Savage Meghan and Harry mocking exposes brutal truth

A “close to the bone” skit about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry exposes a sad truth that the Sussexes have to face.

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In Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s heart-on-his-sleeve, cheque-in-his-pocket memoir Spare, he revealed that after his first date with future wife Meghan Markle, he went around to a friend’s house to watch the animated Inside Out.

“Are you watching cartoons?” Meghan asked, he writes.

“No. I mean, yeah. Kinda,” he replied, doing Noël Coward’s memory proud.

Now, the cartoons have turned on him.

Family Guy has followed on the heels of South Park in energetically and bitingly skewering the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with a new episode taking a swipe at the couple’s lucrative deals and their US careers.

In the scene, ‘Harry’ and ‘Meghan’ are shown lazing on loungers by a pool when a butler approaches carrying a bundle of cash, saying: “Sir, your millions from Netflix for … no-one knows what.”

‘Harry’ says, “Put it with the rest of them” before Meghan says, “Babe, time to do our daily $250,000 sponsored Instagram post for Del Taco.”

A glum looking ‘Harry’ responds, “I shouldn’t have left the made-up nonsense”.

Family Guy made fun of Harry and Meghan’s millions for doing "nothing".

Talk about close to the bone. Because that last line manages to perfectly capture the degree to which the Sussexes have backed themselves spectacularly into a corner – a slightly debasing corner in which they are now liable to be stuck for the foreseeable future.

All of this feels like something of a tolling of the bellwether for their post-truth-telling US careers and their brand.

Soon we will hit the one year mark since Harry & Meghan landed on Netflix, forcing royal writers the world over to have to sit through the six-hours of generally cringey puffery. (The real stars of the show? The amazing caramel and taupe sofas that stole every scene. I hear they are now represented by CAA.)

Hot on the heels of that came the duke’s Spare, a more nuanced but still often squirm-inducing excavation of family traumas after family trauma after that time Princess Margaret once gave him a Biro for Christmas. (Truly. Not sure how the Pulitzer committee overlooked this title.)

Then came the cavalcade of the Duke of Sussex’s TV interviews to sell said book, all of which felt a bit like emotional necromancy, the same dead horse being raised again and again to be flogged for audiences.

Finally, it seemed to be over. (Well, after Harry’s pay-to-watch session with the physician and trauma expert Dr Gabor Maté.)

In February, the Sussexes’ global press secretary Ashley Hansen told Variety that the couple’s “vital ‘look back’ projects,” were over and that they would “now look forward”.

Harry and Meghan in their Netflix docuseries. Picture: Netflix

So it seemed that Harry and Meghan, having said their bit, shared their truth and been paid tens of millions to do so, were ready to move on and to do some top-notch empowering, right after their private ashtanga yoga instructor had left. Namaste.

What followed was a PR farrago of nearly epic proportions including their “near catastrophic” paparazzi chase in New York; them being dropped by Spotify; being called “f***ing grifters” by a Spotify exec; them being asked to vacate Frogmore Cottage; Harry’s Heart of Invictus proving a ratings flop; the couple being papped more regularly than whatever square-jawed quarterback Taylor Swift has been sending heart-shaped candies to and the endless chatter about the state of their marriage.

This year, rather than seeing the duke and duchess really bed down their post-Megxit brand – of them as brave and important voices in the American cultural and political landscape, as dynamic leaders inspiring change and cultivating a global support base – they are instead increasingly looking like Kardashian-adjacent celebrities only this far away from doing a toothpaste commercial.

Harry and Meghan claimed they were in a “near catastrophic” car chase in New York. Picture: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Sussexes’ future that is taking shape right now is a million miles away from the one that I had thought they would build back in early 2020 when hand sanitiser was for hypochondriacal sorts and none of us could locate Montecito on a map. I had envisioned them powering onto UN stages to rapturous applause and them popping up in conflict zones like a Dior-ified 21st century Diana, Princess of Wales, their new mantra, ‘have flak jacket and chief social media officer; will travel’.

Could I have been further from the money?

In 2016, Harry convinced then US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to appear in that fabulous video with the late Queen to promote the Invictus Games. It was a moment that seemed to presage the brightest of bright futures for a man who looks set to have an out-size impact on the world.

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama issue an Invictus Games challenge to the Queen and Prince Harry.

And today? The duke has become a punchline; a go-to bit of comedy material.

(Chris Rock, Chelsea Handler, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah have all lampooned the Sussexes too.)

It’s not that Harry’s drive and hunger to do good has dimmed but that his place in the world has shifted so dramatically. Would the Obamas happily take his call today?

The Duke of Sussex might still be a committed humanitarian but his and Meghan’s years of anti-palace rhetoric and them proving to be mediocre (if not fizzers) as content makers has significantly clouded their reputations.

Harry is no longer primarily known for his charity work but having elevated his family squabbles to Shakespearean levels and earning enormous wodges of cash for doing so, thus driving King Charles and Prince William even further away, thus leaving the Sussexes to fend for themselves, thus requiring they rake in even more millions.

And it’s that last part that brings us back to Family Guy and that “$250,000 sponsored Instagram post for Del Taco”.

How close to reality might this line end up proving? With the Sussexes’ money-making options looking increasingly limited (someone somewhere has scrubbed ‘podcasting’ off a whiteboard), making it more likely they will have to cosy up to big business.

Just this week we saw the real Harry head to Austin for the Formula One as a “VIP guest” of Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS team, according to the couple’s unofficial spokesperson Omid Scobie. Interesting that the duke was photographed by Getty standing around with the team’s part owner Toto Wolff and a bunch of blokes in polo shirts slathered in corporate logos.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex speaks to Mercedes GP Executive Director Toto Wolff in the garage prior to the F1 Grand Prix. Picture: Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the duke is also the Chief Impact Office, a vanity job title if ever I’ve heard one, of a billion-dollar coaching company called BetterUp and back in 2021 he and Meghan made a brief song and dance about, as the New York Times put it, ‘getting into finance’, signing on with Wall Street firm Ethic as “impact partners”. (And never was a peep heard about this again.)

How long before we see the Sussexes go the whole hog and we see a watershed paid Instagram post coming out of Montecito? (It’s widely rumoured that the duchess’ @Meghan account will launch soon.) How long until the duke and duchess end up firmly in the pocket of big shampoo or big bran flakes? How long until we see the world’s first dishwashing liquid commercial starring the fifth in line to the throne? (‘Nothing can clean up the huge family mess I’ve helped make but MY this new Suds Ahoy gets my plates clean as a whistle!’)

Lastly, who else wonders if the real Harry might occasionally look in the mirror and think to himself, “I shouldn’t have left the made-up nonsense”? After all, no one is ever going to ask Princess Anne to pretend to like chicken tinga for the purposes of a paid TikTok.

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