Even for those of us who are not well disposed towards the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, it is hard not to wish — occasionally — that they might catch a break. Yet apart from Harry’s well-judged and unostentatious appearance at the coronation, things have gone from bad to worse over the past six months for the couple. Tetchy High Court appearances; continuing estrangement with the British royal family; and now the apparently total collapse of their wider media ambitions. Few falls from grace have been quite so swift.
Anyone who listened to Meghan’s podcast — which has been canned by Spotify — will hardly be mourning its demise, any more than the news that Netflix is seemingly no longer prepared to finance their navel-gazing to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. But the vitriol of what is being said against the pair — both on and off the record — is striking, even in the notoriously cutthroat world of American media. Jeremy Zimmer, head of the powerful United Talent Agency, said dismissively:
Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent. And, you know, just because you’re famous doesn’t make you great at something.
However, this is mild compared to the anonymous comments of someone who worked on the Netflix projects, who remarked to the Wall Street Journal that the duo were “undermined by their inexperience as producers and trouble finding material consistent with their brand, as well as problems beyond their control, including a retrenchment in the entertainment and podcasting businesses.” According to the paper’s report, executives at Spotify and Netflix were left “underwhelmed” by the royal duo. Sources at Archewell, the couple’s firm, told the WSJ that “most potential initiatives… follow a similar route: big idea, subpar execution.”
After the much-watched but ridiculed Harry and Meghan series, there are few other projects in the works. A documentary, Heart of Invictus, which follows Harry’s patronage of the Invictus Games is due to be broadcast this summer; and, more bizarrely, a scripted series called Bad Manners, which is said to be a modern-day take on the character of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. The only upside for that is that it cannot be as bad as the Steven Knight-written travesty of the novel from earlier this year.
But the question that must be asked is what, exactly, Harry and Meghan want. In their notorious 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, Harry justified lucrative entertainment deals as a means to an end to pay the extortionate costs of their private security, but also described them as not being “part of the plan.” In this regard, at least, he was correct. When the pair were in the first flush of their emancipated new careers, they were besieged by any media company who wished to give their brand kudos by association. Had any of these credit card-wielders stopped to wonder what they were getting for their money, they might well have hesitated, as well as noting which major public figures declined to be involved with them; Taylor Swift turned down the opportunity to appear on the Archetypes podcast, an action which now seems like a typically canny act of Swiftian brand preservation.
Still, publicly at least, the duo are putting on a brave face. A spokesperson for Archewell announced that:
New companies often make changes in their start-up phase, both with people and strategy, and we are no exception. We’re more equipped, focused and energized than ever before.
All this may indeed be true, although I am unsure how having been involved with flop after flop and being denounced by Spotify executive Bill Simmons as “a pair of fucking grifters” can indeed have led to a renewed understanding of what they need to do. But it seems increasingly clear that, whatever the duke and duchess have to sell, the public aren’t buying it. That may yet prove the death knell to their public lives.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK site. Subscribe to the World edition here.
