Meghan, Harry’s ‘train wreck’ start to 2025
Staffers at a company where the Duke of Sussex works are allegedly “living in fear” while the Duchess of Sussex’s TV return faces a massive test.
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Bushes. The royal family does a very strong line in beating around them. (Using only the best sort of sticks of course.)
That guardedness is one of the things that Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ditched pronto when they touched down in California and decided to let all of their feelings hang out.
Now it has all has come back to bite the duke on his yogalates-toned bottom. A business that Harry, champion of the mental health and a Hercules of inner healing, has worked with for years has been labelled a “toxic train wreck”, where “everyone is uncomfortable and living in fear” and which is a “psychologically unsafe place to work”, according to current and former staffers.
Way back in 2021, the duke went off and did something quite remarkable ,which was to get one of those things he kept seeing people have on Emmerdale — a job. Specifically he signed on with BetterUp, a professional coaching and mental health app, as their Chief Impact Officer, a job title that is still as painfully devoid of meaning today as it was then.
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In the years since, being CIO has translated into him turning up at BetterUp events and saying words about feelings and thriving into microphones, for which he is paid, according to the Daily Mail, $2 million per year. Nice work and all that.
Only, what probably sounded to Harry like a cushy gig with all the on-tap kombucha he could drink has instead become something of a PR omnishambles that has been hit by waves of bad publicity and layoffs.
The latest came over new years when the Daily Mail unearthed a tranche of highly critical comments about BetterUp on the website Glassdoor, which lets staffers rate employers, suggesting the San Francisco company might not quite be a paradisiacal wonderland of trust falls and meditation circles.
Current and former staffers have claimed that the billion-dollar outfit is run by an “elitist club of leaders” who “have no moral compass”, that it’s “a literal circus” and that “the company is a mess.”
One account manager, back in August, posted that it was a company “where people dry up and shrivel” and that “literally every person at BetterUp hates their job”.
Dear oh dearie me.
This sort of criticism is not exactly new given that in 2023, one former BetterUp staffer told The Daily Beast, “they treat us like sh**” while another said, “There was a lot of f**kery going on”. (Of Harry’s day-to-day contribution, one ex-employee said he did “zero things”.)
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Do I need to spell out why this is all such a a bad look for a man who regularly (and laudably) bangs the drum about mental fitness?
The duke has, at length and length some more, talked about how the British press and the royal family and the snivelling critterati of social media took a painful toll on his mental health.
But how do we square the circle of an energetic champion of emotional well being, readily taking the shilling of a company that is allegedly “toxic”?
I have no idea, but then I’m not paid to. What I am is to now point out that, more broadly, the Sussexes find themselves in a very tight spot career-wise, down to only one fat content deal (Netflix) and with that reportedly set to go the way of the Dodo and the hoverboard this year.
All their Hollywood hopes, dreams and coffers now rest on the success of the Duchess of Sussex’s forthcoming cookery and entertaining fest With Love, Meghan, which looks set to really give the edible flower industry a major shot in the arm.
The launch last week of the trailer was not without PR incident given the hyper stylised celebration of the supposedly homespun turned out to have been shot on a rented set far away from the Sussexes’ actual home and with the whole thing feeling as about relatable as an Architectural Digest cover story on Imelda Marcos’ shoe cupboard.
Will Meghan’s ice cubes with flowers frozen inside, a nifty trick the Australian Women’s Weekly was busily promoting during the Hawke years, help her make the image leap from renegade royal to domestic demi-goddess?
There are tens of millions of dollars, at least, riding on that question.
By all accounts, this year the Sussexes’ $160 million contract with Netflix will self-destruct and the scorecard currently has them sitting on one ratings winner (Harry & Meghan) versus three duds (Live to Lead, Heart of Invictus and Polo) which hardly represents much return on investment for CEO Ted Saranados and his chequebook.
The question that the duke and duchess face is, will Netflix have any interest in continuing to bankroll the Sussexes’ operation, which increasingly looks like the Fyre Festival of filming.
The other unknown piece in all of this is Meghan’s commercial, product-slinging arm that is quite yet to materialise. Last March saw the grand unveiling of her American Rivera Orchard (ARO) brand which remains swathed in mystery and provides an endless source of puns about jam.
If and when ARO’s product lines finally see the light of day and the add-to-cart function, will shoppers be queuing up to spend their hard earned dosh on Meghan- approved bits and bobs? (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, she has taste for days, even long summer daylight savings hour ones.)
Or is the very idea of an empire built on linen sofas and a duchess showing regular folk how to blob greige hummus into overpriced teeny dishes doomed to fail to capture people’s imaginations and wallets and credulity?
Slice and dice it however you fancy - in fact, chiffonade the dickens out of it - and the Sussexes are at a major crossroads of their US lives.
Having finally gotten over their willingness to cathart for cash in the vain hope it might make King Charles call, (reader: It did not), what comes next? How long can or will Harry keep cashing BetterUp’s cheques? And will With Love translate into a highly successful princess pivot or will it end up a Saturday Night Live parody?
At least we’re already learnt one thing already in 2025 - we need never endure a boring ice cube again.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Meghan, Harry’s ‘train wreck’ start to 2025
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