- Robin Levinson King
- BBC news
JR Moringer, the ghostwriter behind Prince Harry’s new memoir
To help write his “alternative” memoir, Prince Harry needed the help of a professional writer, who specializes in writing celebrity biographies, who has won prestigious awards and even turned his life story into a film starring Ben Affleck and directed by George Clooney.
It was JR Moringer, the ghostwriter Harry hired to draft his memoirs, and it is said he was recommended by Clooney.
This isn’t Moringer’s first experience in the world of celebrity memoirs, as he was also the covert author of the biography of American tennis champion Andre Agassi and co-wrote the biography of Nike founder Phil Knight.
Page Six reported that Moeringer was paid $1 million for his writing services for “The Alternative.”
While working with Agassi on his memoirs, Moringer moved his residence to Las Vegas, spending more than 250 hours with the sports hero.
To get an insight into Agassi’s psychology, he read the works of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, he told the New York Times.
“Freud was very helpful, especially his Anxiety in Civilization and the idea of the death instinct,” he says. “One of the pillars of Andre’s personality was his tendency to self-destruct, but I was trying to rule out the idea that it was an organic part of his nature.”
But some of Mehringer’s ideas about Agassi, and now Prince Harry — both mysterious men who have had rocky relationships with Ahlma — may have come from his complex personal relationship with his father.
Moringer published his memoirs, “The Giving Tavern” in 2005. The work deals with the writer’s childhood in Long Island, where he was raised by his mother alone, and found the image of his father in his uncle Charlie, who ran the local tavern, with a group of his companions.
His father, an early stage rock and roll DJ on FM radio, abandoned the family.
“My father’s radio work gave me sporadic contact with him, so I always tried to get in touch with him,” Moeringer said in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross. He added: “I didn’t understand that he had a certain schedule every day. So I was sitting on the outside stairs of the house. I had a radio. I turned it on very slowly, trying to find his voice.”
Moringer’s memoirs were referenced in a 2021 film, of the same title, directed by George Clooney, and starring Ben Affleck as Uncle Charlie.
Before writing professionally, Moringer attended Yale University, then worked for The New York Times as a news assistant. This was followed by stints at the Colorado and Los Angeles Times, in 1994.
In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his written investigation, Transgression, into the tensions that arise when a ferry arrives in a small, isolated Alabama community.
In addition to The Bidding Tavern and his celebrity ghostwriting, Moringer has also written a novel, Sutton, about American bank robber Willie Sutton.
The best ghostwriters not only write well, but they are able to imitate autobiographical characters without giving the audience the impression that they are imitating them.
Bookseller Madeline Morel told the Observer newspaper of Moeringer: ‘He’s the best. I’m sure everyone aspires to be like him. He’s a fantastic writer. It’s very difficult to write and write this kind of book without the biographer looking like someone else . ”
But being among the best ghostwriters often means staying deliberately behind the scenes.
After Agassi’s biography “Open” was published in 2009, Moringer told The New York Times, “A midwife doesn’t go home with a baby.”
