How's Donald?

According to his page at The Lincoln Project, "Rick Wilson is a renowned political strategist, infamous ad-maker, writer, speaker and a political commentator. In December 2019, Rick co-founded the Lincoln Project, a political action committee whose goal is to hold accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and would place their loyalty to others before their loyalty to the American people and democracy."

In a Substack post dated yesterday, this is what he had to say about the currrent president:

Let me say what the White House press corps cannot bring itself to say, what the Sunday shows have agreed to murmur around rather than at:

Donald John Trump is dying. 

He is dying in the ordinary biological sense, the sense in which you and I and every warm-blooded creature on this rolling flying through space and time are dying. 

He is seventy-nine. He turns eighty next month. He went to Walter Reed today, his thrid visit in thirteen months ("Totally normal! Just a third checkup in a year!"), and the White House would like you to believe this is a wellness influencer's self-care routine rather than what it obviously is: the late-stage management of a long-abused body breaking down in public.

Sure, it's fun to speculate on what we'll all do when The Day arrives, but Trump's death isn't just physical. 

But more importantly, more lastingly, he is dying as a force in our politics, as a presence in our culture, and as the dark gravitational center of the American right. The only people who can't see it are the ones whose paychecks depend on pretending the corpse is still doing pirouettes and burpees. 

The man's own physician diagnosed him last summer with chronic venous insufficiency, the swollen-ankles, blood-pools-in-the-legs condition you generally see in your great-aunt who needs the recliner kicked up before Wheel of Fortune. He has been photographed repeatedly with hand bruises the size and color of rotten plums, slathered in concealer that doesn't quite take. The official explanation is "frequent handshaking and aspirin." 

Of course. Every septuagenarian I know who shakes hands has a hand that looks like he caught it in the door of a Buick. 

Then there's the gait. The slowing shuffle to Marine One. The right-handed lean. The drifting into associative word-salad that, on Biden, would have launched a thousand Fox News chyrons in sixty seconds. 

He has become, there is no way to say this without saying it, MAGA... doddering. Unsteady. Tired. A man whose physical envelope is visibly insufficient for the job he claims to be doing. 

Evil ages you. Sin rests as heavy as lead on the bones. Cruelty and malice corrupt and destroy their bearers. You can see it in him now, the way you could in Mobutu, in Mugabe, in the gangsters of history who used the state as a punishment and piggy bank for too long.  

Compare this with the saturation coverage of Biden's decline to the lullaby around Trump's.

When Biden trailed off, it was a three-day national emergency: cable hits, op-eds, anonymous-source pieces about West Wing concern. The 25th Amendment got more name-checks in 2024 than the Bill of Rights got in a decade.  

Trump goes to Walter Reed for the third time in a year, with bruises hand-painted out of existence and a diagnosed circulatory disorder, and the coverage is what? A polite CBS write-around. A Washington Post nothingburger story detailing the drive up to Bethesda. A few brave souls noting that "independent physicians say the White House hasn't answered keey questions." No Jake Tapper special. No glossy Original Sin book proposal. No "ten Republican senators speaking on background." Just the press doing what the press always does in the presence of an authoritarian project: flinching. 

This is the most dishonest White House about the President's physical condition since Edith Wilson was forging her stricken husband's signature behind the curtains in 1919. The parallel is not casual. The memos, the "excellent health," the "sharpest president in American history," the careful staging... the cover-up of Trump's diminished physical and mental capacity isn't coming.  

The cover-up is already running. Karoline Leavitt, Stephen Chung, and the rest of the White House noise machine have lied to the media for years about Trump's condition, and never once been held to account. 

Here is where the second death becomes impossible to ignore. 

Trump is winning nothing. Trump is holding nothing. He is narrowcasting to a withering, contracting MAGA base dying off at a rate that will soon reshape the political landscape again... and mistaking the cheers in ever-dwindling crowds, in ever-smaller halls for sound of a country still living in 2016.

Pew, last month: 34 percent. The lowest of his second term. Fox News... Fox News... has him down 24 points with Republicans since March 2025. Rural white voters, the base of the base of the base, have gone from +27 net approval to -6 in twelve months. Among his own 2024 voters, approval has slid from 95 percent to 78. 

The MAGA coalition is not growing. It is not holding. It is shedding, paycheck by smaller paycheck, grocery receipt by grocery receipt, slowly creeping away from cultlike adoration with every trip to the gas pump.  

The cable hosts and the Truth Social cheerleaders do not understand this, because they have marinated for a decade in a closed informational system: winning a MAGA primary is not winning the country. The cheers inside the tent get louder as the tent gets smaller. That's not strength. That's the acoustic property of a shrinking room.  

Which brings us to the ballroom, the arch, the White House glitter bukkake redecoration, the urgent desire to slap his name on every flat surface. Add those out-of-touch moments to the pardons, the no-bid contracts, the crypto scams, the $1.7 billion slush fund, and the snake-pit of grift the second term has become. 

The conventional read is that this is power... the dictator phase, the strongman unleashed. 

I want to suggest the opposite. Strongmen at the at the height of their game don't need the ballroom. They don't need to rename the Kennedy Center after themselves. They don't need the gold leaf, the fake portraits, the rebranded monuments and memorials.  

That's the behavior of a man who knows the clock is running and is grabbing what he can while the grabbing is good. That's Marcos in Manila in 1985. That's Ceausescu in 1988, before he and the missus were lined up against a wall. 

Genuine power doesn't need to be advertised this loudly. The frantic escalating, almost pornographic self-celebration is the tell. It's a confession in plain sight. The man building his mausoleum while he's still alive is the man who knows he's running out of road. 

So here we are. A 79-year-old man, swollen of extremity and bruised of hand, looking like the victim of a zombie bite by denying it until he turns, shuffling between Walter Reed and a half-built ballroom nobody asked for, with an approval rating in free fall, a base finally asking quiet questions about grocery prices, a press corps too cowed to say out loud what they all know, and a clock, biological, cultural, and political, that he cannot bully into stopping. 

He is not coming back from this. There is no third act. There is only the long, undignified, makeup-smeared decline of a man and a movement whose moment has passed, narrating itself ever more loudly into an ever emptier hall, a frowzy barfly of a man, replaying past glories that never happened and hoping you won't notice the bad wig. 

Trump is dying. 

Say it out loud. It will feel strange the first time. Less strange the second. By the tenth, you'll wonder why it took the rest of the press corps so long to catch up. 

And yes, when The Day comes, I promise you that my better angels will be taking PTO. 

Update: Tina  Brown weighs in. In a post on her own Substack, dated May 27, titled "Trump's Sweet Vengeance," and subtitled "Democrats are getting it wrong again," Tina presents an opposite view of the world:  

Democrats are getting it wrong again. After Trump’s 11th-hour endorsement of Texas attorney general and all-in Trump sycophant Ken Paxton, who was impeached for multiple charges of abuse of office, investigated on felony security charges, and dogged by adulterous sexual imbroglios, the slippery MAGA sleazebag still went on to pulverize Senate old-timer John Cornyn in the Republican primary on Tuesday. And yet, liberal cableheads deconstructing the results keep recycling the point that, somehow this was good news. Millions of dollars, they chortled, will now have to be diverted from other imperiled Republicans to defend a Senate seat that, for four terms, had been occupied by the beloved party elder Cornyn and now will be in play against the Democrats’ latest Texan mirage and Colbert candidate James Talarico. When has Trump ever found it difficult to raise millions of dollars, especially against a Senate candidate who tweeted in 2021 that his office was “the first in the history of the (Texas) Capitol to put pronouns on their business cards?” Paxton was already on a roll in his victory speech, immediately branding his Presbyterian seminarian opponent “James Talafreako,” “Six-Gender Jimmy,” and “Tofu Talarico” (“Soy boy!” yelled out an inventive Paxton supporter in the crowd).

Of course, as all the pundits tell us, Trump’s base loves him but, in using that term, I suspect they still subliminally conjure dated images of a Viking-horned, bare-chested QAnon shaman storming the Capitol. Today, that same lawless horde is now not only pardoned, but about to have access to Trump’s new $1,776 billion “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund. The fact that the comatose turtle, former Senate leader Mitch McConnell, has finally emerged from political hiding to denounce the outrage of a cop-bashing mob getting a financial pay-out is no threat to Trump. McConnell can exhume some principles because he isn’t running again. Trump’s resident House weenie Speaker Mike Johnson, with his own re-election looming, was so fearful of losing the slush fund vote that he sent lawmakers home early for a week’s recess to avoid it.

Don’t expect House members to return emboldened when Trump has just gone four for four in the primaries, whacking, not just Cornyn, but his Epstein Files Transparency Act foe Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate Brad Raffensperger, who committed the ultimate crime of failing to “find” 11,780 more Trump votes in Georgia in the 2020 election. Sorry, not sorry about Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana also hitting the bricks. He’s the physician who oversaw a nationally-recognized vaccine campaign in his home state, but later revealed his inner worm by casting the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary. Trump punished him anyway for having voted in 2021 for his second impeachment. So long, mofo.

Every liberal commentator now bangs on about an assured mid-term shellacking for the POTUS party over rising gas prices, thanks to the Trump-created catastrophe of the Strait of Hormuz closure and the universally unpopular Iran war. I suspect they and the polls are wrong again. It’s not just the creeping success of Republican redistricting creating more seats than Democratic efforts to do the same. Trump has found a diabolical way to separate his personal charisma from the destruction he perpetrates and the corruption he normalizes. He’s the angel of sabotage, freed from the shackles of his own malign deeds by the Supreme Court, the GOP’s moral turpitude, and the universal glint of greed from the Wall Street honchos, Silicon Valley bros, and Palm Beach plutocrats who see that the presidency is open for business. As last week’s Brennan Center newsletter put it, “There is a zone of lawlessness around the Oval Office.” In Trump’s first term, he was restrained by the need for a second, and by advisers schooled in the now-quaint ethos of governing by accepted norms. But then, he learned something transformative. Speaking to the NYT in January about prohibiting his family from profiteering overseas from proximity to official business in his first term, Trump said that, “he got no credit for it.” He then added a killer kicker that made less news at the time but has stayed with me as a rare moment of truth: “I found out that nobody cared.”

If there is any message that crystalizes the 250th anniversary of the U.S., it is not that America has changed but that Trump has changed America. There will be no snapback when he’s gone. Even as his approval ratings tank and the country is hurting, it feels as if his base has become wider and deeper and represents a new national state of mind. Tuned out on our phones, mesmerized by money porn, high on the idolatry of the big flashy win, we are getting used to the erosion of the rule of law, the threats to free speech, the banishment of government watchdogs, and the chasm of inequality. After ten years of Trump bludgeoning the first principles of the American experiment (ten because I don’t count the disappearing ink of Biden’s lame tenure when every headline was a new Trump indictment, scandal, or toxic blast from exile in Mar-a-Lago), Trump has refashioned the country in his image.

In the comments below the post, Tina says several times that she hopes she's wrong. I do too. 

"An Impeccable Force For Good"

"There's no denying that everyone concerned has been missing the princess's star quality. She is a huge draw wherever she goes."

"She is glamorous, she is beautiful. She is warm and approachable."

"She is an impeccble force for good, a fantastic standard-bearer--not just for the royal family but for the country." 

Wow. That's just a few of the comments in the hagiographic cover story about Princess Kate in People magazine this week. (Is someone in Montecito hurling dishes at the wall? Possibly.)  

Just three weeks after the "on the one hand, on the other hand" cover story about Harry and Meghan's current place in the world, Kate is in the spotlight this week, although "adoring glow" might be more accurate. "Teachers wiped away tears after she left," we're told, referring to Kate's recent visit to a school in Italy. No "other hand" here, this is a love letter.

Read the article here. 

Where Is Everyone?

I haven't been paying much attention to Meghan's trip to Switzerland, but I'm struck by this picture. To be blunt, the optics aren't great. A quick Google search tells me that, straight line, it's almost 6,000 miles from Los Angeles to Geneva. That's a long, long way to go to speak to fewer than 20 people. It might be the camera angle, there could be 100's of people on Meghan's left side, or behind her, but still. This picture is brutal.  

Food

“Carb addict” is a catchy phrase, but it collapses a complicated neurohormonal system into a moral failing wrapped in snack food language.

People like me, on GLP-1s aren’t discovering some secret weakness. We’re discovering that appetite, reward, satiety, and impulse are… https://t.co/v7XmZ5Oje6

— Dr Terry Simpson (@drterrysimpson) May 10, 2026

This is Dr. Simpson's post in its entirety:

Carb addict” is a catchy phrase, but it collapses a complicated neurohormonal system into a moral failing wrapped in snack food language.

People like me, on GLP-1s aren’t discovering some secret weakness. We’re discovering that appetite, reward, satiety, and impulse are biologic systems — and when those systems are altered, the noise changes. That’s the point. Nobody says a patient with hypertension is a “salt addict” because a medication lowered their blood pressure. Yet somehow obesity still invites this strange Victorian need to turn physiology into character judgment. Also, if carbohydrates were uniquely addictive in the simplistic way internet nutrition tribes claim, then cultures built around rice, beans, lentils, fruit, and bread would have collapsed centuries ago into universal metabolic ruin. They did not. The problem is not “carbs.” The problem is hyperpalatable, engineered, calorie-dense food environments colliding with human biology that evolved for scarcity, not DoorDash at midnight. GLP-1s did not create discipline in people. They revealed what appetite feels like when the volume knob is no longer stuck on maximum.

A Constant Hustle...

"Without the palace platform, it takes a constant hustle to keep yourself in the spotlight." Thus sayeth Tina Brown, referring to Harry and Meghan in her 2022 book The Palace Papers, and note that I'm paraphrasing from memory. I thought of Tina's pithy words last Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. central time, when this appeared front and center at people.com:

People magazine cover dated dated May 11, 2026, posted April 29

I also thought of reporter Paula Froelich's advice to Harry and Meghan, published on New Year's Eve Day, 2025: 

Next year, when your father and brother make state visits to the US, LIE LOW. As in, no social media posts, no interviews and above all, no competing engagements. I know this will be hard for you, but trust me. You and your wife look petty and spiteful when you try to hijack the attention. (Who can forget your flashy Remembrance Day visit to Canada in November at the same time your brother was trying to promote his Earthshot Prize in Brazil?) Getting in the way of actual royals trying to maintain the family business, which includes diplomatic duties, makes you look vengeful and jealous. (Read Paula's entire post here.)

I know, from reading many books about the royal family, that Paula's advice is correct. When senior royals, i.e., the King and Queen or the Prince and Princess of Wales, are on high-profile foreign tours or other important engagements, the rest of the family are absolutely expected to lie low. Stay out of the spotlight, stay out of trouble, don't do anything to outshine or upstage the more important members of the family. 

Last week, Charles and Camilla were on an official state visit to the United States, trying to charm (and not get drooled on by) Donald Trump. Wednesday, April 29th, also just happened to be William and Kate's 15th wedding anniversary. Either of those events could have been the focus of a People cover story. How did we end up with Harry and Meghan front and center, smiling up a storm with a headline that says they're Making Their Own Rules? 

Now, obviously, Harry and Meghan have no control over what People magazine chooses to put on the cover each week. On the other hand there's no way I believe the timing of this story is a coincidence. This is almost certainly the result of an intensely targeted, and very effective, pitch by Harry and Meghan's experienced (and expensive) publicists, Sunshine Sachs. In a story posted January, 18, 2026, and titled "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Reteam with a Familiar Hollywood PR firm amid Staffing Shakeup," people.com reported this:

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are returning to a familair firm as they restructure their professional team at the start of othe new year. 

PEOPLE confirms that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are once again working with Sunshine Sachs Morgan and Lylis (SSML), with the bicoastal public relations firm supporting Meghan's lifestyle brand, As ever, as well as the couple's U.S.-based efforts. The firm is a major Hollywood player, representing A-list talent and leading entertainment projects. 

The firm is working alongside the Sussexes' internal team, which includes LIam Maguire, their U.K. and Europe director of communications, w ho remains in  his role and has primarily overseen Prince Harry's communications.  (Read the entire article here.) 

This is what Sunshine Sachs (SS) says they can do for you: "In today's quickly changing media and digital landscape, there is no one way to tell your story. It doesn't have to be a million-dollar idea (but we have those too!) - it can be a well-timed social post or a small, simple connection. We use data and trend forecasting to help our clients connect with their audiences through bold and creative storytelling." Read more about Sunshine Sachs here.

I'd say SS earned their money this week. Did Harry and Meghan get their money's worth? Maybe. Were they pleased, even thrilled, by the article, and the timing? Probably, but overall I can't imagine it changed anything for them, and it may have royally pissed off the people around Charles, Camilla, William and Catherine, if not the actual royals themselves. The state visit was considered to be a royal triumph and by Wednesday evening, the Harry and Meghan story was completely gone from the people.com homepage, which tells us that other stories were getting more clicks. Would the story make readers rush to the As ever website to buy overpriced candles and jam? Would an event planner somewhere decide that they should pay low six figures to have Harry come and give a speech? Is Prince William saying to himself, wow, I forgot how wonderful my brother and sister-in-law are, let's get them back right away?  No, probably not, and don't make me laugh. 

Anyway, this is the article, in its entirety:

In January 2020, at what became known as the Sandringham Summit, Queen Elizabeth drew a firm line. After intense talks about what the future would look like for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the answer was clear: There would be no "half in, half out" role. They could not remain working members of the royal family while pursuing independent, income-generating ventures. The couple would step back--fully.  

When the Queen publicly confirmed the decision, making clear it was "not possible" for them to continue with the responsibilities that come with a life of public service outside the institution, Harry, 41, and Meghan, 44, pushed back with a statement of their own: "We can all live a life of service. Service is universal."

Six years on, that belief still shapes their path. During an unannounced visit to Ukraine on April 24, Harry was asked whether he recognized the label "not a working royal." "No," he said. "I will always be part of the royal family... I am here working, doing the things I was born to do." In Australia, where Harry's father, King Charles, is head of state, the Sussexes spent four day in April moving through engagements that echoed an offical royal tour, from hospital visits to moments of remembrance, while also embracing the independent, income-generating model that now underpins their work.

For some inside palace circles, that overlap remains deeply contentious. "They are pushing the envelope and making it much more difficult for reconciliation to happen," says Sally Bedell Smith, author of the Royals Extra Substack.

In Ukraine, Harry stepped into territory traditionally avoided by the royals. Speaking at the Kyiv Security Forum, he called for "American leadership" in the ongoing war--a remark that carried clear political weight. The moment came just days before King Charles's state visit to the U.S., a tightly choreographed trip that, sources say, left no room for any private meeting between father and son. While Harry emphsized that he was speaking "not as a politician" but as a soldier and humanitarian, the remarks were strking.   

Together, the two trips illustrate the space the Sussexes now occupy--outside the boundaries the institution has long sought to maintain. "The monarchy is meant to be above politics and commercial imperatives," says Valentine Low, author of Courtiers. "This is exactly what the late Queen wanted to avoid." Insists a source close to Harry: "This idea that he's going against the wishes of the Queen by being half in, half out is nonsense. None of this is being done in the name of the institution."

On the ground in Australia, the response told a different story. "There were joyful, smiling people everywhere they went," says Kylie Walters, a royal correspondent for WHO magazine there. "People wanted to see them." The visit began April 14 with a stop at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, where patients and staff lined the halls to greet them--almost eight years after their last visit to the country, in 2018, when they were newly married and firmly within the royal fold.

The impact of the latest trip was immediate. "I gave Harry flowers, and he said 'Thank you' and told me to 'keep on being brave,'" says Novalie Morris, 12, a patient who met the couple. "It cheered me up a lot--I'll keep thinking about that."

At a war memorial in Canberra, Harry laid a wreath, his military medals pinned to a suit--including those from his late grandmother--a quiet reminder that since stepping back from being a working royal, he is no longer permitted to wear his military uniform. When he was barred from doing so at Queen Elizabeth's funeral in 2022, his spokesperson said that "his decade of military service is not determined by the uniform he wears." 

Meghan, meanwhile, spent time at a women's shelter, serving food and speaking with families. and on Sydney Harbour they joined Invictus Australia team members and veterans for a sailing event. "Harry was completely relaxed--Invictus is where he belongs," Walters says of the international adaptive sports tournament for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans that Harry founded in 2014. "People gravitate toward him, and he knows how to make them feel special. The royal family really misses out on that. It's a sad reminder of the global platform he could have had. It's the closest he's going to get to continuing to serve on his own terms."

But alongside those traditional moments of service was something far less familiar. Harry delivered a ticketed keynote speech at the Melbourne InterEdge Summit, where seats initially ran into the thousands, while Meghan made a surprise appearance as a guest judge on MasterChef Australia and a paid appearance at a women's retreat, where $3,199 VIP packages included a group photo with her. The outing came a year after the launch of her lifestye brand As ever, with guests receiving products in swag bags. "They have a big security bill and a lifestyle to maintain, so it's not surprising they're taking on money-making ventures," says Walters. 

Meghan's fashion choices were also linked to an AI-powered shopping platform, OneOff, allowing followers to purchase the looks she wore during the trip--many by Australian designers. Through the partnership she earns a commission. Her page drew more than a million views withing the first three days, with several items selling out. 

"The royals are influencers, but the mystique is that they are not promoting themselves as such," says Bethan Holt, fashion director at The Telegraph. "Meghan is lifting the veil." Adds Bedell Smith, "It was shocking to see her go to the hospital and then sell the clothing she was wearing. I've never seen anybody in the royal family do that. I can't imagine it went down well at the palace." 

For critics it raises a broader question about where public service ends and personal branding begins, yet those close to the couple push back on that characterization. "They're not reliant on Harry's father or taxpayer-funded money," says an insider. "They pay their own bills and make their own money while continuing to support a lot of causes that might otherwise go unseen. It enables them to do what they love doing." 

Adds another source: "They're trying to live their life, raise their children [Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4], do meaningful work and earn a living." 

Palace insiders say it is more likely to deepen tensions with the royal family. "It won't help Harry's case or promote good relations," says Queen Elizabeth's former press secretary Ailsa Anderson. 

For Prince William, the issue is especially firm: "What Harry and Meghan are doing is a nonnegotiable for William," Anderson says of the future King's view within the royal family. "He wouldn't countenance any acceptance of it." 

After years of distance--strained by Harry's legal battle over security and the fallout from his memoir Spare--there has been some renewed contact between him and his father, 77, in recent months, though they haven't seen each other since September. But the divide remains most acute with his brother William, 43, with some questioning whether the rift can ever heal. "William is over all the drama," says Robert Jobson, author of The Windsor Legacy. "He doesn't need it, and he doesn't want it. He's too busy and focused on his own family." For now, adds Bedell Smith, "they're at a standoff." 

Those close to the Sussexes, however, describe a more measured reality behind the scenes. "Meghan lets him lead on all royal matters and dictate what needs to happen," a friend says. "But it would never put them at odds--they're on the same team." 

Says another source: "It remains very emotional. Harry and Meghan are both realistic. They're not approaching it with the expectation of a quick resolution. It's about taking small, manageable steps and seeing where things land. This remains very important to Harry, with Meghan supportive. 

While Harry has long spoken of hoping for reconciliation, he's still reckoning with his upbringing. At the InterEdge Summit in Melbourne he reflected on the loss of his mother, Princess Diana, and the years he spent resisting the role he was born into. "I was like  'I don't want this job. I don't want this role--wherever this is headed, I don't like it,'" he said. "It killed my mom, and I was very much against it." Over time, though, "I realized... how would somebody else make the most of this platform?" he said. "And what would my mom want me to do?"

At home in Montecito, Calif., work is scheduled around school hours; weekends are for family time. "Archie and Lilibet are their life," says a staffer who has worked for the couple since their early days in California. "There's a real warmth and a sense of normalcy."

Both have built tight-knit circles. Harry maintains a close group of friends, many of them fellow dads. "He really thrives on those friendships and values that sense of connection," the close source says. Meanwhile, Meghan keeps a small, loyal group of longtime friends, often meeting for workouts or quiet nights out together. "They're very careful about who they let into their lives," a friend says. 

That loyalty runs deep. "No matter what she has going on, she always makes time for her friends," says Meghan's friend Kelly McKee Zajfen, who recently welcomed son Jack after the loss of her son Georgie, 9, in 2022. "She really shows up, and not just when it's easy." 

It's a side of Meghan that is often overlooked. At an April 16 discussion with Batyr, an Australian youth mental health charity, Meghan spoke candidly about online abuse. "Every day for 10 years I have been bullied and attacked," she said. "I was the most trolled person in the entire world... and I'm still here."

Her resiliance is hard-won, sources say. "They both try to focus on staying as positive as possible," says a source. "But people forget they're human beings, especially Meghan. There's only so much a person can handle." Still, that same source says their focus remains steady: "They wake up every day focused on being the best parents they can be. No matter what comes at them, they pick themselves up and keep moving forward." 

Nearly eight years after their wedding, Harry and Meghan's bond remains central. "They are the biggest champions of each other," says the staffer. "The more adversity they face, the more they come together."

That partnership propels their next chapter, even as scrutiny persists. "This is the shape of things to come," says Anderson. "There is nothing to stop them from doing this."

Adds Low: "The palace might not like it, but they can do it. The question is whether it's sustainable." 

For their future to hold, their ventures will need to succeed. While their widely reported $100 million Netflix deal wasn't renewed, the relationship has evolved into a first-look arrangement, with several projects still in development, including a scripted series set in the world of polo. A documentary they backed, Cookie Queens, has also gained traction on the festival circuit and is now set for a theatrical release. 

Meghan, meanwhile, is focused on building As ever into a lasting business. The brand continues to roll out new products, including a Mother's Day collection featuring candles inspired by the couple's children. "It is still in test-and-learn mode," says the close source. "She wakes up thinking about new ideas and works on it all the time." 

While reports of high staff turnover have raised questions about the couple's working environment, others who remain describe a different experience. "There are quite a few of us who've been here a long time," says one six-year staffer. "Much of her company is made up of young women, and she really champions them. She's always saying to me, 'Just speak up'--that's one of her biggest things." 

Those close to the couple believe their trip to Australia set a new blueprint. The late Queen herself once recognized the positive effect Harry and Meghan could have across the Commonwealth--and supporters say their influence has not disappeared. "They're very aware of the impact their presence can have," says the longtime staffer. Walters adds, "A lot is forgiven when you're on the ground and you show up and do good work. That magic and allure of a royal doesn't necessarily come down to a title." Click here to see the story as posted.  

Note: the other cover story dated May 11 featured Goldie Hawn; Rita Wilson and Marilyn Monroe are the cover stories dated May 18. 

More about Harry and Meghan in Australia

According to Wikipedia: "Tessa Dunlop is a Scottish historian and broadcaster. She has written several history books based on oral histosry, and presented history programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, Discovery Channel, UKTV History and the History Channel."  

This is her take on Harry and Meghan's place in the world, published in The Independant on Friday, before Meghan's appearance at the Her Best Life retreat in Sydney.  

Meghan says she was ‘most trolled person’ in the world

It was all going so well. A curated couple in matching beige wowing a carefully selected crowd in Australia with a heady mix of celebrity and charity. “Just call me Meg,” insisted the duchess on the first day. Apparently, the penny had dropped, Meghan finally understood that on a not “royal” tour she can’t stand on ceremony. Sick children smiled, and dear Haz gladhanded at a veteran’s museum with abundant charisma. Hurrah, the House of Montecito are here! Day one of their Australian tour was a surprising slam-dunk for brand Sussex.

So where did it all go wrong?

Yesterday the headlines curdled, the temperature rose, and by all accounts, it is not just Brits who are furious. How dare the Sussexes inflict a “faux royal tour” on Australians already unable to decide which side of the monarchy line they sit. For Harry and Meghan to re-enter such a fragile ecosystem was always going to be risky. Having enjoyed a full-fat royal visit to Australia in 2018 to universal acclaim, the stakes were high.

If these days the couple are no longer part of the monarchy, then what are they exactly? Cosplaying royals? Profiteering celebrities? Do they bat for Team America? Or just Team Sussex? How to square the circle of a touring prince who is not a working prince but who is still a prince? It is a challenging question, and one Harry proved unable to answer.

Cue the Duke at a lectern intoning to a room of Australian business leaders: “After my mum died just before my 13th birthday – I was like ‘I don’t want this job. I don’t want this role – wherever this is headed, I don’t like it.” Here, you are forgiven for asking, “if you didn’t like the job Harry, why have you replicated that same job on a repeat tour in a constitutional monarchy?”

Miles from home, in a challenging landscape, blinded by his own privilege, and never a great thinker, the giant contradiction at the heart of the Duke’s angry thesis roared to the surface once more, breaking the hearts of monarchists and serving red meat to republicans. If only Harry and Meghan could acknowledge that their lives are gilded in exorbitant privilege thanks to their intersection with monarchy, a hangover which they wear daily: their titles, their inherited jewels, their well-documented royal back story. Instead, they lament their former difficulties while replicating much of their former lives. Argh! Cue more of the very same trolls that Meghan claims she ran away from when she left the House of Windsor. Make it make sense!

For those of us who long to move the script forward, this is more than cognitive dissonance; it is a reminder of why the Sussexes have ultimately set back the cause of much-needed reform in the institution of monarchy. Their truth-to-power departure in 2020 was a potential moment of reckoning for the House of Windsor. A chance to open up the doors and let in the light, to root out cronyism, encourage financial transparency and lean into a new democratic age.

Harry is an uncomfortable reminder of why our working royals are tightly scripted, who say it best when they say virtually nothing at all

But six years on, the self-involved, repetitive woes of Harry have failed to move the dial towards progress. There is no fresh new narrative, or alternative model. Harry continues to operate in the royal mould; he is still platformed thanks to his extraordinary start in life, as he sashays around the world, resting on his blue-blooded laurels. The only difference is that nowadays the Duke is paid with private money, not through the public purse. He has to sing for his supper, with tickets to hear Harry talk about his dislike of royal life selling for a cool AU$997.

“So what?” you may well think. Better to be remunerated openly and honestly for a speaking gig than to acquire money through extraneous, illicit means. The problem is that Harry, operating off piste with nothing new to say bar a few more parenting observations, tells us that when let out of their royal cage, princes are just a self-involved version of ordinary.

His series of banal utterances merely serves to further diminish the once transcendent glamour of monarchy. In short, Harry is an uncomfortable reminder of why our working royals are tightly scripted, who say it best when they say virtually nothing at all. The King’s much-anticipated speech to Congress in a couple of weeks is a case in point – brains in the Foreign Office are no doubt already fine-tuning their platitudes. In contrast, the Duke, with an unscripted surround-sound of his own making, doesn’t stand a chance.

The upshot isn’t only a downgrade for the Sussexes, it tarnishes the entire royal edifice. Once upon a time in 2018, the couple were a smash hit in Australia – a unifying national glue that spread the love from one continent to another – we basked in the reflective glory of our monarchy and Australia’s monarchy too! How times have changed.

These days, Harry and Meghan are working for themselves, Britain is out of the picture, and Australia in a sulk. The cost of security has proved divisive (a petition against that burden numbers tens of thousands of signatures). The country struggles to acknowledge the fantastic free advert the pair have bestowed upon their great nation – sunlit Australia is all over the international news. No matter, nowadays, split in two, the royal family no longer encourages international unity, but rather feeds echo chambers and angry silos looking for something to rage against.

If Harry and Meghan stand for a nepo-baby new age opulence, our old school working royals have been pushed further into a once green and pleasant land now occupied by flag-waving, rigid little Englanders who won’t tolerate change or criticism of any kind. Next stop America for a state visit with a warlord leader of the once free world – the optics that come with a president who professes to love the King, but loathes the Pope will prove uncomfortable to say the least.

Gone are the days when the monarchy offered an alternative to a brace of strongmen operating with impunity. Instead, the option is a them-or-us version of royalty. And the posturing of the Sussexes this week has further diminished a unique national feature that once helped us feel good about ourselves. The problem is personified by Meghan, who looked every bit the Duchess at a lunch for the homeless in Melbourne, her slender wrist adorned with Diana’s Cartier watch, and her neat frame showcasing a dress by Karen Gee, an Australian designer. But without the bulwark of the British state and the protection of the palace walls to conveniently buffet away awkward questions, who and what is it all for? An Instagram moment? A paycheque? Or a calling?

And if we ask those questions of Meghan and Harry, then it is only fair we ask them of William and Kate, of the King and Queen. By pulling at the royal tapestry one stitch at a time, the danger is the whole facade starts to fray. Arguably, it already has. These days, Meghan and Harry are just a sideshow, a harbinger of what could come as less deferential generations push forward and demand value for money and transparency from an institution rocked by a curious cocktail of Epstein-induced scandals and family feuds.

Perhaps the monarchists among us are hoping for too much when we pray for a reconciliation that will take the sting out of the Sussexes’ showboating and help redeem the embattled working royals. While it may be the stuff of nightmares for Kate and William, if silver linings are what you are looking for, the optimists believe the couple’s joint tour of Australia is a dummy run for a return to Britain this summer. If that’s the case, as a conciliatory gesture, perhaps the King could lend Harry his speech writer?

"My Trauma, My Truth, My Merch"

It's Sunday morning and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been back in the U.S. for about 24 hours. Their quasi-royal tour of Australia is still big news, however, and most of what I've seen is not positive for Harry and Meghan. The Sunday Times of London has some thoughts, in an article titled "Harry and Meghan's Australia tour--my trauma, my truth, my merch," and subtitled "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's quasi-royal trip is about profit, not philanthropy," ouch.  This is the article in its entirety:

The late Queen Elizbeth's judgment looks sounder by the day. Early in 2020, her grandson proposed that he and his new wife switch to a "half in, half out" role. They would remain part-time working royals, Harry suggested, while also being free to pursue money-making opportunities. This "hokey-cokey" arrangement, also known as having your cake and eating it, was emphatically, correctly and inevitably (given her finely tuned appreciation of how the institution she headed should behave) rejected by the Queen. 

Supremely miffed, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex promptly decamped to California. Yet, as has become apparent, most recently on their quasi-royal progress around Australia, the couple have not abandoned their favoured portfolio option. No royal approval? No matter! Harry and Meghan seem happy to proceed with royal disapproval, or more specifically royal dismay, from the King and royal disgust from the Prince of Wales. 

Never mind "call me Meg". Harry and his wife freely use their titles in their business ventures and insist on titles for their children. Their schedule Down Under has been characterised by a blend of emotive endorsements of good causes, leisure and leveraging their fame to make money. Meghan was interviewed on stage at an event in Sydney for which guests were charged £1693 a ticket. She has been plugging her lifestyle brand and podcast. Details of the clothes she has worn to philanthropic events have been posted on a style platform in which she has invested, with links for fans to buy the outfits. She has also filmed an episode as a guest judge on MasterChef Australia, rebooting her celebrity career. 

This trip looks like the shape of things to come, a combination of "my trauma", "my truth" and "my merch". While this pitch may prove profitable, it will never be classy. Elizabeth made the right call.  

"... the Sussexes must put a sock in it."

In a March 24 Substack post titled "Are the Windsors Underestimating the Sussex Problem?," Tina Brown suggested that the way to solve the Sussex Problem is to bring them back into the fold of the royal family:   

Just how desperate does the House of Windsor want Harry and Meghan to get? The royals and their advisers don’t seem to see the iceberg looming from sunny Montecito. Distracted by the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor catastrophe, the palace remains in a perplexed haze about one of the Andrew scandal’s less-discussed lessons: the perils to the monarchy when peripheral royals hang out with the uber-rich and start to consider themselves, by comparison, broke.

Not that there is anything about Harry and Meghan’s cacophony of blown opportunities that resembles the disgraced Andrew’s cascade of dissolute transgressions or Sarah Ferguson’s heinous groveling to their pedo pal Jeffrey Epstein. But look in the crystal ball, people. Bad enough that Spotify bailed on the Sussexes and Netflix failed to renew their 2020 $100-million deal. Now, the streamer has put a fork in Meghan’s basted turkey, With Love, Meghan, and cut loose her domestic-goddess home products spin-off after a mortifying eleven months (leaving a $10-million pile-up of tea, baking mix, and strawberry jam), the Sussexes’ revenue streams are starting to dry up. They will soon be heading for that hinterland of freebie hell that draws them further and further into cheesy commercial gigs, or worse, toward dubious, transactional acquaintances willing to underwrite their faux-royal lifestyle and their astronomical security costs. Their upcoming trip to Australia where Meghan will appear as the up-close star attraction at a paid “girls weekend,” hosted by the podcast Her Best Life in the ballroom of the InterContinental Hotel at Sydney’s Coogee Beach, has the whiff of Fergie’s post-divorce money-making schemes. (Remember the rogue redhead’s early aughts contract with Wedgwood to flog fancy table settings under the fluorescent lights of mid-market American shopping malls?)

Potential reputational hazards to the Sussexes lurk in the dreaded moral pitfall of wanting to fly private. On their 2024 DIY royal tour of Nigeria to promote Harry’s Invictus Games, Meghan’s refusal to fly by military transport meant the couple availed themselves of a small plane supplied by the Nigerian big shot Allen Onyema. Without palace advisers to brief them, Harry and Meghan seemed unaware that Onyema was wanted in the U.S. on charges of money laundering. Sounds like just the kind of dodgy dude Prince Andrew would have invited to a “straightforward shooting weekend.”

This piquant revelation comes from the British investigative journalist Tom Bower’s latest biographical hit-job, Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, a 400-page forced march through the Sussexes’ post-Megxit fuckups. It’s what you would expect from Bower, a dour scandal detective, whose more than 25 previous tomes are a bomb site of reputations, from Robert Maxwell’s to David Beckham’s. He’s always been good at turning up unforgettably damning details, like the one from Rebel Prince, his 2018 biography of Prince Charles, which dropped that amongst a convoy of personal effects the prince brought to his friends’ country houses was his bespoke lavatory seat, a tidbit that may fall in the category of “too good to check.” (I am told that, as recently as two years ago, in a private discussion about press malfeasance, the king was still exasperated by “that damned lavatory seat nonsense.”)

A new Bower news bomb is always something of a publishing event in the UK. The best nuggets in Betrayal are Meghan’s doomed ongoing efforts to project authenticity. In one Instagram promotion of the “love language” of her jam, the duchess posted an image of her daughter Lilibet’s hand “nearing a bubbling pot in her own kitchen that supposedly contained her homemade spread. ‘Beautiful,’ says her daughter, although As Ever jam was apparently manufactured 2,000 miles away in Illinois.” For Meghan’s much-covered 2021 visit to a Harlem school to read the students her platitudinous picture book The Bench, her press aide arranged to have the classroom walls painted and the lighting improved to make it look “more appealing.” Meghan is portrayed as a deluded diva with an infallible belief in her own star-powered, misunderstood specialness.

Bower’s Harry is a dazed, distraught figure who stumbles around in a state of explosive chagrin. He is outraged when Sophie Chandauka, the assertive chair of Sentebale, the Lesotho charity started by a teenage Harry, presents him with a “brand audit” in 2024, informing him that fifty organizations and donors believe he is now toxic to Sentebale’s fundraising efforts. “People don’t want to be associated with your Netflix shows, and especially not with Meghan,” she told him with a brutal candor that must have been a first for the grandson of the queen. Harry was stunned. Johnny Depp, he replied wonderingly, still attracts a lot of money, despite the courtroom battles with his ex Amber Heard. Harry could not accept that his own distraction, and the blowback of his scorched-earth memoir Spare played a role in the implosion of Sentebale, despite his personal injection of $1.5 million. Ms. Chandauka is usually depicted in the tabs as a shrill saboteur who weaponized her race and gender to drive Harry out. Here, she comes across as a pragmatic businesswoman, vexed by the charity’s financial hemorrhaging and determined to reposition Sentebale for potential donors “who don’t want your victimhood. It can’t be Africans with a begging bowl.”

Juicy stuff, if true. The Sussexes have blasted the book as “deranged conspiracy.” Missing from Bower’s litany of failures is any empathy for the larger quandary of Harry and Meghan’s predicament, which haunts, in varying degrees, all the “minor” royals, expected to dutifully encircle the crown. The Windsor B-list is accustomed to a luxury and a deference that everyone resents, but without the wherewithal or expertise to pursue successful lives beyond the palace. If they try to do so, they are accused of exploiting their royal status. But what else do they have to sell? As one veteran courtier put it to me when I was writing The Palace Papers, Harry “is a deeply caring person who wants to make a positive difference. What he doesn’t understand is that the reason he’s getting to do that is because he’s a royal prince.” If Meghan fantasizes that she’s a global lifestyle guru with the following of a millennial Martha Stewart, it’s at least in part because of the sheer size of the Netflix and Spotify checks that, once upon a time, confirmed it.

I am told that the heir to the throne, Prince William, is preoccupied with the built-in risk of primogeniture’s cruelty. He is determined that his second- and third-born children, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, are well-prepared and well-financed for independent lives and will not fall into the same cycle of thwarted freedom. But what about his traitorous brother? The rupture with Harry is bigger than a sibling feud. Before the Sussexes crash and burn, the House of Windsor needs to put aside schadenfreude and grip the problem. Give Harry and Meghan a limited international role. Cough up a turnkey pied-à-terre for them in Buckingham Palace, where none of the rest of the family wants to live anyway. Pay their damn UK security bill. (It won’t be a good look if Harry, a veteran of two tours of Afghanistan, is taken out by a nutjob). In return, the Sussexes must put a sock in it.

As for the press’s obsession with brotherly reconciliation and forgiveness, forget it. For 70 years, Queen Elizabeth II spent her reign smiling tightly at people she couldn’t stand.

Variety Weighs In

Not a good week for Harry and Meghan:  

Inside Meghan and Harry’s Falling Out With Netflix — and Why the Royal Couple Is Struggling in Hollywood

After five and a half tumultuous years at Netflix, are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the outs in the streaming kingdom?

That’s been a burning question around Hollywood, as the couple’s company, Archewell Productions, has struggled to release bingeable content. Launched in 2020, the company was originally intended to produce scripted and unscripted films and series for all ages. For the past 18 months, it has largely become a vehicle for Meghan Markle’s consumer products brand, As Ever.  

Last week’s news that Netflix had divested from the lifestyle venture, which the tech giant footed the bill to help build, tossed gasoline on a bonfire of speculation about the health of the relationship between the former royals and their creative home. Variety spoke to six well-placed individuals with knowledge of Netflix and the Sussexes, who say the union between Meghan, Harry and the streamer has been far from a fairy tale. The Sussexes’ perceived pattern of selling repackaged versions of the same story about their exit from royal life has exhausted Netflix. Their partnership may continue to taper off, and with it will Meghan and Harry’s remaining show business lifeline.  

“The mood in the building is ‘We’re done,’” one Netflix insider tells Variety of the vibe on Meghan and Harry. Their bedside manner has ruffled feathers in meetings, and lackluster ratings for shows like “With Love, Meghan” have led to doubts that e-commerce is the best way for Netflix to stay in business with the couple (a Netflix insider says the ratings for “With Love” are “on par with other lifestyle series”). That’s to say nothing of Archewell’s history of what sources call “poor communication” in their dealings with the company.

Three insiders say Netflix chief Ted Sarandos is fed up with the pair — who, per two sources, have been known to text directly with the Co-CEO about their projects, as do many A-listers who work with the streamer. Similarly, chief content officer Bela Bajaria is said to have grown weary of the Sussex pact. A Netflix spokesperson says it is “absolutely inaccurate” that Sarandos and Bajaria have lost faith in the couple.

“Archewell has been a thoughtful and collaborative partner, “ says Bajaria, “and we’ve really enjoyed working with Harry and Meghan. They’re deeply engaged in the storytelling process and bring a unique, global perspective that aligns with the kinds of impactful

Insiders at the streamer say Sarandos and his wife, Nicole Avant, socialize frequently with Meghan and Harry and are neighbors in the star haven of Montecito, California. However, two sources insist that Sarandos recently said he would not sit for a call with the duchess unless a lawyer was present on the line (the sources were unclear if Sarandos was serious or joking). A Netflix spokesperson says it is “absolutely inaccurate” that Sarandos made the comment.  

“This is blatantly false. In fact, Meghan texts and speaks with Mr. Sarandos regularly, and has been to his home, sans lawyers,” says Sussex attorney Michael J. Kump in a letter to Variety regarding this story. 

Last August, a second set of episodes from “With Love, Meghan” performed dismally compared with the first round. Netflix was sitting on a surplus of As Ever products, including tea and baking mixes, totaling more than $10 million in value (so much so that the company started giving inventory to employees for free, putting the goods on card tables in various office buildings. An Archewell spokesperson says giveaways from sample closets are standard practice at studios). A different Netflix source says the plan was always to spin As Ever back into Archewell’s control, and that the streamer only intended to assist in its launch. “With Love,” which features Meghan’s friends and the occasional synergistic cameo from talent with ties to Netflix, like Mindy Kaling, was not renewed in full. A spokesperson for the Sussexes says, “‘With Love, Meghan’ will continue as seasonal specials.”  

Yet, according to many people familiar with the matter, Netflix’s disenchantment is not a recent phenomenon.  

At the onset of COVID and their move to the United States in March 2020, the couple made it clear that they planned to build an entertainment empire. They held discussions with every major media company in town — including Disney, Apple, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal — as they searched for an overall deal. Content slates and consumer brands were always part of their vision, but the industry was clamoring for one asset in particular: a docuseries featuring never-before-seen footage of Meghan and Harry’s great British escape (including video of the two on the commercial jet that delivered them to California). 

David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, was especially keen to land Meghan and Harry, a source familiar with the executive says of that time (a rep for Zaslav did not return a request for comment). Sarandos, fiercely competitive, swooped in and signed them to an exclusive arrangement over a five-year term. Reported numbers for the deal vary from $30 million to north of $100 million, but two sources peg the figure at roughly $60 million. Netflix announced the partnership in September 2020 with fanfare and immediately got to work setting the stage for the docuseries “Harry & Meghan.” 

What Netflix didn’t expect, according to numerous sources, was the March 2021 blockbuster primetime interview the couple would participate in with Oprah Winfrey. While nobody at Netflix has suggested that the Sussexes violated any of the terms of their agreement, which allows the couple to engage in projects in other arenas and participate in interviews for other distribution outlets, many at the streamer were annoyed by the lack of communication. Sources say that the company only discovered at the last minute that the Sussexes would sit with Winfrey and share intimate, headline-grabbing details of their lives. A Sussex spokesperson says it is “categorically false” that Neflix was unaware of the Winfrey interview. Regarding their deal and its exclusivity, the representative adds that “Netflix and Archewell had legal counsel involved to oversee the evolution of the deal, as is common practice for any deal changes in Hollywood.” Still in the honeymoon phase, Netflix leadership ultimately did not interfere with the broadcast, which delivered a massive 17.1 million linear viewers for CBS. 

Following the Winfrey interview, chatter in the book world was that an auction was heating up for a tell-all memoir from Prince Harry. Still smarting from the Winfrey experience, Netflix approached the couple to discuss how a potential book deal would impact the release of the docuseries. Sources say Meghan downplayed the auction, telling Sarandos that any publication would be far in the future, if it happened at all. A spokesperson for Meghan calls this “categorically untrue — there was open communication with Netflix months before release to coordinate timing between book and series.” 

In the spring of 2021, sources say the streamer felt blindsided again with news that Penguin Random House was indeed publishing the Harry memoir “Spare,” and planned to do so during Netflix’s rollout for “Harry & Meghan.” While two sources say Sarandos was riled to hear about this during a chance encounter with a Penguin executive, a Netflix insider says the Co-CEO never met anyone at the publishing house regarding the book. Penguin would formally announce the project in July 2021, setting a late-2022 release. Penguin Random House had no comment on the matter.

Netflix acted immediately to have “Harry & Meghan” air in its entirety before the book hit shelves, the sources say. Penguin shifted its release to January 2023, when “Spare” would become the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time, according to Guinness World Records. Prince Harry earned a reported $40 million from that deal. A Netflix insider says the plan was always to air “Harry & Meghan” in December 2022, though two sources say plans ultimately changed to get ahead of the memoir.  

Concurrent to the book-release incident, production on “Harry & Meghan” proved challenging. Lana Wilson (Taylor Swift’s “Miss Americana”) was originally enlisted to direct the project, but no official deal was reached. A rep for Wilson says she was never “formally” attached. Garrett Bradley (“Naomi Osaka”) came on board briefly, reports say, before splitting with the couple over creative differences. An Archewell source says Bradley was never engaged as a director. Sarandos then personally appealed to Oscar nominee Liz Garbus (“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib”) to shepherd the project. She agreed, and the working relationship between Garbus and the couple remained smooth throughout the process until postproduction. 

During the editing of the docuseries, two sources say Meghan appealed to Garbus to remove elements from the final cut, saying select interviews and footage would be “upsetting” to the royal family — especially given that Queen Elizabeth II had died two months prior to the series debut and the couple was observing a period of mourning. Garbus declined to comment. Internally at Netflix, sources say the feeling among some executives was that the couple’s true intention with the request was to ensure Harry’s upcoming memoir would contain exclusive news and insight that would satisfy his publisher. A Netflix spokesperson calls this characterization “not accurate.” Two other sources with knowledge of the process say Netflix leadership encouraged Garbus to conduct one final interview with the couple, to ensure that events discussed in Harry’s book would also be covered in the series. Garbus and the couple were strongly advised to deliver “Harry & Meghan” in a way that maximized the value of the show. They agreed, the sources add. “Harry & Meghan” would go on to mark the highest documentary debut ever for Netflix, with 81.55 million hours viewed in the first four days of release. 

During the editing of the docuseries, two sources say Meghan appealed to Garbus to remove elements from the final cut, saying select interviews and footage would be “upsetting” to the royal family — especially given that Queen Elizabeth II had died two months prior to the series debut and the couple was observing a period of mourning. Garbus declined to comment. Internally at Netflix, sources say the feeling among some executives was that the couple’s true intention with the request was to ensure Harry’s upcoming memoir would contain exclusive news and insight that would satisfy his publisher. A Netflix spokesperson calls this characterization “not accurate.” Two other sources with knowledge of the process say Netflix leadership encouraged Garbus to conduct one final interview with the couple, to ensure that events discussed in Harry’s book would also be covered in the series. Garbus and the couple were strongly advised to deliver “Harry & Meghan” in a way that maximized the value of the show. They agreed, the sources add. “Harry & Meghan” would go on to mark the highest documentary debut ever for Netflix, with 81.55 million hours viewed in the first four days of release.  

Outside Netflix, parts of the entertainment industry began to sour on the couple. After making an exclusive podcasting deal with Spotify the same year the Netflix contract was signed, the Sussexes parted ways with the company, having delivered only one series (Meghan’s well-rated “Archetypes”). On an episode of his own podcast in June 2023, Spotify’s head of talk strategy, Bill Simmons, called the couple “fucking grifters.” 

The year before, in a January 2022 episode, Simmons said, “You live in fucking Montecito, and you just sell documentaries and podcasts, and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.”

However, the ratings for “Harry & Meghan” brought much-needed success for the couple and a return on Netflix’s investment. There was a feeling of momentum in the Archewell offices. Despite the renewed optimism, the couple struggled to connect with Hollywood’s creative community. 

A-list talent and directors were hesitant to work with the pair, sources say. Perceptions were shifting in the industry and across the U.S., thanks to comments like Simmons’ and similar remarks from then-United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer. “Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent,” Zimmer said at a 2023 conference in Cannes. “Just because you’re famous doesn’t make you great at something.” 

Scripted projects — including the animated series “Pearl,” about a time-traveling girl who meets famous women throughout history — were often scrapped. Development turnaround is common in Hollywood. Yet the Sussexes have not produced a single scripted project in their nearly six years at Netflix.  

Meghan signed with talent agency WME in April 2023, in hopes of burnishing her profile in the business. Agency sources say, however, that her primary focus was building As Ever. 

Within three months of Meghan becoming a client, key members of the team assembled to represent her dropped off the account (Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and the Kardashian whisperer Brad Slater). The agency still represents the duchess and Archewell Productions, and her team includes Jill Smoller (an architect of the Serena Williams empire).

Netflix also stepped up to help define the post-“Harry & Meghan” era at Archewell. When Ben Browning departed as production and creative head at Archewell in late 2023, the streamer showed renewed vigor. At the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, for instance, the new creative team at Archewell hit the ground with indications from Netflix that the company would prioritize spending on acquisitions for Archewell — with the goal of building a substantive pipeline of projects for Meghan and Harry. 

But sales agents and filmmakers on the ground were not interested in any Archewell involvement, four sources say. Archewell specifically expressed interest in “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” and the Christopher Reeve doc “Super/Man.” No deals materialized despite the Sussexes’ overtures. The Reeve doc ultimately went to Warner Bros.’ DC Films label for $15 million, less than what Archewell would’ve paid, three sources say. Netflix took “Skywalkers: A Love Story” for its main film library, and sources say the dealmakers were not interested in having Archewell as a second partner. Jeff Zimbalist, the writer-producer on “Skywalkers,” tells Variety that “neither the couple nor Archewell was ever mentioned” to producers during the bidding process. Regarding the Sussex rejection at Sundance, a Netflix spokesperson calls this “categorically untrue.” A source familiar with Netflix’s acquisitions protocol says Archewell would only be floated as a partner if the streamer or a sales title’s producer felt the couple added value to the project — and that was not the case for “Skywalkers” or “Super/Man.”

This year, the couple went to Sundance to premiere the Girl Scouts documentary “Cookie Queens,” on which they served as executive producers. That documentary struggled to land a sale before Roadside Attractions bought it nearly two months after it debuted at Sundance. News of the sale came as this story was going to press.  

By March 2025, it was clear that Netflix and Archewell had changed direction. With scripted projects failing to materialize, it was time to reconsider the partnership. Prince Harry was not nearly as visible in projects after the 2024 debut of “Polo,” a five-episode unscripted series about his friend and athlete Nacho Figueras. It was time to test Meghan’s mettle as an entrepreneur and a solo star.  

“I think Meghan is underestimated in terms of her influence on culture,” Sarandos told Variety last March. “When we dropped the trailer for the ‘Harry & Meghan’ doc series, everything on-screen was dissected in the press for days. The shoes she was wearing sold out all over the world. The Hermès blanket that was on the chair behind her sold out everywhere in the world.” Sarandos added that Meghan and Harry were “overly dismissed.”  

Sarandos also confirmed that Netflix was a passive partner in the As Ever brand, which he called “a big discovery model for us.” “With Love, Meghan” went into production, complementing her range of products, and later debuted in the Netflix Top 10. Last August, the Sussexes signed a new pact with Netflix, downgrading their exclusive agreement to a first-look deal (sources say this is common, and happens with other talent deals including the Obamas’). The announcement came with a quote of support from Bajaria and name-checked As Ever. The brand investment was highly experimental for Netflix, which had little experience in retail. The move into new businesses meant more of Netflix’s corporate resources would be allocated to Archewell, and the company’s vast staff would interface more often with the couple. The Sussexes’ bedside manner was not well received by some inside the streamer. 

Insiders say that Meghan has long conveyed that Hollywood is her domain. In virtual and in-person meetings with partners, she tends to talk over or recast Prince Harry’s thoughts, sometimes while he is mid-sentence, sources say (usually preceded by a touch to the arm or thigh). Meghan’s lawyer Kump, in his letter to Variety, says this assertion “seems calculated to play into the misogynistic characterization of her bossing her husband around.” Prince Harry, meanwhile, attests that this is “categorically false.”  

Meghan also had odd methods of providing feedback, according to three sources. She was known to “disappear” for long periods during Zoom calls, the sources say. Later, Netflix teams like the marketing department would be informed that her absence was due to her being offended by something that was said.  

Kump says that Meghan “works from home, is the mother of young children aged 4 and 6, and often encounters (as many parents who work from home do) children who enter the space unexpectedly during a meeting. Independent of being a parent who works from home, Meghan is also conscious of shielding her team from the distraction of children. Nearly all professionals can attest to needing to turn off the audio or camera during a virtual meeting at some point during many hours of virtual business calls.” 

Consumer response to Meghan’s lifestyle series and the As Ever products was mixed. Archewell reported selling out its inventory across the board after launch, though Newsweek reported in January that a glitch on the company’s website revealed a high volume of unsold products.  

After the second batch of “With Love” episodes cratered, sources say the writing was on the wall that Netflix was losing faith in the former royals. While news of Netflix’s divestment in the brand only hit days ago, two sources say it had been in the works since last fall. That’s when Meghan hired independent brand consultant and creative director Devin Pedzwater, who had worked with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, signaling to several sources that Netflix had thrown in the towel on Meghan’s venture.  

Archewell has two scripted features in the works at Netflix: an adaptation of the novel “The Wedding Date,” which recruited “Girls Trip” writer Tracy Oliver, and a movie based on Carley Fortune’s book “Meet Me at the Lake.” A writer-director on the latter project will be announced in the coming days, two sources said. With regard to As Ever, Meghan has hinted she’s exploring ways to deliver more bite-size content, such as two-minute recipe clips.  

But after half a decade of inconsistent shows, strategic shifts, false starts and a diminished hold on the popular imagination, are the Sussexes really living the Hollywood dream they imagined? This is the article in its entirety.