This week, Variety published a really bonkers hit piece, mostly on the Duchess of Sussex. They also tagged Prince Harry, Netflix, Ted Sarandos and As Ever. It seems like the same old agenda is at play: Meghan is terrible, because she mutes Zoom calls and because of the Oprah interview and because she talks over Harry! Within the Variety piece, there were real-time denials for all of the bullsh-t from “unnamed Netflix sources.” All I can say is that I came out of that piece convinced of multiple things: there is a high-level, decade-long, international campaign to take down Meghan in particular; mid-level Netflix employees are selling/giving away negative stories about the Sussexes; and Meghan and Harry have finally, at long last, realized that they need to respond immediately whenever their professional credibility is impugned or smeared. If this Variety piece had been published in 2023, they probably would have just stayed infuriatingly silent. What’s also interesting is that Ted Sarandos and Bela Bajaria (Netflix’s head of programming) went to bat for the Sussexes yet again within the Variety piece. Bajaria did it again on Wednesday:
Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria on Wednesday batted down reporting that the streamer has been distancing itself from Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
“I would say don’t believe whatever you read,” she said about a recent story in Variety reporting on Netflix’s “falling out” with the Montecito-based couple. “Maybe we should all do a little fact-checking. But here’s the thing: We still have a relationship with them, we have movies in development with them, we have an amazing doc with them, they have things in development on the TV and film side.”
Bajaria added, “Deals come and go all the time and… we don’t renew so many deals and those don’t get as much press for obvious reasons, I guess. So there’s no juicy story there.”
Bajaria made the remarks at the Next on Netflix presentation of the streamer’s upcoming slate, which spotlighted projects like Ben Affleck’s upcoming film Animals and the second season of Beef (but nothing from the former royals).
The comments weren’t surprising, given that Netflix vociferously responded to the Variety piece, with a spokesperson telling the publication that it is “absolutely inaccurate” that the streamer had run out of enthusiasm for the couple and their Archewell Productions. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are owned by the same parent company, Penske Media Corporation.
But it’s clear that the streamer has been disentangling themselves from business deals with the couple over the last year or so. On March 6, Netflix announced that it was exiting Markle’s lifestyle brand As Ever as a business partner. The [move] followed Netflix downgrading the couple’s rich overall deal to a first-look deal in August 2025 after the company had produced the documentary Harry & Meghan and unscripted series Polo and With Love, Meghan.
Watch how the trade papers’ stories shift from paragraph to paragraph, not just in this THR piece but in the Variety piece as well. Here’s yet another Netflix executive going on the record again, saying that we’re still in business with the Sussexes and we have stuff in development with them. “But not enough,” cry the trade papers, as they list a fraction of the projects Archewell has already produced through Netflix. Which is it? Netflix hates the Sussexes because they haven’t done anything, or Netflix hates the Sussexes because the Sussexes aren’t offering up 24-7 content after already producing several successful shows? Anyway, I know Bela is tired. Not tired of the Sussexes, tired of the industry media and British media behaving as if Harry and Meghan are the only f–king people under contract with Netflix.
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
