Hewitt and the late Princess Diana met in 1986 when he was brought on as her riding instructor. (Two years after Prince Harry was born.) Around that same time, Diana’s husband, Prince Charles, was rumored to have been seeing his former flame — and current wife — Camilla Parker-Bowles.
“It’s a gradual period and then, you know, suddenly you can’t get enough of each other or see each other as much as you want,” Hewitt says of his whirlwind affair with the princess. He added that he wanted to “whisk her away” from the spotlight.
The couple had a low-key relationship, and Hewitt recalled some of those times during the interview. “Well, I’d cook and she’d wash up,” he said. “Just dinner and relaxing and laughing.” He added that he and Diana also enjoyed walks along the beach.
The pair ended their affair when Hewitt was deployed to serve in the Gulf War and their relationship was exposed by the press.
Sunday Night also spoke with Diana’s bodyguard Ken Wharfe, who said he often slept on a camp bed in a hallway outside the bedroom when Diana and Hewitt spent time together.
“It was pretty obvious what was happening,” Wharfe said, adding that “it wasn’t for me to moralize on this.”
Diana and Charles divorced in 1996, after 15 years of marriage. She died in August 1997 after a car accident in Paris.
