Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to spend major day 4000km apart
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are set to step out on the same day but on different coasts in the US, which will mark 75 days since they’ve been in public together.
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Rationalists have been tussling over whether or not there are such things as coincidences since Einstein was in short pants.
Today, it’s our turn to consider this puzzler given a very odd situation that has arisen concerning Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
After a very strange few months in a curious year for the couple, their diaries are now about to badly clash for the second time in a matter of weeks, with the stage set for a major PR collision between the duke and duchess.
Maybe the gods of fate and scheduling have decided it would be a right larf to make sport with those two Montecitan mortals? I’ll leave that one to the theologians at the back of the room, but what is fast emerging is the highly unusual advent of Sussex versus Sussex.
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So let’s start with next Wednesday, which will see both the duke and duchess undertake red letter outings as they attempt to reinflate their sagging profiles – but on separate US costs.
Come December 4, Harry will be in New York for the Dealbook Summit among the likes of Jeff Bezos and OpenAI founder Sam Altman, a crowd that really know their way around a sleeveless puffer vest and Larry Ellison’s yacht.
And Meghan? She will be nearly 4000km away in Los Angeles celebrating uber producer (and the family’s official Fairy Godmother) Tyler Perry at the highly prestigious Paley Centre for Media honours.
(It’s also worth noting that both the duke and duchess are on the Paley Centre hosting committee for the Perry event. Unusual then that Harry would accept a speaking engagement in New York on the same night as an event that must have been in his diary for yonks.)
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Who knows, maybe the couple will do some smart thing involving private jets flying against the rotation of the earth and the duke could make it back for the Paley night, but that has not been flagged at all.
What this means is that the way things currently look, the couple has accidentally denied
Brand Sussex the nice, beefy PR that would immediately flow should they have planned to turn up together.
This double-booking would be unusual and all but making it even weirder is that it comes after, last week, major PR pushes were launched for each of them on the same day and at nearly exactly the same time. In the words of C + C Music Factory, things that make you go hmmm ….
On November 22nd, Marie Claire published an exclusive interview with Meghan about her hosting a charity dinner on behalf of the Sussexes’ shared Archewell Foundation for Afghan women in which she talked about the family’s Thanksgiving plans. The internet Archive first recorded the story going live at 3.39pm.
Pity then that Netflix trailer for Harry’s make or break new series, Polo, aka the Real Horse-wives of Chanel County, landed on YouTube only 16 minutes earlier, at 3.39pm, again, according to the internet Archive. (The taster of the five-part show has been met with thumbs downs – 11,000 of them – while former polo-playing compadres of the duke’s have labelled it “so tacky and cringey”.)
Two significant Sussex outings happen nearly simultaneously? Woopsie daisy, that’s a real old fashioned clash-a-roonie.
And shame given that these two big drops coming at nearly the same time would have surely cannibalised, to some extent, the natural degree of attention and coverage the other would have received.
(Let us all note that in each of these instances we are talking about external organisations over which neither the duke or duchess necessarily have any say.)
These scheduling conflicts come at a time when Harry and Meghan seem inclined to increasingly build independent public profiles.
The last few months have seen a notable shift in the topography of the Sussexes’ public life with Wednesday marking 75 days since they were last seen together in public leaving Tyler
Perry’s 55th birthday party. (A video they released in early November to support a global conference addressing violence against children notwithstanding.)
These scheduling head-to-heads come as the duke and duchess attempt to reanimate their somewhat flaccid US fortunes after years of censoriously carping on about Crown Inc.
He’s busy trying to swap his image from renegade, angry son to global humanitarian – par excellence and sans tie, no need to be a square man – while she’s been trying to crack the TV presenting game – and a few eggs – with her upcoming, unnamed Netflix entertaining show along with a push into the entrepreneurial space. It’s all part of what an insider told People in October is their new “twin-track approach.”
Both of next week’s outings, in New York and LA will bolster each royal’s ‘twin track’, putting each Sussex in the same room as la creme de la creme of the business world (Aitch) and Hollywood (the former Suits star). Shame then that their other half will be nowhere to be seen.
You would have to think that in another scenario the couple would be by one another’s side for each event, doing their supportive, hand-squeezing thingame.
In a similar vein, invitations went out last week for a virtual Christmas party to be hosted by
Harry for the child bereavement charity Scotty’s Little Soldiers which make no mention of
Meghan.
New chapters seem to be a theme right now.
The subject of change was one Meghan spoke about when she addressed the Afghan women who had gathered for the charity dinner, saying, “For so many of them it would be very easy to go, ‘My life has ended, because everything I knew that I was familiar with is gone.’”
However, she went on to urge them, “No, your life is just beginning. It’s a very, very different chapter. It’s the beginning of something where you’ve taken steps that you never thought you would.”
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s media titles.
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