Why the global star power of the Sussexes is flickeringly low
For the Sussexes, the nearly four years since leaving the Royal Family have been nothing like the fawning, scrutiny-free escape they may have envisioned.
Just when we all thought Prince Harry and his wife Meghan had embraced the optimistic kumbaya of Montecito California, having exhausted all of their vapid complaints, out comes a new indulgent book full of perceived slights.
The timing could not have been worse.
The global star power of the Sussexes is flickeringly low, what with troubles at Harry’s Invictus Games set up, their $20m podcasts not being renewed, the rumours of their troubled marriage including a recent private jet trip to Canouan in St Vincent and the Grenadines to “revive the spark”, and other celebrities finding it awkward around them at fund raising events.
The revolving staff in their charity operations continues, with the latest being the sudden departure of Invictus Games chief executive Peter Lawless and chief commercial officer Bill Cooper.
And as their coupledom appears to fray, Harry, 39, and 41-year-old Meghan are off doing separate projects.
Earlier this year Meghan signed with a Hollywood agency to boost Archewell’s business as well as offering herself on the roster of their associated speakers bureau.
All the while Harry is looking at a solo project retracing the steps of his mother, Diana, the Princess of Wales, and her work in Africa to keep the $100m Netflix deal afloat. That mega deal, which runs to 2025 with the Sussex’s production company Archewell Productions has just one current product: The Heart of Invictus, which has not been the stellar success expected, with other suggestions which not been confirmed are about an adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations, and the romance novel “Meet Me By The Lake”.
There doesn’t appear to anything scheduled for the audio arm of the company after their Spotify deal collapsed earlier this year.
So while Meg is doe-eyed at Kevin Costner during a recent charity do for Californian first responders, giving him her best audition as he scouts for lead actors in his Bodyguard remake (they both share the same agent); Harry is ringing his father King Charles in the first signs of rapprochement in six months since the Coronation.
The children, Archie, four, and two-year old Lilibet – whom Charles has only met briefly – even recorded a video singing him a happy 75th birthday, but of course the moment was immediately leaked to a British newspaper.
No one has heard from heartbroken Thomas Markle as to whether he has been offered a similar olive branch chorus from his daughter.
For the Sussexes, life some four years since leaving the Royal Family has been nothing like the fawning, scrutiny-less escape they envisioned.
Their unique selling point – whingeing about how horrible it was to be royal – is tiresome to others, but keeps them in the headlines, reminding people how important they really should be.
So two and a half years after the bombshell Oprah Winfrey tell-all, 11 months since the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, and 10 months after Harry’s own ghost written book Spare, there is a book released this month by Megan’s favourite hagiographer, Omid Scobie.
If in doubt about the tone of Mr Scobie’s latest book, – his first was Finding Freedom – let’s just repeat this statement from the author who told People magazine: “These were two men (William and Harry) who once upon a time were firmly aligned in their outlook. One of them had to move on to also protect the crown.”
So, according to Mr Scobie, Harry is the saviour of the monarchy.
Silly us, here we were thinking he was disrespectful to Queen Elizabeth making her final Platinum Jubilee year a difficulty, including questioning her parenting style in bringing up Charles.
Many are not as sympathetic as Mr Scobie, thinking instead that Harry is a drug-using therapy-weaponised loose cannon in accusing Queen Camilla of being a wicked stepmother sacrificing him on her personal pr altar, and blaming William and Kate’s for dressing as a Nazi to a party.
In the first excerpts released from Mr Scobie’s book “Endgame” we are told Harry was sidelined from the Queen’s death, having to pay for a private jet to get to Balmoral and how his dastardly estranged brother wouldn’t respond to text messages. The book accuses Charles of telling Harry not to bring Meghan because of “protocol”, and Kate was back in Windsor dealing with settling the kids into their first day of a new school, but that really Meghan knew she wasn’t wanted.
Meanwhile Harry found out about the Queen’s death when his jet landed, which was 20 minutes after it had been broadcast to the world. After seeing his grandmother’s body he had no chance to meet with his father or brother because they had moved across to Charles residence in nearby Birkhall, and so Harry got the first commercial flight back to London the next day.
For some perspective about this tension lets go back to the summer of 2019 when the Sussexes – still in the royal fold at this point – snubbed the Queen’s invitation to Balmoral with the other grandchildren claiming Archie, then three months old, was too young to travel, only for the three to then head off to Minorca and then to Elton John’s place in the south of France.
Then in 2022 when the Queen, at 96, was most frail, the then Californian-based Sussexes again had no plans to see her, for Harry was too busy writing his desperate memoirs about his frozen todger.
Surely now Harry would be happiest on his ride on mower tending to the vast acreage of their luxury mansion, watching the hummingbirds and scampering around the nearby beaches with his young children than being prodded and steered by his permanently grinning wife around various socialite functions.
But no, this month’s sighting of the couple was at Katy Perry’s final show in residence in Las Vegas, flying there by his preferred transport mode, a private jet, and prompting critics to ponder Harry’s future as patron of the eco-friendly travel site, Travelyst.
Charles very much welcomed the Harry phone call and the thaw in relations could see Harry and family speak further and they may even cross the Atlantic to see the King, but William is wholly circumspect about having anything to do with his brother and his wife.
A Royal insider told the Mirror: “It appears no matter what happens behind closed doors, even in a time of such pain and grief, that where the Royal Family are concerned it will one day emerge.
“Nothing is off limits with William and Kate appearing to be this author’s number one target. It only takes a few months for the knives to come out again and the wounds to be opened up.”
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