After Dominic West revealed over the weekend that he’s no longer friends with Prince Harry, more details have emerged about how Harry reportedly was annoyed that the actor said too much at a press conference about the “two-day bender” they and others enjoyed upon reaching the South Pole on a 2013 charity trek with injured military veterans.
During an interview Sunday with Times Radio, West, who plays King Charles III in the Netflix series “The Crown,” didn’t say much about his falling-out with Harry, only that “we sort of (lost touch because) I said too much in a press conference,” Us Weekly reported. The press conference in question took place after Harry and West completed Walking With the Wounded, a three-week expedition through Antarctica with military veterans, including some who were amputees.
DUSSELDORF, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 06: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex speaks on stage during the press conference at the Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023 – One Year To Go events, on September 06, 2022 in Dusseldorf, Germany. The Invictus Games is an international multi-sport event first held in 2014, for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women, both serving and veterans. The Games were founded by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex who’s inspiration came from his visit to the Warrior Games in the United States, where he witnessed the ability of sport to help both psychologically and physically. (Photo by Joshua Sammer/Getty Images for Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023)
Richard Eden, a columnist for the Daily Mail, reported that he had been told by West’s close friend that Harry was particularly angry about an anecdote the British actor shared. It had to do with how the trekkers drank champagne from the prosthetic leg of one of their comrades after reaching the South Pole.
“Harry threw a (expletive) fit,” West’s friend told Eden. “He accused Dominic of invading his privacy. Dominic told him not to be ridiculous. They haven’t spoken since.”
During the press conference, Harry, an army veteran and a founder of the Invictus Games, was generally formal and reserved in what he said about the 208-mile expedition, while West spoke candidly. West said, “Two of the Aussie guys stripped naked and ran round the pole but most of us, Harry included, just went on a two-day bender with the Icelandic truck drivers who had brought some lethal home brew with them,”
“There was a lot of liquor drunk,” West added. “We all drank champagne out of (one of the team’s) favorite prosthetic legs.”
According to West, the prosthetic leg belonged to Duncan Slater, a double amputee who was injured in Afghanistan in 2009. Slater corroborated West’s story during the press conference, admitting, “We decided to use my legs as a primitive ice bucket. I don’t know why we did it, but we did!”
It’s curious that Harry might still hold a grudge against West over whatever the actor said about the team’s heavy drinking on the expedition — given that Harry wrote plenty about his excessive use of alcohol in his memoir, “Spare.”
In his book in fact, he admitted there was a fair amount of drinking on the South Pole trip. While he doesn’t mention West in “Spare,” Harry said the team spent a week or two preparing for the expedition by “carbo-loading” and “quaffing vodka.” He also said he made his way across the snow with a broken toe — the result of dropping a piece of furniture on his foot after a recent night of heavy drinking in the U.K.
Once the team reached the South Pole, Harry acknowledged that it was possible that they drank champagne out of a comrade’s prosthetic leg. “Some press accounts say that one of the soldiers took off his leg and we used it as a tankard to guzzle champagne, which sounds right, but I can’t remember,” Harry wrote. “I’ve drunk booze out of multiple prosthetic legs in my life and I can’t swear that was one of the times.”
It’s also curious that Harry was reportedly upset about West “invading his privacy” at the press conference. Critics of Harry said he invaded his own privacy quite a bit in “Spare” — as well as the privacy of his royal relatives when he disclosed details of his conflicts with them.
Harry also was accused of saying much too much about his penis being frostbitten during a similar trek to a frozen landscape two years earlier. In 2011, Harry journeyed to the North Pole and wrote that he suffered frostnip to his “nether regions.” He said his “todger” caused him discomfort when he served as best man to his older Prince William at his wedding to Kate Middleton.
The duke said he finally found relief by applying an Elizabeth Arden cream to the affected area. He mentioned it was the same product his late mother, Princess Diana, used on her lips. “I felt as if my mother was right there in the room,” Harry wrote. “Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there. ‘Weird’ doesn’t really do the feeling justice.”
Harry also shared that he avoided frostbite in the same area on his South Pole trip by hiring a seamstress to create a special cushion for that area — “square, supportive” and “sewn from pieces of the softest fleece.”
During the controversial 2014 press conference, West gushed about some of Harry’s other actions during the expedition.
“(Harry) was very much part of the team,” said the actor, who also starred as hard-drinking Detective Jimmy McNulty on “The Wire.”
“He seemed to specialize in building latrines,” West said. “He built this incredible castellated structure with blocks to keep out the wind, and it even had a [toilet] roll holder.”
Because of their falling-out, West explained that he couldn’t talk to Harry about playing his father on “The Crown.” West joined the Netflix series in 2022’s Season 5, playing Charles as he deals with his divorce from Diana and the aftermath of her 1997 death.
Harry once admitted that he has watched episodes of the show, which dramatizes the reign of his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
“It gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle, what the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else, what can come from that,” Harry said on “The Late Late Show With James Corden” in February 2021. “I’m way more comfortable with ‘The Crown’ than I am seeing the stories written about my family, or my wife, or myself.”
