Harry and Meghan’s top secret move ‘behind backs’ of palace laid bare

A bombshell story published about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex has made a stunning claim about the two royal exiles.

Those Windsors of ours, they have staff for everything – from toothpaste application to horse-shodding to advanced gynaecology. It would have to really take something to upset this over-coddled apple cart.

Or someone – namely Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex – who had the shocking temerity to, in 2019 back when she was still an out and proud HRH and had never contemplated paying her bills via blackberry preserves, actually hire someone for herself.

And not just any someone.

The former Suits star reportedly “went behind the backs” of the Palace to employ a US outfit which is not above dabbling in the PR “dark arts”.

This week, five years on, that hiring of an American firm called Sunshine Sachs is back in the news after The Hollywood Reporter published the journalist’s equivalent of a pound of C4, releasing an exposé about the duchess that is nothing short of eye popping. Gobs have well and truly been smacked. Jaws have dropped. Flabbers have gasted.

Meghan, insiders told the Reporter, is “just terrible”, “marches around like a dictator in high heels” and has “reduced grown men to tears”.

Understandably, it’s these lines that have gotten all the headlines, hardly surprisingly given a highly respected US trade publication has alleged that the 40th anointed King of Great Britain’s daughter-in-law is “just terrible”.

But there is a Harry part of the Reporter story that has been overlooked and which is pretty astounding, capping off what has been a less-than-ideal period for the duo.

Not only has the Reporter revived the duchess’ provocative hiring of Sunshine Sachs but has now alleged that Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex was also on the Hollywood firm’s books years – years – before he did that quitting thing and stormed off to the contiguous United States.

Blimey.

Meghan has been called ‘terrible’. Picture: Diego Cuevas/Getty Images

The royal family has long since regularly plucked bright minds and cunning operators from the ranks of government and the media to join Crown Inc, but a royal prince on the books of a Hollywood firm while simultaneously repping said Crown?

In a line that needs to be added to pretty much every bit of journalism ever about the Sussexes, him too. It was not just the duchess on Sunshine Sachs’ books, but according to the Reporter, the firm’s Keleigh Thomas Morgan “[added] Harry to her client roster when they became engaged”.

So … in 2017 then. Years earlier than has previously been reported and years before la Megxit and their Megxiting orfff.

Blimey squared.

Harry was reportedly added to Sunshine Sachs’ book in 2017. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

What the Reporter bombshell has this week brought back to the fore is the extent to which paid US advisers were involved in the Sussexes’ lives and careers during the febrile, ultimately monarchy-rocking months leading up to Megxit.

I might be asking too much here, but cast your mind back and try to remember 2019. Go on. Meghan and Harry were in the midst of a publicity slump that would make Enron executives feel sorry for them, the couple having managed to tumble from adored superstar status to go-to whipping boys, doing a spectacularly good job at making a right hash of things. So, the duchess did what any sensible adult would do – she turned to professionals, the la creme de la creme of reputational jedis, in the form of Sunshine Sachs.

(Handily, in a bit of foreshadowing, Sunshine Sachs’ Keleigh Thomas Morgan had enjoyed a plum seat at the Sussexes 2018 wedding).

In September 2019, this news was broken by The Sun which reported that, “in a massive break with royal tradition”, Meghan had gone “behind the backs of Buckingham Palace advisers to hire [Sunshine Sachs], known for using the so-called ‘dark arts’ of public relations to improve the celebs’ reputations”.

Courtiers and their ilk were said to be “shocked” at the duke and duchess’ decision.

The Reporter bombshell revealed the extent to which paid US advisers were involved in the Sussexes’ lives. Picture: Adrian Dennis/various sources/AFP

A royal insider told The Sun that this move was “unorthodox to say the least” and that “senior palace courtiers have been left bemused over the last few months that the couple have been ignoring advice from their own highly-professional team and will instead listen to outsiders in Hollywood”.

Smugly “bemused” they might have been, but just imagine their faces if they knew then what we do today thanks to the Reporter. Would courtiers have been quite so “bemused” and instead right proper incensed if they had known it was not just the duchess relying on Californian help to craft her career, but that of a frontline, working member of the royal family too?

In 2019 it was reported that Meghan had gone “behind the backs of Buckingham Palace advisers to hire [Sunshine Sachs]”. Picture: Paul Grover – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Sunshine Sachs was not the only Hollywood-ites sticking their designer sticks in the royal spokes either.

The Telegraph has previously reported that Meghan, even after her marriage, “continued to consult” her lawyer, business manager and talent agent “with regular conference calls even set up to link both sides of the Atlantic”. This trio and Morgan “were constantly fielding proposals for Meghan and bringing stuff to her”.

Exciting stuff, unless you happened to be on the royal payroll. “The team in America did pose problems for staff at [Kensington Palace]. There was always quite a lot of secrecy surrounding the couple’s conversations with the US,” the insider has said.

This disconnect between the trans-Atlantic arms of Sussex Corp had become apparent by the very beginning of 2019 when, in February, the duchess had zoomed over to New York to be doted on and fussed over by a coterie of celebrity pals at a starry baby shower.

“That was a bit of a headache, not least because no one from the palace was there to oversee what was happening,” the source told the Telegraph.

“The American lot were the ones dealing with the baby shower.”

The duchess had zoomed over to New York to be doted on and fussed over by a coterie of celebrity pals at a starry baby shower. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/Pool/AFP

Meanwhile, “staff back in London wondered how they should register the freebies in accordance with the Royal Family’s strict rules on declaring gifts”.

It wasn’t all just macaron towers and juicy offers. It was later revealed that a year before the Megxit detonation, the Sussexes had already been in discussions with a US streaming platform. Oh sure, it all came to nothing and said meetings were with Quibi, a short-form streamer that flopped like a Beluga whale being heaved off a high diving board.

However, Harry told Oprah Winfrey that doing lucrative commercial deals “was never the intention … We hadn’t thought about it … all I needed was enough money to be able to pay for security to keep my family safe”.

Meghan also said, “Yeah, we genuinely hadn’t thought about that before”.

And yet, a source with knowledge of the situation later told the Telegraph, “there were well-developed proposals in place with Quibi from early 2019”.

“A lot of it was orchestrated by Meghan’s people in America. It was a bit of a secret squirrel,” a royal source also said.

The question that this week’s Reporter piece demands is, what role did US wheelers and dealers and executives yelling into headsets during conference calls play in events between the Sussexes’ 2017 engagement and January 2020 when it all came crashing down? To what degree were outside operators inserting (or being paid to insert) themselves into royal business?

This Reporter story and its claims about both Harry and Meghan come at a time when the couple’s career, fortunes and futures are under the microscope.

To write about their professional output since Megxit is to have to repeatedly find synonyms for “hits and misses”. Any time the duke and duchess have turned royal whistleblowers things have gone gangbusters; any time they have not, then imagine the sounds a deflating balloon makes. That.

Their Harry & Meghan six-parter might have made news and more news but the recent Emmys were only a reminder of its abject lack of critical success. While Netflix’s other most recent celeb-y docuseries, Beckham, has just won the Emmy for most Outstanding Documentary, the Sussexes’ offering did not get a single skerrick of Hollywood awards recognition.

The Harry & Meghan series has not received any Hollywood awards. Picture: Netflix

Meanwhile, the duke recently spent his 40th birthday weekend at a charity tennis day and at Tyler Perry’s starry 55th birthday party, which really paints a picture of where they have ended up nearly five years since Megxit.

Whatever the Sussex/Sunshine Sachs history, it all came to a halt not long after. This week’s Reporter story also revealed that “Morgan stopped repping them around 2020, because the Sussexes stopped paying Sunshine Sachs for its services, though the PR firm denies that was the case”.

And today?

Meghan is now repped by WME’s Ari Emanual, a pairing that in 18 months has not outwardly or obviously borne any commercial fruit.

And Harry? As far as is publicly known, he has no one.

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