Netflix embarrassment for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry
A Netflix insider has revealed something that doesn’t reflect well on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Where do they go from here?
COMMENT
You know the saying, “Out of the mouths of babes”? Well, when it comes to Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, it’s more a matter of “Out of the mouths of Netflix sources.”
These unnamed streaming insiders pop up with a degree of regularity in Sussex Land, such as when one revealed the company would be getting their “pound of flesh” out of them or when it was revealed that the duke and duchess had “fallen out” with their first director.
This week, we got another dose of Netflix insider info, with an unnamed source turning up in the Daily Mail to say the powers-that-be inside the company are “relieved” that Harry, the world’s most famously unhappy prince since Hamlet, will be going to King Charles’s
coronation.
Not because they want him to bring them back some duty-free shortbread or get the Archbishop of Canterbury’s autograph but because the Sussexes’ “celebrity status is starting to wilt”. According to the source, the people who write the duo their cheques are aware that the couple’s “currency depends on him still being seen as an active member of the Royal Family”.
This Netflix source’s revelations mark something of a turning point; the first time someone supposedly inside the company has come out and expressed some concern over their huge investment in the royal refuseniks.
Reading between the lines, it sounds an awful lot like people inside streaming HQ are worrying that the duke and duchess might become the Hollywood equivalent of crypto: overhyped, overvalued and the public are all a bit over it.
Harry and Meghan would seem to have gone from the hottest of hot properties to lukewarm leftovers.
This month marks three years since they officially broke free of the Buckingham Palace cage to forge brave new lives in the United States, where they could talk about “their truth” and raise chickens unmolested by Buckingham Palace’s twitching eyebrows.
What promptly followed was big businesses eagerly lining up to throw money at two people who had done the nearly unthinkable in turning their backs on royal life. For the first time in close to a century, since Edward VIII decided that long afternoons with a scowling Wallis Simpson trumped the throne, members of the House of Windsor had wanted out – and the corporate giants wanted in.
So companies like Netflix, Spotify, BetterUp, the Harry Walker Agency, fintech asset manager Ethic and Penguin Random House were soon merrily sending out press releases tooting their own horns for having secured the “talents” of Harry and Meghan.
But a hell of a lot has changed since those halcyon days of fat cheques and gloating CEOs.
A hell of a lot.
So have Harry and Meghan hit something a US dead end?
That Mail story featuring that Netflix deep-throat also quoted a senior executive at Disney as saying: “What Harry and Meghan do next is the $64,000 question everyone in Hollywood is asking.
“You could argue the bloom is starting to fade from the rose. What is their currency?”
And even though “Hollywood is asking”, so far Harry and Meghan don’t seem to have any sort of real answer.
Their most saleable commodity, their willingness to energetically lay bare the inner workings of royal life – like the Edward Snowdens of Kensington Palace (Willy-leaks?) – is one with a limited shelf life. They simply cannot keep regurgitating their tales of woe and expect audiences to remain interested, let alone sympathetic.
Perhaps this fact has twigged inside La Casa del Sussex given that Meghan has all but disappeared from view. In fact, the couple has not appeared in public together in five months, with Harry undertaking his battery of book-promoting interviews in January entirely solo.
So where is Meghan? According to a recent report in the Telegraph she has had the white board out, the drip filter coffee bubbling away, as she “plans” and “regroups”. (Thought showers and ideation sessions anyone?)
Specifically, a number of reports have suggested that the former actress is in the throes of rebooting her blog, The Tig, with a view to getting back into the lifestyle game.
Except that celebrity-run wellness, beauty and style side-hustles are two a penny these days with Kourtney Kardashian’s Poosh, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Kate Hudson’s Fabletics, Reese Witherspoon’s Draper James, and the uber successful makeup lines from Selena Gomez, Rihanna, and Kylie Jenner to name only some.
In a very crowded market of famous women selling us lesser mortals everything from lip gloss to overpriced scented candles and the occasional vibrator, will anyone care about Meghan’s recommendations for the best cashmere throws?
There have also been reports suggesting the Sussexes are looking at moving into scripted content for Netflix such as rom-coms, which sounds a tad ludicrous and outside their wheelhouse. (Though I’d watch When Harry Met His First Gas Bill.)
Well-known British journalist Gordon Rayner recently wrote of the duchess in the Telegraph: “Having been through the trauma of Megxit, the British chapter of her life is behind her, and in front of her all pathways are in the US.”
Except does the US of A feel as enthusiastically about Meghan?
According to polling out earlier this month, 36 per cent of Americans have a favourable view of her with 24 per cent having an unfavourable one. Starting from such a half-hearted base, Meghan doesn’t exactly seem to be in the running to transform herself into the Martha Stewart of the TikTok generation.
Then there is Harry, a man who seems to entirely lack purpose. Of course he still has his signature cause, the Invictus Games, chugging along successfully and his daily bread-and-butter of talking about mental health to anyone who will listen, but what do you think he actually does all day?
He now seems like a lost soul, having lost his family, his homeland, his UK home and the very job he was born to do. Meghan might be able to pivot career-wise but what the hell can or will Aitch do with the decades and decades that lie ahead?
The duke – like his great, great uncle Edward VIII – now faces being stuck at a lifelong loose end.
This is all happening against a backdrop of a number of Sussex allies showing their support for the royal family, with British Vogue’s Edward Enniful penning King Charles’s recent entry in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people list, their Montecito neighbour Katy Perry set to perform at the coronation concert, and gospel singers from the choir at their wedding on board for the actual Westminster Abbey crowning.
(In case you were wondering, Kate, the Princess of Wales, has appeared on the Time list the most out of the royal family.)
Friends of his have told the Times that the duke found being back among his family after the death of his grandmother Queen Elizabeth last year “awkward” and “difficult” and that he felt a “twinge” of “regret over a missed opportunity of what could have been”.
With the coronation less than two weeks away, with more ‘twinges’ incoming for Harry, with Netflix reportedly wringing their hands over their ‘wilting’ celebrity and with a painfully necessary Sussex rebrand in the offing, it is not immediately obvious what the duke has to smile about right now.
Still, the US is known for being the home of second chances, even for second sons onto their second careers. And if nothing else, the world might soon be treated to Meghan’s $199 ‘This Candle Smells Like Kensington Palace.’ I’d be the first to buy it.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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