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Archive footage of Prince Harry and Princess Diana being photographed on a Spanish vacation in 1987 has gone viral on social media after an edited clip was uploaded to video sharing platform, TikTok.
Harry's interactions with photographers and his exposure to the paparazzi became a subject of increased focus after the release of the prince's high-profile media projects in recent months, in which he described his childhood and relationship with the press.
The footage, posted to TikTok by user royalthecrown, has been viewed over 1 million times this month and received in excess of 200,000 likes and 100 comments.
In the video, a two-year-old Harry is shown with his mother telling photographers snapping royal family photographs "bye!" while waving.
At the time the news footage was captured, Diana and Harry, along with the then-Prince Charles and Prince William were visiting the King and Queen of Spain, Juan Carlos and Sofia, as part of their vacation to the country.
A number of TikTok commenters have praised the prince for his cheeky comment to the photographers as well as drawing comparisons to his recent revelations about press intrusion into his life.
"He's always known how to treat the paparazzi," one user wrote. "He's never taken their abuse and continues to speak up in his mother's memory. He's a star."
Harry spoke in detail about the media and paparazzi treatment endured by his mother, and the grief he experienced after her death in injuries sustained in a 1997 Paris car crash in his memoir Spare, published in January.
"The paps had always been grotesque people, but as I reached maturity they
were worse," he wrote of his experiences in the early 2000s. "You could see it in their eyes, their body language. They were more emboldened, more radicalized, just as young men in Iraq had been radicalized.
"Their mullahs were editors, the same ones who'd vowed to do better after mummy died. The editors promised publicly to never again send photographers chasing after people, and now, ten years later, they were back to their old ways...The editors were still inciting and handsomely rewarding thugs and losers to stalk the royal family, or anyone else unlucky enough to be deemed famous or newsworthy."
Harry referenced this "promise" made by editors in the wake of Diana's death in court papers filed in March as part of an ongoing lawsuit into historic illegal information gathering techniques allegedly used by the publishers of the Daily Mail newspaper to write about him.
In documents outlining his allegations against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL). the prince's legal team argued: "As a senior member of the Royal Family at all material times, Associated's pursuit of detail as to information as to his private travel plans and publication of the same through the Unlawful Articles caused a significant security risk to the Claimant which was as grossly irresponsible as it was dangerous.
"Moreover, the Claimant regards Associated's Unlawful Acts to amount to a major betrayal given promises made by the media to improve its conduct following the tragic and untimely death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997."
ANL has vigorously denied the prince's claims.
In the aftermath of the princess' death, in which it was revealed that the car she was traveling in at the time of her fatal crash was being pursued by numerous members of the paparazzi on motorbikes, her brother, Earl Spencer, publicly criticized the press for playing a role in her accident.
"I always believed the press would kill her in the end," he said. "But not even I could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in her death as seems to be the case.
"It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana's image, has blood on their hands today," he continued. "The one consolation is that Diana is now in a place where no human being can ever touch her again. I pray that she rests in peace."
In the years since her death, Harry has spoken about the trauma he has experienced as a result of the press highlighting the similarities between the treatment of his wife, Meghan Markle, and his mother, going so far as to say the clicking of cameras provokes a physical reaction in him.
Speaking in the 2021 docuseries The Me You Can't See, the royal said: "We would get followed, photographed, chased, harassed. The clicking of cameras and flashes of cameras makes my blood boil, it makes me angry, it takes me back to what happened to my mum and what I experienced when I was a kid."
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more