When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fled royal life in 2020 and relocated to the United States, they were “hot property” in Hollywood.
But four years later, some in the industry believe that the Montecito-based royals have “worn out their welcome,” according to a new report in the entertainment news outlet The Wrap. While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are in the midst of another major rebrand, The Wrap reports that they squandered opportunities with Spotify, Netflix and other companies to become powerful media moguls, failing thus far on a promise to produce hit movies, award-winning documentary series and high-impact podcasts,
What went wrong? According to The Wrap, the renegade son of King Charles III and his American former TV actor wife have aggravated “a long list of exhausted agents, producers and other industry veterans” with their “iron-fisted desire for control, combined with a lack of experience.” Their troubles in Hollywood appear to mirror what’s happening in their own production company, Archewell, which has seen a revolving door of executives, The Wrap also said.
“Everything with them was fraught and complicated because they wanted complete control,” one Hollywood creative who has worked with the couple told The Wrap.
(L-R) Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain’s Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex on the long Walk at Windsor Castle on September 10, 2022, before meeting well-wishers. – King Charles III pledged to follow his mother’s example of “lifelong service” in his inaugural address to Britain and the Commonwealth on Friday, after ascending to the throne following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. (Photo by Chris Jackson / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS JACKSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Another insider, who claimed knowledge of Archewell’s management issues, agreed, telling The Wrap that the couple have shown themselves to be so stubborn that they have alienated others. “It appears that they just want what they want and won’t take advice,” the insider said.
The reported challenges of working with Harry and Meghan became apparent last June, when their $20 million deal with Spotify fell apart and Bill Simmons, a Spotify executive and founder of The Ringer podcast networked, labeled them “(expletive) grifters.” For the money and resources Spotify reportedly pumped into their Sussex investment, the couple only delivered 12 episodes of Meghan’s “Archetypes” podcast.
“I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories,” Simmons said on his eponymous podcast. A report from Bloomberg’s Soundbite newsletter revealed that Harry had the curious idea of doing podcast interviews with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their childhood trauma.
Meanwhile, the couple’s $100 million deal with Netflix may be petering out, according to The Wrap, even though Bela Bajaria, the streaming company’s chief content officer, said in early February that they have “a couple of unscripted things they’re working on.”
The Sussexes’ Netflix deal has thus far mainly yielded their late-2022 series, “Harry and Meghan,” which was a “legitimate” hit, The Wrap said. It set a record for the biggest debut for a Netflix documentary with a total 81.6 million hours watched on its first four days of availability, amounting to more than 28 million households watching, The Wrap also said.
But critics say the docuseries generated so much buzz because it focused on the couple revealing royal secrets about their difficult relationship with Harry’s family, from whom they are estranged. At the same time, production on “Harry and Meghan” was “difficult,” The Wrap also said. One source said that dealing with the couple was “a nightmare” because they were fiercely protective about how their story was told. “Harry and Meghan made the collaborative process very hard, to the point that there was no collaboration at all,” the insider said.
Netflix also produced the generally well-regarded “Heart of Invictus,” which focused on Harry’s international games for wounded service men and women. But other projects were shelved or are nowhere close to production, The Wrap said.
“Taking on Harry and Meghan was a great coup for Netflix,” U.K.-based public relations and branding expert Mark Borkowski told The Wrap. “It probably got a lot of eyeballs and subscriptions, but they (Harry and Markle) never delivered.”
As for the couple’s rebrand, it’s not their first effort to try to find new ways to promote themselves as entertainment innovators, humanitarians or global thought leaders. Last month, the couple launched Sussex.com, their third website in four years, with their representatives saying it would bring their various charitable and commercial endeavors “under one umbrella.”
Critics say the Sussex.com site mainly serves to amplify the couple’s connections to their duke and duchess titles, as well to monarchy, even after they spent the past few years alleging that the institution was dysfunctional, out-of-touch, cruel and possibly racist.
Perhaps as part of this rebrand, Harry has shown a desire to repair relations with his family, making a quick trip to London to visit his father last after he was diagnosed with cancer and telling Good Morning America about his “love” for his family. People claiming to Harry’s friends also floated the idea to the Times of London that he could temporarily return to royal duties to help out while his father undergoes treatment for cancer. But sources close to Prince William immediately shot down that idea, saying that the heir to the throne remains “so angered” by Harry’s attacks on the monarchy that he would block any of his brother’s attempts to return to “the Firm.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 10: Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Prince William Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge watch the RAF 100th anniversary flypast from the balcony of Buckingham Palace on July 10, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Paul Grover – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Meghan hopes to make another go at podcasting, announcing that she has signed a deal with Lemonada Media to produce a new show and to rerun her “Archetypes” podcast. However, the company is small, unlike Spotify, and is not expected to provide a big payday, The Wrap said.
Meghan also may be trying to revamp her look and reputation by hiring a stylist, with the hope that such a collaboration could be “the first step to something bigger” — even the launch of her own fashion line, according to a new report in Puck, another industry news site. Her new stylist is Montecito neighbor Jamie Mizrah, who also has worked as a stylist for Adele and, most recently, for Jennifer Lawrence.
Puck writer Lauren Sherman said that Meghan probably has needed a stylist for quite some time. She’s been operating on her own, with the result being “wrinkled clothing and slightly off tailoring,” including her Givenchy wedding gown, Sherman said.
While Meghan’s fans don’t seem to mind — items she wears in public quickly sell out online — the fashion industry has thus far wanted little to do with her, Sherman said. Dior went so far as to release a statement last summer, denying a report that they wanted to sign her to be their next spokesperson. “The fact that (Dior) even bothered to extinguish a swirling rumor suggests that they were desperate to have it quashed,” Sherman said.
But as Sherman, The Wrap and others have pointed out, Harry and Meghan need to make money, not only to pay for the mortgage and upkeep for their $14 million Montecito mansion, but to also fund their security and a reported desire to live like multimillionaires, if not billionaires.
Unfortunately for Harry and Meghan, they might only be able to make money by involving themselves in projects that exploit their ties to the royal family, Borkowski told The Wrap.
“They create a lot of column inches, but do people want content from them unless it is revealing something extraordinary (about themselves or the British royals)?” Borkowski said. “I don’t know how much more they can reveal.