Meghan Markle’s Suits breaks Netflix records as her popularity plummets

The public can’t get enough of one thing from Meghan Markle – but the wild uptick in demand isn’t helping her popularity.

COMMENT

They might make an unlikely pair but this week, both Queen Camilla and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, have been notching up royal firsts. (And somewhere up above, Queen Mary suddenly feels faint.)

Camilla has become the first Queen in British history to have started her Christmas shopping while on an official State Tour, going on such a spree at a craft market at a donkey sanctuary in Nairobi her aides ran out of cash and had to dash around issuing IOUs.

And Meghan? This week her TV alma mater Suits broke all records and hit its 14th week as the most streamed TV show in the world. It has broken so much streaming ground they are probably running out of spades.

And while I would very much like to spend the next thousand words of this story examining in minute detail just who might be getting what from Her Majesty’s donkey bender come December 24 (maybe the sisal bag she bought was for Prince Andrew to carry around all his lawyers’ bills?) it’s the Meghan milestone that demands a closer look.

Because two things are happening right now and they don’t quite gel.

Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane in Suits/ Picture: Ian Watson/USA Network/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

On one hand, Suits, the cable dramedy bought by Netflix earlier this year has, out of the blue, been attracting stratospheric viewing numbers. For example, in one week in August alone, it was watched for 3.9 billion minutes – that’s 65 million hours. Holy hell.

The legal procedural is at least the second, and by now might be the first, most-streamed series ever recorded by Nielsen. (Based on numbers over consecutive weeks.)

And yet on the other hand, Meghan and her husband Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex seem stuck in the doldrumest of career doldrums.

How come Suits is sailing past milestones and view counts like a TV steamroller yet the Sussexes’ stock remains decidedly lukewarm?

When Suits first aired back in 2011, it did moderately well, with an average of 4.28 million people tuning in per episode. However, by the time season seven debuted, the final one to star a certain actress who was by then busy across the ocean having a tiara fitted, that number had fallen to 1.3 million.

Meghan Markle and Patrick J. Adams in Suits. Picture: Shane Mahood/USA Network

In the Suits season five finale, Meghan Markle's character Rachel Zane in a wedding dress.

Star Patrick J. Adams got a 2012 SAG Awards nomination but otherwise the series was entirely blanked by the more prestigious gong shows like the Emmys and the Golden Globes.

Still, while the show had an undeniable and considerable fanbase, we are not talking about a series that reinvented the genre or set the entertainment world on fire.

Then earlier this year Netflix, which also happens to have Harry & Meghan on their books, threw down some cash and bought the rights to stream Suits. KABOOM. (The show was previously, and still is, available on the US streaming channel Peacock).

Soon after landing on the platform, the show started topping the weekly Nielsen chart of most streamed content, leaving much more recent or big budget shows in its pinstriped wake.

If you had asked me back then what the consequences of Suits’ resurgence would be for Meghan, I would have called it a gift that would keep on giving (like Andrew’s sisal bag). I would have made the case that the duchess’s face suddenly appearing in millions of lounge rooms and showing her as the savvy, driven Rachel Zane would have seen a corresponding bounce in her popularity and professional prospects.

I would have assumed we were looking at the sort of comeback scenario that would have had Netflix execs rubbing their hands with glee (and finding their duchess some new documentary projects, quick sticks) and royal courtiers stocking up on Dramamine.

Ultimately, I would have made the case that for Meghan, after years of being best known for taking aim at the royal family, this year’s success of Suits would have served as something of a restart button. Here would be a chance for audiences to see the duchess in a whole new light (or reminded of an old light)! To give her a fresh injection of cultural currency and to reorient her celebrity!

Except, nope. Sorry. No dice.

This year’s success of Suits should have served as something of a restart button, but sorry, no dice. Picture: Shane Mahood/USA Network/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

If there was some way to include a graph here, a technical question I’ve never pondered before, what we would see is the Suits line tracking energetically skywards while Meghan’s popularity slipped.

In the second quarter (April, May and June), 40 per cent of Americans polled by YouGov (and reported by Newsweek) liked the Duchess of Sussex and 23 per cent disliked, putting her on an overall position of +17.

However, for the months of July, August and September, the very same time that the legal series was enchanting viewers with its heavy reliance on pencil skirts and office banter, Meghan’s popularity was going the other direction. During this time, Americans who had a positive view of her had fallen to 32 per cent while those with an unfavourable view remained nearly the same at 22 per cent, thus putting her on +10 overall. (Another YouGov/Newsweek twofer.)

Camilla Christmas shopping at the markets in Nairobi, Kenya. Picture: Ben Stansall – Pool/Getty Images

Meghan’s career remains as underwhelming as Camilla’s grandchildren will feel receiving their gifts on Christmas Day. Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Project Healthy Minds

It’s only fair at this juncture to point out that this year’s Suits Netflix rocket ship has not, so far, particularly helped any of the other cast members or seen any of them enjoy any sort of career revivification. The ‘but’ here is that none of them married a prince and had a wedding watched by nearly two billion people.

The incongruity that I find fascinating is that while, over the last few months, much of the world has fallen hook, line and clicker for Adams’ Mike Ross, including his romance with Meghan’s Zane, the Sussexes’ careers remain about as underwhelming as Camilla’s grandchildren will feel on Christmas Day when they discover they have gotten £5 WH Smith vouchers. Again.

Despite the Sussexes landing on US soil in 2020 as the most sizzling of hot property since the advent of the Furby, somehow they have snatched mediocrity out of the jaws of success.

Where will or should the Sussexes go from here? I have no idea. If only there was a crack team of bright minds with law degrees and razor sharp wits to take on this particular case.

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.