Major Meghan Markle project bites the dust

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have reportedly been dealt another blow with a major project formerly in the works now being axed.

It’s the title I’m sorry about. My guess would have been it being called something like Flower. We, the good burghers of the internet, have today been denied ever reading the tell-all, feeling-feelings-all-over-a-page book long-mooted to be coming from Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.

‘Flower’ was not only the duchess’ childhood nickname but you could really make the floral metaphor do some heavy lifting: Meghan, the rare bloom, transplanted to stony British soil where she wilted and withered. Now replanted in her homeland and watered by the nourishing balm of authentic support and all the cashew milk fit to drink, she has truly blossomed. It basically writes itself.

But no. Now Page Six has now claimed that despite Meghan and Prince Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2021 publishing deal supposedly being for three titles – one from the duke, one from the duchess and one from both of them – “there are no plans for any more books”.

It’s been reported that there are currently no plans for a tell-all book from Meghan Markle. Photo: Raul ARBOLEDA / AFP.

This is a surprise because it’s not like a Meghan book wouldn’t sell better and faster than some sizzling hot cakes fresh out of the oven. Harry’s Spare set a Guinness World Record and was the highest selling book in the UK last year. (Consider: In 2023, 707,000 Brits paid about $28 a pop to read about why a native born son found UK life so intolerable he had to relocate to the shadow of a Jamba Juice.)

I reckon that Flower would have moved units like a gold-plated Big Mac. So with a book reportedly off the table, what comes next for the 43-year-old? So far, in a year of rebirth and rejigging the Sussex MO, Meghan’s (and Harry’s) other embryonic projects remain decidedly foetal.

What, you might ask, of the duchess’ most major bit of 2024 career developing and evolving, her lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard (ARO)? The concept and name was announced in March with a highly stylised Instagram video using a font best described as Westchester pony club. Then, a month after that, the duchess did an ultra exclusive and sugary jam drop to 50 select Hollywood and society sorts.

Meghan is focusing on other pursuits, according to a report from Page Six. Photo: RAUL ARBOLEDA / AFP.

Unfortunately, since then, we have been stuck in an ARO vacuum, all question marks and shrugging. In that same Page Six story as today’s book claims, it was reported that the ARO launch is “still up in the air.” One Sussex source said: “That is a whole other story.” In April a California-based source told the Mail that an “The initial CEO search has not panned out so far”. Then in August, the Mail’s Alison Bosshoff reported that “It is believed that Netflix … is taking over the commercial exploitation of the brand”.

After all, the streamer has some serious skin in the Sussex game. The figure bandied around with an abandon that is plenty gleeful is that the couple’s 2020 deal is worth about $USD100 million ($147 million). Except in August, a source with knowledge of the situation told the Mail “It was never the huge payday that the Press reported.”

“Rather than a massive lump sum” they were reportedly only paid about $4.4 million “to cover the overheads of Archewell” and “of which the Sussexes will keep a small portion personally.” In February, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria enthused, “they actually have, like a bunch in development” only for, later the same month, the Mail to report that according to “a source with knowledge of the [Netflix] situation”, the “deal is a dead duck”.

The pair’s Netflix deal hasn’t been as impactful for the streamer as bosses may have hoped. Picture: RAUL ARBOLEDA / AFP.

Harry and Meghan’s ronde with Netflix is reported to end sometime next year, giving them a year to demonstrate that they can be a truly bankable investment for the streamer. Of the three series they have produced for our viewing delectation, one that was six hours of marinating in royal draaaamaaaaa, one about leadership and one about the Invictus Games, only one has managed to actually do very good streaming business. You’ll never be able to guess which is which.

So. They need a serious, unimpeachable, get-out-the-breaking-records-press-release-template win with Netflix, something they have to deliver in under a reported year. The only available options seem to be their adaptation of Meet Me At The Lake, Harry’s show about polo (a gift horse?) and Meghan’s mystery entertaining slash lifestyle series. (Shooting has wrapped on the project after the duchess spent several months this year filming it in a rented luxury home several kilometres away from the couple’s actual luxury home. Nothing like some verisimilitude to get viewers in.)

Let us thus review: No Meghan book (reportedly). No new podcasts as yet, despite singing with Lemonada Media in February. A clock ticking on the time to prove themselves to Netflix. No ARO CEO and no announcements about products or a launch date or when we too can have Sussex jam on our breakfast tables. The only recent substantive development on the Duchess of Sussex’s career front came last week when the New York Times revealed she is building an investment portfolio, her latest addition being taking a stake in handbag brand Cesta Collective.

Could Meghan be set to become the next Gwyneth Paltrow-esque figure? Picture: Variety

The unknowable bit is, will the Goop-ification of Brand Meghan work? On one hand, she is supremely stylish and has excellent taste, thus her curating lovely, expensive products for us to drool over could make for a great business. On the other hand, the market is hardly short of lifestyle influencers peddling candles that cost at least three figures and they are not people who come freighted with quite the same political and cultural baggage.

Let us now, one final time, lament, the book-that-never-was. Vale. Just imagine the revelations, the details, the fact she could describe what Queen Camilla’s jokes are like after her fourth breakfast Fernet Branca. I just really hope Page Six has gotten this wrong for the sakes of you, me and every bestseller list the world over.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ of experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.