Coronavirus wreaks havoc with Harry and Meghan’s rebranding plans
They were free from the Royal Family and ready to take on the world. Then coronavirus struck, forcing Prince Harry and his wife Meghan to rethink their many commercial and charitable ventures. So where will they go from here?
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Even the best-laid plans can go awry, as Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex discovered.
Launching a new brand, in a world on the cusp of a pandemic and global economic shutdown, wouldn’t appear on many entrepreneurs’ to-do list.
So are Meghan and Harry’s plans in tatters, or have they done a pandemic pivot? One royal expert says they’ve been derailed.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s plans for 2020, and with much of the world on lockdown for weeks they have had to change their focus,” says Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine.
“As for their planned non-profit organisation, Archewell, now is not the time. The situation needs to improve considerably before they will be in a position to make their aspirations public.”
Corporate gigs are parked and even the acting — such as Meghan’s recent voice-over work for Disney’s Elephant documentary — is furloughed.
Even their much-anticipated biography Finding Freedom, by authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, due to be published in August, might end up timed badly if it comes out amidst ongoing unrest.
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Scobie says he has been working on the book for two years and reports suggest the couple was keen to see it published earlier, to “set the record straight”.
The lockdown has skewered their relaunch, agrees UK Telegraph royal correspondent Camilla Tominey. “They have had to put their plans for Archewell on hold, along with other projects they had hoped would cement their place as two of the world’s leading philanthropic influencers.”
The pair, who prided themselves on being the mental health gurus of the Royal Family, dramatically revealed they were leaving the British institution in January, making their final ‘Megxit’ at the end of March.
They resigned from The Royal Foundation, closed their Sussex Royal brand, website and social media accounts and announced they were launching a new foundation called Archewell.
This will offer emotional support groups, multimedia educational services and a wellbeing website. But thanks to COVID-19, the very time the world could have done with some wellbeing, the duo went silent.
Meanwhile, the remaining Royal Family members buckled down to business in the UK, with Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge particularly stepping up to support the National Health Service by calling hospitals and even playing virtual bingo with care home residents.
So hard is the duo working, society magazine Tatler recently ran a sensational cover story suggesting Catherine is annoyed she has been left with a heavy workload after Harry and Meghan’s departure. Kensington Palace was quick to issue a statement refuting this.
Harry and Meghan were snapped delivering food parcels in LA, where they are living in a luxury mansion owned by Tyler Perry. But it’s the Black Lives Matter movement which has provided their pivot, bringing out a passionate side to Meghan that hadn’t been seen since she married into The Firm.
Giving a speech to her old school, the Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles, she said, “I wasn’t sure what I could say to you. I wanted to say the right thing and I was really nervous that it would get picked apart. And I realised the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.
“You know that you’re going to rebuild, rebuild and rebuild until it is rebuilt. Because when the foundation is broken, so are we. You are going to lead with love, you are going to lead with compassion, you are going to use your voice.”
So eloquent was she, her nemesis Piers Morgan gave her the highest praise he could, writing, “It comes to something when it falls to Meghan Markle to give the President a lesson in how to show leadership at a time like this.”
He also admitted to the UK’s Sunday Times he’d probably “taken things a bit too far” with his criticism of Meghan.
The pair has been having meetings with community leaders in order to learn how to do more, according to royal sources. “This is something that is incredibly personal to Meghan, especially given everything she has experienced,” said Omid Scobie.
“Both Meghan and Harry have been quietly having meetings behind the scenes with people on all levels to make sure that they are educated and connected to the issues of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement,” he told Harper’s Bazaar magazine.
Meanwhile, Harry is consolidating his charity foundations — he has merged The Endeavour Fund with the Invictus Games, removing it from The Royal Foundation.
Pre-lockdown, the couple put a new team in place including chief of staff Catherine St-Laurent, who previously worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
They also registered Archewell for trademarks on everything from publishing to TV and movies and clothing and stationery.
In April, the Sussexes said in a statement they wanted, “To do something of meaning, to do something that matters.
“Archewell is a name that combines an ancient word for strength and action, and another that evokes the deep resources we each must draw upon,” they said.
“We look forward to launching Archewell when the time is right.”
The question is whether that time is now.
Originally published as Coronavirus wreaks havoc with Harry and Meghan’s rebranding plans