‘Blown it’: Meghan’s Markle’s big Hollywood move backfires

The Duchess of Sussex’s unexpected appearance only highlights just how badly she and husband Prince Harry’s are getting it wrong.

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One of the most controversial decisions in TV history came in 1986 when Dallas, the biggest show in the world, killed off lead character Bobby Ewing – only to reveal in the final episode that it had all been a dream. Impossibly naff, impossibly manipulative, and just, impossible.

It is still the quintessential example of how to really stuff up a good thing in Hollywood.

Or maybe that should be ‘was’ as a 21st century example of how to truly bugger things up, Hollywood Boulevard-style, unfolds in front of our eyes.

If you’re reading this then you probably know exactly who I’m talking about – Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, two people who are busy finding out it’s not all been a bad dream.

Just over three years since becoming Netflix’s most famous hires and inking deals worth more than the GDP of small Pacific nations, the Sussexes have “blown it,” according to a new report.

Meghan during an interview with Variety last year. Picture: Variety

Not that you could have picked up any wobbly feelings or any sense of tribulation when Meghan took to the red carpet recently for Variety’s Power of Women event. Beaming and dressed in a stunningly minimalist Proenza Schouler dress, the duchess looked like a woman whose concern was working out when to schedule her next bee sting facial.

However, appearances can be tricky things.

The Variety event is not just a chance for mutual industry masturbation in between raw tuna appetisers but marks the beginning of awards season. In attendance were big names like Margot Robbie, Emily Blunt, Carrie Mulligan and Billie Eilish.

Robbie was honoured at the event as a producer of Barbie, a movie that has made more than $2 billion at box office. Eilish has sold more than 45 million digital singles and has seven Grammys.

Also in the room were Janet Yang, president of the organisation that runs the Oscars, and Pearlena Igbokwe, who is chairperson of Universal Studio Group.

So, a bunch of women who know a thing or two about achieving.

And Meghan? The keynote moments of her 2023 were she and Harry being involved in a car-chase that might not exactly have been and a lot of talk about the duchess starting some sort of wellness brand that has yet to eventuate.

Talk about chalk and cheesy.

Beaming and dressed in a minimalist Proenza Schouler dress, the duchess looked like a woman with no concerns. Picture: Lisa O’Connor/AFP

The real problem that the duke and duchess face right now is that the content they have created has either relied on them hauling the royal family over the coals or has failed to really set the world on fire.

Thus, the appearance of Meghan at the Variety bash was part of a “strategic effort” to remake the duchess into an industry “power player in her own right,” the Daily Mail has reported.

The presence of the 42-year-old, who had not been on the official guest list, was, according to the Mail, “a calculated attempt to mute persistent rumours that Netflix is planning to ‘quietly allow’ its $100 million deal with the Sussexes to lapse when their contract ends in 2025.”

However, maybe that mute button is broken. It seems highly debatable that attending one industry dinner and making it to the dessert course would be enough to magically change the image of the Sussexes as being over-coddled underperformers.

There is also the fact that Meghan walking this red carpet makes her look dangerously like just another name trying to climb the greasy Hollywood pole and not someone who only a few years ago was an official representative of the British crown.

Meghan at Variety’s Power of Women event. Picture: Lisa O’Connor/AFP

Part of a “strategic effort” to remake the duchess into an industry “power player in her own right,” reports the Daily Mail. Picture: Lisa O’Connor/AFP

So far, the duchess’s Variety turn has yet, from my vantage point, to create hot new buzz around her name or whatever new content she and Harry have been cooking up in their Montecito guesthouse.

Whomever has been tasked with this Meghan “strategic effort” has their work cut for them, given the Sussexes non-royal oeuvre is so thin it could do runway in Paris.

An executive at a major Hollywood studio spoke to the Mail: “The truth is that a lot of people think the couple have blown it. In Hollywood, Harry is viewed as someone stuck in the past and consumed by grudges. Meghan is still able to get a lot of attention but the challenge for her now is about translating that attention into cold, hard cash.”

According to the Mail, if the duke and duchess’s Netflix contract goes the way of Bobby Ewing, then that would “signal a death-knell to their Hollywood ambitions”.

For Harry and Meghan, two people who now have to foot their own Wholefoods bills, their output for much of this year has been remarkable for its sparseness.

January at least saw Harry’s Spare unleashed, forcing me to suddenly have to type the word ‘todger’ with painful regularity. The memoir might have sold like the proverbial clappers but the duke’s only other big project, his Heart of Invictus doco, absolutely disappeared without a trace, viewing wise.

While Heart is incredibly moving and undeniably powerful (I dare anyone to watch the parts with Ukrainian paramedic Yuliia Paievska and not end up blubbering) this is not exactly easy, bingeable watching.

Then there’s Meghan who has managed to get the entire way through this year without having released … anything. Not a major new charity initiative, a children’s book, a podcast or any Netflix projects likely to drop before Prince Archie starts grade school.

(The duchess also looks set to notch up the first full year she has not seen the royal family in person at all.)

Meghan has managed to get the entire way through this year without having released … anything. Picture: Lisa O’Connor/AFP

Fair play and all, making things harder for the Sussexes’ TV ambitions is the fact that much of the year has seen the entertainment industry grind to a standstill with the actors and writers’ strikes.

However, the problem is that Harry and Meghan now exist in a world where they are judged on their output and not whether they ended up with a title because their great, great, great, great grandfather managed to boff Queen Victoria.

And of what they have made, their big hits (Spare and Harry & Meghan) are both projects that entirely rely on the Sussexes excavating royal life and royal hurts for our entertainment pleasure. Can or will they be able to achieve similar success with a project that does not include the ‘r’ word once?

I’ll leave you with this: Having seen Meghan turn up at an event that constitutes the starting gun on the run-up to the Oscars, might, just might, we be about to see the first member of the royal family take to the Academy Award stage next year to present a gong? I’m taking bets as of now.

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.