Prince Harry’s hugely out-of-touch money claim to Oprah exposed
Prince Harry is set to inherit a staggering sum of money within hours thanks to a secretive will – and it exposes one of his major claims.
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If we’re to believe one particular 19th century historian, Britain managed to get itself an empire “in a fit of absence of mind”.
Such a pithy quip, I know, and one sure to bring wry smiles to the faces of the billions of people who then found themselves being subjugated under the paternalistic jackboot of extravagantly moustachioed men who had never left Westminster.
“Absence of mind” is still fitting though, only this time, concerning a bit of contemporary royal news about how a prince coming into nearly $14 million was a detail that somehow slipped his mind.
To be fair, when Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex took his place beside his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex under the ministering gaze of Oprah Winfrey in 2021, he had a lot on his mind.
The couple’s original plan to “carve out a progressive new role” inside Crown Inc had immediately run afoul of the late Queen, who was not having a bar of it. And so, having been “cut off” by the royal family, as the almost 40-year-old explained to Winfrey, new horizons and new bills had duly awaited.
Enter the tender embrace of streamers, who were hungry to get a freelance duke and duchess on their books and a couple who needed to find a whole lotta lolly.
Except, reporting this week out of London has thrown up a very interesting titbit – that when Harry and Meghan left London, when they were “cut off”, they had another source of cash – nearly $6 million worth – and that moreover, when the duke turns 40 on Sunday, he will get more from the same source.
Specifically, he will inherit at least $7.8 million from a trust set up by his late great grandmother, the Queen Mother and modern dentistry’s greatest failure, according to the Times.
It has now emerged that Her late Majesty set up a $37 million trust to be divvied up between her great-grandchildren and grandchildren. (Yet she still managed to have a nearly $8 million overdraft when she died aged 101, proving that Harrods bills for cases of crab paste and Pond’s Cold Cream can really add up while one’s off playing bridge and getting misty-eyed over the empire).
It has now been reported that the Brothers Grim, Harry and Prince William, shared in $11.7 million when they each turned 21, though the “bulk” went to the Duke of Sussex. (William has the nearly $2 billion Duchy of Cornwall trust to keep him warm at night).
Another $15.6 million combined was and will be waiting for them each when they hit 40.
What does “bulk” mean? Your guess is as good as mine, but even if Harry got £1 more than brother Prince William, that adds up to him getting at least $13,650,001 across these two birthdays. Nice for some, right?
And so circle back to Oprah. One of the myriad bombshell moments came when Harry revealed that after all this “progressive” talk, the royal family had “literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford … security for us”.
“I’ve got what my mum left me, and, without that, we would not have been able to do this,” he said.
Suddenly faced with having to find millions every year for the family’s 24/7 security needs, the duo did what any sensible people would. They went to see which of Hollywood and the entertainment industry’s biggest powerhouses might like to give them some of those business deals they kept hearing all about.
Doing lucrative content deals “was never the intention”, he told Winfrey, a woman who knows her way around a billion dollars (or four and a half of them, precisely).
“We hadn’t thought about it … And, look, from my perspective, all I needed was enough money to be able to pay for security to keep my family safe,” he explained.
Poor Harry, we were meant to think, and plenty of people did and do and should. Those stony-hearted Windsors and their closed cheque books, leaving the Sussex family to fend for themselves!
But now, it would seem that Harry maybe had a little more than what his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales had left him. While there have been previous reports suggesting that the Queen Mother had bequeathed Harry a little something, this week is the first time I’ve seen actual figures attached. When Harry was talking to Oprah that day, a missing piece of information was that $13.65 million.
Lucky though, I have to say. The Sussexes’ security costs have been estimated to be at least $4 million a year, meaning that since Megxit, they have possibly spent $16 million already on this alone. Holy smokes.
This week’s 40th birthday pay out from the Queen Mother’s trust comes at a time when the future of Harry and Meghan’s professional lives and capacity to rake in the sort of “megawatt” deals they attracted back in 2020 is under something of a cloud.
Since the Sussexes were inking those sorts of chunky contracts in 2020 and 2021, the celebrity gravitational pull of their names – and therefore, their bankability – has waned. A title in California doesn’t seem to go as far as it did only a few short years ago.
This week, Netflix announced that the polo series produced by Harry, imaginatively titled POLO, (yes, in all caps, sigh) will land in December, with the news having made little splash.
Meghan has a show in the pipeline too, one that will see her clatter pots and pans and give us, I’m guessing, west coast domestic goddess with a side order of Rumi quotes.
Will these projects and their adaptation of Meet Me At The Lake be enough to ensure the streamer stays the course with them, even when their contract reportedly expires next year?
Widening the lens, taking TV-making off the table, and it’s unclear what the Sussexes could do to garner a similar nine and 10-figure deals as they have in the past. Harry’s Spare was an enormous success, but there are no indications he might do a follow up while suggestions Meghan might also write a book have had cold water poured on them.
In March, Meghan announced a lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard (ARO) but, according to recent reports, its actual launch won’t arrive until next year.
In the last week and a bit, ARO was denied a trademark for its brand name by the US Patent and Trademark Office, which also has an issue with the O in its ornate, overly worked logo.
Here’s hoping that Harry celebrates his birthday this Sunday with love, joy, cake and no ominous meeting requests from Netflix execs.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
Originally published as Prince Harry’s hugely out-of-touch money claim to Oprah exposed
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