Oprah Winfrey

‘I was afraid’: Prince Harry, Oprah discuss mental health

For Harry, returning to London to attend Prince Philip’s funeral last month meant once more facing a place where he felt trapped and hunted by cameras. It would be a test of his ability to cope with the anxiety that was bubbling up again. “I was worried about it, I was afraid,” Harry told The Associated Press during a recent joint interview with Oprah Winfrey to promote a mental-health series they co-created and co-executive produced for Apple TV+. He was able to work through any trepidation using coping skills learned in therapy. Also read: Prince Harry thought about quitting royal life in his 20s “It definitely made it a lot easier, but the heart still pounds,” said Harry, the Duke of Sussex and grandson of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband Philip. In “The Me You Can’t See,” which debuted Thursday night on Apple’s streaming service, Harry reveals that he first saw a therapist approximately four years ago at the encouragement of then-girlfriend Meghan. They’d had an argument and she recognized his anger seemed misplaced. The series is another chapter in the unprecedented openness that Harry has brought to his life and his royal family relationships since stepping away from his duties and moving with his wife to California. In March, he and Meghan gave a headline-making interview to Winfrey that elicited a rare public response from the palace. Harry’s self-work may be relatively recent but he and older brother William, The Duke of Cambridge, have long championed the importance of mental health. In 2016, Harry, William and his wife Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, launched Heads Together, an initiative to speak up and not be ashamed to ask for help when mental well-being is at stake. Their collective work led to interactions with people across the globe, from all walks of life, and they recognized a common thread. “Sharing your story in order to be able to save a life or help others is absolutely critical,” said Harry. Harry is practicing what he preaches and laying bare his own struggles with trauma and grief. He describes in “The Me You Can’t See,” the instances of feeling helpless as a young boy while riding in the car with his mother, Princess Diana, who cried as they were surrounded by paparazzi and she struggled to drive. Years later, Diana was killed in Paris after the car she and friend Dodi Fayed were riding in, crashed during a high-speed chase to flee cameras. Harry was 12 and suppressed his own feelings to meet the mourning public gathered outside Kensington Palace. Cameras rolled and snapped away as he walked behind her casket to Diana’s funeral, alongside William, father Prince Charles, Philip and Diana’s brother Charles Spencer. Harry’s revelations coincide with Queen Elizabeth’s official confirmation a few months ago that he and Meghan will not return to their senior royal positions within the family, following a one-year trial period. Also read: Royal funeral offers chance for William, Harry to reconcile The couple now lives about 90 minutes north of Los Angeles in an exclusive area near Santa Barbara called Montecito. They count Winfrey, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom as neighbors. The paparazzi still lurks but it’s less intense than in Los Angeles. This new, outspoken prince who shares his emotions is a contrast to the “never complain, never explain,” “keep calm and carry on” mantras that are part of the prototypical British way. The British tabloids have had a field day picking apart his statements. Some royal commentators have also cried foul over a contradiction between seeking a private life yet granting interviews and revealing family strife. Harry appears to be cautious in choosing what he wants to speak about, and neither he nor Meghan seem interested in sharing their every move with the world. They do not operate a social media account. He is undeterred by naysayers, he says, because there’s a greater good in being honest about his struggles. “I see it as a responsibility. I don’t find it hard to open up,” he said. “Knowing the impacts and the positive reaction that it has for so many people that also suffer, I do believe it’s a responsibility.” Winfrey was already working with Apple to develop a series on mental health when a conversation with Harry sparked the idea to join forces. “We were having a conversation and I asked him, ‘What are the two most important issues you think facing the world today?’ And he said immediately, ‘climate change and mental health.’ She mentioned the project and Winfrey recalls him later saying , ‘Oh, by the way, if you ever need any help with that … give me a call.’ And I went and turned around and said, ‘What’s your number?’” Winfrey’s existing partnership with Apple created a rare opportunity to reach the vast number of people who use the company’s devices, Harry said. “If that’s in a billion pockets on a billion screens, then maybe we can really start a global conversation about this,” he said. Winfrey recalls some of her own childhood traumas in “The Me You Can’t See.” In addition to her and Harry’s stories, the series also features accounts from both regular people and celebrities including Lady Gaga and Glenn Close, who speak candidly about their own experiences with mental illness. Winfrey said Harry pushed to present a global perspective. “This has got to be a world thing and not just a U.S. thing,’” she recounted him saying, adding: “I think we’ve accomplished that really well.” Harry jokes he’s “slowly catching up” to Winfrey’s decades of inner-work and encouragement of others to do the same whether on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or her “Super Soul Sunday” interviews on OWN. Even Winfrey said she’s had a lot to learn. “I have dealt personally with one of the girls from my school (Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa), who had schizophrenia,” Winfrey said. “Only after hearing the doctor say that ‘it’s a diagnosis. It’s not your life, it’s not who you are,’ that I had my great awakening about it. ... ‘That is not you. You are a person who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia.’ That is powerful.”

3 years ago

Oprah and CNN: AT&T is merging media business with Discovery

The merger of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia operations, marrying the likes of HBO and CNN with HGTV and Oprah Winfrey, is another illustration of the head-spinning speed in which streaming has transformed the media world. The companies are essentially placing a $43 billion bet that they’ll still be in the mix when consumers decide how to spend their monthly entertainment budgets. The agreement was announced Monday after AT&T CEO John Stankey and his Discovery counterpart, David Zaslav, worked out the details in Zaslav’s Manhattan brownstone over the past two months. “I think, together, the combination makes us the best media company in the world,” said Zaslav, who will run the new company if approvals are granted, probably sometime next year. Read:Asian stocks follow Wall St lower as inflation worries mount The deal also represents a strategic retreat for AT&T. The hope for the newly merged company is that, with a wider array of material than either can offer on its own, it can join Netflix, Amazon and Disney in the widely acknowledged top tier of streamers. Analysts say it also makes it imperative that services below that tier — think Paramount+ or Peacock — find some way to ramp up or risk being left behind. WarnerMedia and Discovery both launched their own streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery+, within the past two years. It’s still not clear whether the merger will result in a single streaming service or several bundled together, but it will have a vast array of content to offer: scripted and reality TV, movies, sports including the NBA and NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and news with CNN. With consumers figuring out which streaming services they use regularly and which they can give up, that depth means a better chance they will use this new one regularly, said Raj Venkatesan, professor of business administration at the University of Virginia. The average U.S. household spends $40 a month on streaming services. “It either has something for everyone in the family, or is so diverse that it is hard to explain,” said Jim Nail, an analyst for Forrester Research. David Schweidel, a business professor at Emory University, questioned whether consumers will be better off with the deal. “If I do decide to cut the cord and I need three to five services to get what I had before, that bill could easily approach what I was paying for cable before,” Schweidel said. “This may end up hurting consumers.” Read:Amazon’s profit more than triples as pandemic boom continues HBO Max and HBO have a combined global subscriber base of about 63.9 million, and Discovery+ has about 15 million subscribers. That compares with Netflix, which has more than 200 million subscribers worldwide, and Disney+, which counts over 100 million. In a call with investors, Zaslav said he believes that the standalone company could garner “200, 300, 400 million” subscribers at some point in the future, but there were no details regarding a timeline. The deal is a stark reminder of how much the entertainment world has changed, said Tim Hanlon, CEO of the media consultants Vertere Group. “I think most consumers now look at live television as being something of an anachronism,” he said. While it increases the pressure on smaller streaming services like Peacock or Paramount+ to find partners, those two are affiliated with the NBC and CBS television networks — so doing so would require a rethinking of the broadcast industry regulatory process, Hanlon said. It’s the second time this year that AT&T has calved off a major acquisition as it navigates a rapidly evolving media landscape. In February, the company spun off satellite TV service DirecTV for a fraction of the $48.5 billion it paid in 2015. Dallas-based AT&T acquired the former company Time Warner for more than $80 billion less than five years ago in a bid to control both sides of the entertainment process: the broadband and wireless services that help deliver entertainment to homes, and the entertainment itself. But the costs involved in trying to do both became a burden. “That vision clearly has not panned out,” said CFRA analyst Tuna Amobi. The new company will be able to cut costs by $3 billion annually, the companies said, money that could go toward original streaming content. It will house almost 200,000 hours of programming and bring together more than 100 brands under one global portfolio, including DC Comics, Cartoon Network, Eurosport, Magnolia, TLC and Animal Planet. Read:Facing $11B tax bill, Samsung heirs donate mass art trove That likely means layoffs as the companies consolidate. The deal is also likely to force major decisions on familiar brands. For instance, CNN Chief Executive Jeff Zucker said he expected to leave at the end of the year. But with the new company being led by Zaslav — who worked with Zucker at NBC in the 1990s — that equation could change. Zaslav called Zucker an extraordinary talent. “It’s all about the talent, and so we’ll be figuring out how do we get the best people to stay,” he said. Shares of Discovery Inc., which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland, fell $1.80, or 5%, to close Monday at $33.85 after initially jumping to $39.70. AT&T’s shares finished the day down 87 cents, or 2.7%, at $31.37, down from a session high of $33.88.

3 years ago