Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan have a love story like no other couple, but even they couldn't escape the awkward phase that often comes with navigating cultural differences in a romance.
In a new interview, the Duke of Sussex revealed that when he and Meghan first got together—Meghan, an American actress who was living in Canada, and Harry, a then senior member of the British royal family—their differences became apparent.
Discrepancies between British and American terms, he joked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, "got me and my wife into a lot of trouble in the beginning of our relationship."
Though he didn't offer more details on the "trouble" their cultural differences caused in the interview, Harry does write extensively about the topic in his memoir, Spare.
In the book, he writes about the time Meghan met Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, and the royals were taken aback by Meghan's casual, friendly nature.
And on another occasion, he writes about a heated argument that broke out because Kate got offended by a typical American term Meghan used.
Harry also writes about a time he overreacted to something Meghan said and, as a defense mechanism, lashed out at her.
"Meg said something I took the wrong way. It was partly a cultural difference, partly a language barrier, but I was also just over-sensitive that night. I thought: Why's she having a go at me?" the book reads. "I snapped at her, spoke to her harshly—cruelly. As the words left my mouth, I could feel everything in the room come to a stop."
He shares that Meghan left the room they were in, and after 15 minutes, he found her in the bedroom.
"She was calm, but said in a quiet, level tone that she would never stand for being spoken to like that," he writes.
The event led to him seeking therapy, which he still attends today.
Read the biggest highlights from Spare here.
Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets.
