Tom Sykes is the Daily Beast’s “Royalist” columnist. He’s a well-connected British guy who used to be quite critical of Prince William and Kate, but nowadays, Sykes regularly writes pieces straight from Prince William’s ass/team. At least, that’s the only explanation for how increasingly unhinged the pro-Peg and anti-Sussex agenda has gotten over the years. Recently, Sykes has been writing pieces for the Times of London, which is known as pretty pro-Peg as well. The Times’ royal correspondent Roya Nikkhah has gotten many juicy exclusives from Kensington Palace, and she’s even interviewed William a few times. I’m just explaining how the royal-reporting sausage is made – I find it very curious that the Times is platforming another pro-Wales reporter/columnist and tasking Sykes with writing hyper-critical pieces about the Sussexes. That’s just what happened this weekend – Sykes previewed the Polo series and of course the article was just as obsessively nasty as possible. Some highlights:
A make-or-break moment: Polo, which arrives on Netflix next week, comes at a make-or-break moment for the Sussexes’ careers in Tinseltown. Since achieving early success with the Harry & Meghan documentary, released in December 2022, and Harry’s memoir, Spare, things have gone somewhat downhill. With the demanding costs of living in California, including up to an estimated $3 million a year on security alone, Polo is a bet they can ill afford to lose. What’s worked for Harry and Meghan so far is anything that closely involves their own lives. When they step back, their content tends to flail. The Polo trailer doesn’t bode too well on this front. Although Harry and Meghan’s roles as executive producers are flagged in the opening seconds, neither features in person.
Polo is an elitist sport!! But polo is also emphatically exclusive, carbon-heavy and elitist, all labels that the couple have studiously sought to avoid. Amateur players often cycle through three or four “ponies”, as the horses used in the game are known. The barrier to entry is high: prices for ponies start at about $10,000 and reach $200,000 or more for “high-goal ponies”. High-scoring players use a “string” of as many as ten ponies per match. “You can’t play a sport that costs a minimum $2 million a year to participate in and pretend to be the height of empathy and authenticity,” says Paula Froelich, an entertainment correspondent and editor for the US cable channel NewsNation.
Netflix executives are mad! The trailer has added fuel to Hollywood rumours that executives at Netflix are not particularly happy with the documentary’s laser focus on the Argentinian player Ignacio “Nacho” Figueras, who was once almost a big deal, instead of Harry, 40. Nacho’s name will be familiar to anyone who read too many US style and fashion magazines in the early Noughties. Handsome and nattily dressed, Nacho was a fixture on the fashion party circuit and is a regular sparring partner for Harry. He is perfectly nice to interview but, you have to wonder, if he failed to make it big 20 years ago, why make him the focal point of a lavish production today?
Will the Sussexes renew their deal with Netflix? The ultimate stakes here are whether Meghan and Harry will be able to renew the reported $100 million deal they signed with Netflix in 2020, or find another similarly lucrative landing pad elsewhere. Jim Janowitz, a senior partner at the New York law firm Pryor Cashman and a legendary figure in the world of US entertainment law, told me in 2020, when Meghan and Harry signed with Netflix, that it was a great deal for them but that renewal would hinge on them doing “good things”. If they did not deliver, he said, “then the first money will be the last money”. Four years later, what is his take? “I believe things are following the trajectory I thought likely,” he says. “The excitement about them is diminishing. Harry’s book was successful, and a good book, due in large part to the work of his collaborator [the ghostwriter JR Moehringer], but he can’t do that again.”
People roll their eyes at the Sussexes! Froelich says there are even rumours that some power players in Hollywood who were formerly enamoured of the couple will no longer take Meghan’s calls personally, noting bluntly: “This is what happens when you haven’t actually made money — you fall [down] the totem pole of importance. People in LA roll their eyes at them. Harry understands his popularity is tied to things like Invictus Games — a charity he started that [really] helps people,” Froelich said. But, she warns, Invictus alone won’t be enough to change the trajectory of the couple’s narrative in the US. “The only story the world wants to see from them now is if they make nice with their families.”
Anyone who believes that Harry and Meghan’s popularity hinges on whether or not they capitulate to the left-behind Windsors or the psychotic Markles is simply a hater. That’s not genuine analysis. None of this is – how many “make or break” moments have the Sussexes had in the past five years? And they’ve never broken. It’s a constant stream of “well what if his book bombs” and “but what have they done other than that enormously successful docuseries” and “so one successful podcast, what else??” Sykes and Froelich want to shift the goalposts forever without acknowledging that Harry and Meghan managed to thrive when the entire British media and monarchy went out their way to try to destroy them. The fact that the Sunday Times hired Sykes to write this seething piece about an upcoming polo docuseries on Netflix is actually pathetic. Oh, and the Nacho slander is bizarre – Nacho is famous, he has lucrative international sponsorships and he’s the professional polo player most people know.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Netflix.