Los Angeles, summer 2021. We can imagine the scene very well: installed in a soft and plush armchair in premium linen (not labeled Ikea like the one in Nottingham Cottage), Harry tells his story, an entire life relegated to second place.
That of the spare part (of the emergency roux?).
The office doors of his villa in Montecito are closed, and in the distance, we can guess Archie's laughter.
Facing him, via the Zoom application, JR Moehringer, his penholder.
Like a shrink, he takes notes on a notebook.
Or rather his Macbook Air.
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In video, "Silence is betrayal", says Prince Harry in an interview
Friend of the Clooneys
A few years before, a completely different patient - famous and damaged, too - unpacked his most intimate secrets to this American crowned with a Pulitzer Prize.
His name: André Agassi.
250 hours spent on JR Moehringer's couch will (re)immerse the legend of the tennis courts in his family history, his victories, his defeats, his low blows, his consumption of methamphetamine... But in the case of Harry, the unboxing is d another magnitude.
With Meghan Markle, it's been more than a year since the heir to the throne of England went into exile in California.
Far from the killer headlines of the British tabloids, far from Buckingham's protocol, far from the shadow of his elder William.
Now he wants to talk.
Make your voice heard after years of being silent, protecting the Crown and cashing in.
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It is the publishing house Penguin Random House which will end up hitting the jackpot in 2021 by buying the word of the prince once so adored by the English.
A contract of 36.8 million pounds sterling (41.54 million euros) for a trilogy in which Harry will retrace his life.
Because you don't improvise yourself as an author overnight, his friend George Clooney introduced him to the brilliant JR Moehringer (real name John Joseph Moehringer), whose bestseller and autobiography
The Tender he adapted for the cinema.
Bar
: the story of a fatherless boy who spends his time in the bar run by his uncle Charlie, a crazy man (played by Ben Affleck) who turns out to be the only father figure around him and teaches him to " become a man”.
The candidate has everything to please Harry.
Like him, he had a chaotic relationship with his father;
like him, he experienced setbacks with alcohol… And like him, he remained dented by his younger years.
But there are things that set them completely apart: Harry grew up in an ivory tower between the walls of very private palaces and boarding schools;
JR Moehringer, in a poor home in the suburbs of New York, then in Arizona.
Whatever, the deal is done.
The memoirs can begin, the Windsors just have to watch out.
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The Pulitzer in 2000
However, nothing is a foregone conclusion when you know JR Moehringer's path strewn with pitfalls.
Born in New York on December 7, 1964, the American first grew up in Manhasset, a suburban town on Long Island where much of
The Great Gatsby
novel takes place .
From a modest family, he lives in cramped accommodation with his grandparents and his mother Dorothy, who raises him alone after splitting from Johnny Michael - a violent DJ who tried to smother Dorothy with a pillow when JR was a baby.
To clear his mind, he is used to frequenting the Publicans bar where he enjoys the company of a few regulars focused on the bottle.
As a teenager, he moved several thousand kilometers away, towards Scottsdale in Arizona, and succeeded in integrating the prestigious Yale University in Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1986. After which, he embarked on journalism.
He started at the
New York Times
before joining the
Rocky Mountain News
, Colorado's first newspaper, then the
Los Angeles Times
where he covered the Orange County region.
It is in the pages of the Californian media that he signs a brilliant report which will earn him the distinction of a Pulitzer Prize in 2000: "Crossing Over", the story of a small town in the racially divided "Deep South". where a river separates black descendants of slaves and white descendants of slave owners.
Poignant story
Five years later he published
The Tender Bar
.
This poignant story, inspired by his own story, caught the attention of André Agassi who devoured the bestseller during the 2006 US Open. The tennis player then asked JR Moehringer to write his memoirs.
Request accepted by the author.
And he did well.
The sportsman's autobiography
Open,
which appeared in 2009, was critically acclaimed and became a bestseller.
In it, the champion admits having given in to "crystal meth" in 1997, admits having always hated playing tennis, looks back on his complicated relationship with his authoritarian and dominating father... In short, he says it all.
Even today, the work is considered to be of high quality.
“[Moehringer] really elevated the art of
ghostwriting
because he is not only a great journalist, but also a great writer,” said Buzz Bissinger, co-author of Caitlyn Jenner's memoir.
"He's the best, he writes beautifully, and he's the author everyone dreams of having."
To write it, JR Moehringer even moved to Las Vegas where he interviewed André Agassi for hours.
“It worked like therapy,”
the writer confided
a posteriori .
The “book of a life”
Spare
, Prince Harry's autobiography, is already breaking records in bookstores.
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Since then, the American - married to an editor, Shannon Welch, and father of two children - has worked on
Shoe Dog
, the memoir of Nike founder Phil Knight.
However, everyone agrees:
Spare
(
Le Suppléant
, in French) is a completely different challenge, the “book of a life” whisper some.
It took no less than 50 interviews on Zoom to obtain Harry's exclusive confidences: the 25 people he killed in Afghanistan, cocaine as a teenager, the loss of his virginity at 17 in a field , the Nazi costume in 2005... And still the same subject that fascinates JR Moehringer (and the rest of the world), namely the complex relationship between the prince and his family.
A source from the
Daily Mail
says: “JR is meticulous.
He is charming and easy-going, and has an innate sense of history.
He spent his life writing about broken men.
Take lost souls, from royalty, and you have the recipe for the next bestseller: according to Penguin Random House, which publishes Harry, sales of
Spare
topped 1.4 million copies on the first day for the UK edition. English.
The book of a life, then.
In video, the trailer of the interview granted by prince Harry to ITV
