Has there ever been a more brutally effective piece of social satire than the South Park episode that mocked Harry and Meghan?
Since it aired in mid-February, the Duchess of Sussex, previously a seemingly ubiquitous and unstoppable cultural phenomenon, has effectively withdrawn from public life. She’s made just one formal appearance — at an awards show, which ended in the farce of disputed paparazzi car chase claims — and has given precisely no interviews.
The couple’s media empire also seems to be imploding. Spotify has axed their $20 million podcast deal, with senior exec Bill Simmons ungallantly labeling the pair “fucking grifters.”
There are reports, too, that Netflix has grown tired of the couple and may not be renewing the $100 million deal they signed in 2020. “The feeling is the lemon has been fully squeezed,” the Sun reports an anonymous insider as saying.
I remember at the time it was aired thinking the South Park episode, with its perfectly executed send up of the Worldwide Privacy Tour the pair seemed to be embarked upon, would take some getting over, particularly in a place like California, where they now live and where image is all.
Toward the end of it, there’s a section in which the character meant to be Prince Harry breaks away from a session he and his wife are having with a brand advisor, to speak from the heart.
“We don’t need to be a brand, do we?” he says passionately. “If it’s truly what we want, then we really can get away from it all. No more magazines and Netflix shows. We really can live a normal life.”
When his wife doesn’t respond or make any facial expression, he continues: “Yes, I’m sure you agree, darling. We can be the people we talked about being. With no more worries about how we look or the image we project to people. What matters is what we have on the inside.”
When still she doesn’t respond, he pulls her head back — as if her jaw were on a hinge — to peer down her neck. “Hello?” he calls out, but there is only an echo. The implication is so cruel and unignorable: that there is nothing inside Meghan, no substance at all, and that instead she exists only at the most superficial level of image, in magazines and on television shows. Ouch.
Previously the couple had appeared able to write off the endless criticism they received for their endeavors — not least for quitting the British royal family — from commentators in the press, particularly in the UK, as the sour grapes of uncool blowhards like Piers Morgan and Jeremy Clarkson. Now suddenly they had been mercilessly savaged by the coolest kids in Tinseltown — widely adored South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Did the phone then stop ringing? You decide.
Back in 2021, shortly after they’d arrived to begin their new lives Stateside, the couple — thanks, one suspects, to the glamour conferred by their royal/victim status — were feted by the highest echelons of American society. Who could forget, for example, the text message Meghan received from megastar Beyonce the day after her Oprah Winfrey interview had aired, received, as chance would have it, while she was being filmed for her Netflix documentary?
“I still can’t believe she knows who I am!” the Duchess of Sussex squeals breathlessly as she sees it, before explaining its contents to her husband:
“She said she wants me to feel safe and protected, she admires and respects my bravery and vulnerability, and she thinks I was selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.”
“Well put,” Harry replies, admiringly.
Now contrast that with the account of comedian Tim Dillon, who in late May of this year described how he had recently been at a Hollywood party at which A-list celebrities were apparently openly laughing as they passed around text messages they’d received from Meghan.
He said:
They’re hucksters. That’s what they are. We can see it. It’s right out there in the open… I was at a celebrity party the other night talking to somebody about this, and they go: “These people, it’s just constant with them. They are just like moths to the flame, trying to hang out with celebrities. They’re like low-grade reality stars that are trying to attach to anything.” I’m literally at the party and they are showing me texts from this woman [Meghan], begging people to hang out. She’s trying to get places. It’s sad, and a lot of it isn’t working. And they’re rolling their eyes to me, and we’re all having a good laugh about this… A lot of people at the party were like: “We text her back, she’s the duchess. But we’ve had enough.”
It’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for Meghan, not least because it feels like the end of the road, reputationally.
First, she enraged large sections of the public in the UK with her antics, but then she left, seemingly for the promise of being better understood — and therefore more free — in America. But history seems to be repeating itself. Now increasingly she is being openly mocked for what is perceived to be the grift — swindle — of monetizing, and using for social advancement, the supposed horrors of a life of unimaginable royal privilege.
Perhaps unfairly, Harry seems to get off more lightly on account of the widely-held belief that he is incredibly thick, and therefore easily led: Macbeth to his Lady Macbeth, in other words.
Maybe there’s a way to rebrand successfully — after all, it’s what Hollywood specializes in. Meghan has recently signed with the WMA talent agency, and if anyone can turn it around for her, surely it is them.
Perhaps that starts with classy brand endorsements — there’s talk of some sort of deal with Dior — but it’s hard to imagine how that might be successful.
Or perhaps it begins with a lengthy period of silence and unheralded dedication to unglamorous worthy causes: ironically enough, pretty much exactly what is expected of a member of the British royal family.
It might be the duller option, but it’s at least harder to satirize.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
