Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Are in Their Flop Era

Sometimes you can just feel it when a celebrity is entering a flop era. I vividly remember watching Katy Perry using drag queens as props on Saturday Night Live in 2017, accompanied by a rapper who had recently used a homophobic slur, dressed in a hideous Beetlejuice-style striped jacket, and just knowing that her album rollout for Witness was going to be a complete disaster. Similarly, when Dakota Johnson awkwardly accused Ellen DeGeneres of lying during a toe-curlingly iconic interview on her eponymous talk show, it prompted a slow drip-feed of negative stories to appear in the press. Suddenly, after decades as the queen of daytime TV, the grisly end of DeGeneres’s reign felt inevitable.

Speaking of royalty, I have this exact feeling when I think about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. After fleeing to the U.S. to start a new life in the wake of a racist and misogynistic smear campaign in the British press — which they accuse the royal institution and their family members of actively colluding in — the pair signed a string of lucrative deals with the biggest streaming platforms. Then there was that tell-all memoir. 

As much sympathy as I have for the despicable way the couple has been treated since they wed in 2018 — and I really do — I have the feeling that the appetite is waning for their content stream. On June 15, it was announced that Markle’s deal with Spotify was coming to an end after just one series of her podcast, “Archetypes.” (Sources are divided over whose decision this was, but there were reports that Spotify was unhappy about Markle’s lack of output for the $20 million deal). The news prompted United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer to take the unusual step of publicly questioning her credentials. “Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent,” Zimmer told Semafor at the marketing festival Cannes Lions in the South of France. “And, you know, just because you’re famous doesn’t make you great at something.” 

If we look back to 2021, the Sussexes pulled together a truly blockbuster media event when they were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. The interview was packed full of viral moments that were tailor-made for how content is consumed in today’s social media landscape, like Winfrey’s famous line: “Were you silent, or were you silenced?” More importantly, there were concerning claims about how Markle was treated by the institution in the wake of suicidal thoughts, plus alleged racist comments which were made by members of the firm about their infant son Archie’s skin. The interview was enough to give many (but not all) of their detractors pause. Crucially, it relaunched the couple to a U.S. audience and signposted a new era of sharing their story after years inside a notoriously guarded institution.

In the aftermath of the Oprah interview, the gloves were well and truly off. There was more mud-slinging in the press and it seemed like the feud had been ramped up a gear. Sensing an appetite for more — and now footing the bill for their own extortionate personal security and lifestyle costs — the couple signed deals with Spotify, Netflix, and Apple. Prince Harry reportedly netted in excess of $20 million for his memoir, Spare, with Forbes estimating the couple’s earnings from streaming deals to be in the region of $135 million. (FYI, Jeremy Zimmer, it looks like they are great at something: minting money). 

Despite millions of dollars in the bank, the success of the Sussexes’ projects has been mixed. Their Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, which essentially functioned as a much longer version of the Oprah interview with more backstory, was at the top of the platform’s “most-watched” list for weeks. Prince Harry’s book, Spare, broke records and became the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time. 

Part of the issue the Sussexes are currently facing is that they have made their brand about their beef with the royal family. Now, their feud has reached a stalemate and it feels like there isn’t much more to say. Part of the reason why Prince Harry’s book was such a success is because it went so far back into his childhood and provided so many scandalous details about now-Queen Camilla and losing his virginity. But in the aftermath of the tell-all, it feels like there surely can’t be much more to share about their royal estrangement.

The Sussexes are in a difficult position: appetite is waning for content about their rift with the royal institution, because digesting it in so many different formats now feels like overkill. But there isn’t much enthusiasm for their other projects, like the “Archetypes” podcast, which aren’t about that.

The Sussexes are also discovering that being a “celebrity” is different to being a working royal. The royals, by nature of the institution they’re a part of, benefit from sycophantic media coverage in the U.K. in particular, where the media and political establishment functions with the end goal of keeping them relevant and popular. But as celebrities who are now royals in name only, the couple has to generate their buzz and cultural relevance on their own.

For inspiration, the Sussexes might look to the Kardashian-Jenner family. Led by matriarch Kris Jenner, reality-TV’s First Family have always understood that maintaining cultural relevance is about constantly reinventing yourself. Kim Kardashian is one of American culture’s greatest chameleons. Once, she was a tacky run-of-the-mill reality star who rose to fame because of a sex tape. Now, she’s a high-fashion muse, criminal justice reform campaigner, billionaire mogul, and A-list celebrity.

The Kardashians have always traded on strength in numbers. The title of their original reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, was appropriate because even if nothing particularly dramatic or interesting was going on for Kim, one of her sisters would usually have a juicy storyline — like a wedding, an infidelity, or a health crisis. The overexposure of the Kardashians feels less jarring because they’re always giving us something new, but as a couple who are cut off from most of their families, the Sussexes’ narrative seems to have stagnated. It’s becoming uninteresting and, even worse: it’s getting annoying.

I wonder, then, whether it’s time for Harry and Meghan to reinvent themselves more drastically. Perhaps a return to acting for Markle? Or a Goop-style lifestyle brand? They need to try something different, because I can’t shake the feeling that they haven’t really earned the preachy role they’re trying to play. Harry and Meghan have been through the wringer, for sure, but it takes decades of painstakingly navigating turbulent times in the public eye to achieve that special Michelle Obama-style status, where people listen when you talk and respect you if they don’t totally agree with you. Markle’s friend Oprah — who the Golden Globes tapped for a lifetime achievement award in the aftermath of the #MeToo scandal — is another such person. Her faultless speech at the 2018 ceremony had people seriously begging her to run for president. But it doesn’t feel like the Sussexes have put in the work to get there — if reports are to be believed, Markle could barely even be bothered to make her own podcast. 

After Spotify confirmed that they were parting ways with the Sussexes, right-wing media practically salivated at the news, declaring that their “empire is imploding.” I don’t think that’s entirely true: their partnership with Netflix isn’t going anywhere (though they were reportedly given an ultimatum by the streamer) and there will surely be a memoir in the cards for Markle soon. You can call it a “flop era,” or simply teething issues, but the Sussexes are working out which platforms work for them — clearly, some don’t, but that is the same for every celebrity. I’m not surprised that Markle’s Spotify series failed to take off. The market for interview-based podcasts is so saturated and even Michelle Obama — whose memoir Becoming broke similar records when it was released — failed to make a long-term success out of her Spotify podcast. 

It feels like the ship might have sailed on the Sussexes achieving that Oprah-style, Michelle Obama-status they seem to covet, because these women have become icons through using their voices sparingly over the years. A “less is more” approach has allowed them to cut through the noise when it really counts. If Harry and Meghan want to become icons through being overexposed (as they are currently) then they need to channel their inner Kardashian and give us something new. Because right now, apart from familial beef that is past its sell-by-date, it doesn’t seem like they have much else to offer.

From Rolling Stone US.