With their popularity at an all-time low, will Harry and Meghan’s novel idea put an end to their slump? Photo / AP
With their popularity at an all-time low, will Harry and Meghan’s novel idea put an end to their slump? Photo / AP
OPINION
By any measure, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex aren’t quite where they hoped to be when they released their bombshell Megxit statement in January 2020.
Having dreamt of carving out “a progressive new role” in which they would “work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty the Queen”, Prince Harry’s His Royal Highness title has now been removed from the official royal family website, with the Sussexes’ personal profile pages demoted on the homepage. Harry and Meghan’s pages are now near the bottom, with the late Queen’s lesser-known cousins the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Princess Alexandra featuring ahead of them.
Far from the “continued collaboration” they hoped for with the King and the Prince of Wales, the couple have not been invited to join the rest of the royal family at Balmoral for the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, even though they will be in Europe for the Invictus Games in Germany that starts a day later, on September 9. When the duchess turned 42 earlier this month, her birthday was conspicuously ignored by all the official royal social media accounts.
Meghan's recent birthday was ignored by all the official royal social media accounts. Photo / Getty Images
The Sussexes have “found their freedom” with lucrative deals to tell their story to Oprah Winfrey, on Netflix and in Harry’s autobiography, Spare — but at considerable cost to their status and reputation. In June, Meghan’s approval rating fell to an all-time low of –47 in the UK, according to YouGov, with Harry on –36.
Meanwhile, the King has jumped from 26 to 32 since the coronation, while the Prince and Princess of Wales are on 57 and 59 respectively — both up from April’s figure. To rub salt into the wounds, this week Prince William was voted America’s most popular public figure, ahead of Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a Gallup survey of public figures.
But now the beleaguered couple appear to have found a new story to tell after Netflix paid a reported £3 million (NZ$6.3 million) for the film rights to the romantic novel they intend to produce for the streaming service as part of their £80 million ($169.2 million) deal.
It was initially suggested that Harry and Meghan had personally bought the rights to Carley Fortune’s Meet Me at the Lake, which echoes their personal story and includes a character whose parent dies in a car crash. But it has since emerged that Netflix stumped up the cash for the adaptation under the couple’s Archewell Productions arm.
With Harry, 38, now in Asia to attend a sports conference in Japan before playing in a charity polo match in Singapore on Saturday — leaving his wife and children Archie, 4, and Lilibet, 2, back in Montecito, California — industry insiders are describing the Meet Me at the Lake project as a “sink or swim” moment.
Prince Harry and Argentinian polo player Nacho Figueras at a charity polo match in Singapore. Photo / Getty Imsges
As PR guru Mark Borkowski pointed out, the Sussexes “have zero track record in drama or producing anything of consequence”. Describing the adaptation as a “playbook” attempt by Harry and Meghan to resurrect their media careers after their Spotify deal was axed and other production ideas were vetoed, he added: “They are so far off the radar. I suspect there is more to this than meets the eye.” Borkowski suggested Penguin Random House, the publisher of Spare, “probably” helped do the deal because it also put out Meet Me at the Lake.
Yet it seems the links between Fortune and Meghan run much deeper than that. A self-confessed Meghan fan who binge-watched Suits — the legal drama starring the duchess as paralegal Rachel Zane — and woke up “teary” at 4am to watch the royal wedding in 2018, the Canadian author appears to have forged a career out of supporting the Sussexes.
Harry and Meghan filmed taking part in a joint meditation session for their Netflix docuseries. Photo / Netflix
Exposing “an intense and insular group which peddles hatred online”, a lengthy article for Refinery29, which is still online, suggests “a mixed-race foreigner” is a “threat” to the British monarchy, adding: “For Meghan anti-fans, conspiracy theories which confirm her maliciousness might bolster the view that the British monarchy, by contrast, is beyond reproach.” The piece extensively quotes Omid Scobie, who wrote Finding Freedom, a hagiography of the couple, and is due to publish a second book, Endgame, in November, “exposing the chaos, family dysfunction, distrust and draconian practices” threatening the future of the Royal family.
Fortune resigned as executive editor of Refinery29 Canada in October 2021, announcing on Instagram that she was working on a second book following her bestselling debut novel, Every Summer After.
Her website was recently updated to reflect the fact she is now represented by Carolina Beltran at William Morris Endeavour (WME) — the same influential Hollywood agency that signed Meghan in April to build on her “global enterprise”.
Variety magazine broke the story exclusively, having featured the duchess on its cover in October last year, when she “discussed her ambitions around Archewell original content”.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex congratulating the first members of their Archewell Foundation Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund.
“So much of how my husband and I see things is through our love story,” said Meghan. “I think that’s what people around the world connected to, especially with our wedding. People love love. I’m not excluded in that sentiment.
“For scripted [content], we want to think about how we can evolve from that same space and do something fun. It doesn’t always have to be so serious. Like a good romcom. Don’t we miss them? I miss them so much.”
Described as “a breathtaking love story about two strangers who come together when they need each other most”, it is uncanny how much Meet Me at the Lake, which was published in May, fits the bill. Yet will Fortune’s book be enough to reverse the Sussexes’ fortunes?
Having left a rainy UK full of optimism under their umbrella in March 2020, few could have predicted the dramatic highs and lows experienced by the couple since they spilled the beans to Winfrey a year later.
The revelation that an unnamed royal discussed Archie’s skin tone before he was born (a conversation Harry clarified later in the interview had taken place before they were even married) sent shockwaves around the world and gained sympathy for the couple after Meghan claimed the monarchy had almost driven her to suicide.
They managed to survive criticism of the timing of the tell-all prime-time chat, which was filmed as Prince Philip, then 99, was still recovering in hospital from an unspecified illness, and Harry appeared on relatively good terms with his nearest and dearest when he attended his grandfather’s funeral the following month.
The duke was relegated to second-row royal status at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral. Photo / AP
The birth of Lilibet gave their popularity a boost in June 2021, notwithstanding reports that they gave their daughter the late Queen’s nickname without first seeking her permission.
Although relegated to second-row royal status at both the jubilee and Queen Elizabeth’s funeral three months later, amid reports of Harry and William being “barely on speaking terms”, their return to the UK did not herald the threatened booing and egg-throwing.
The tide appeared to turn, however, after Meghan was filmed mocking curtsying to the late Queen in their six-part Netflix series and following the publication of Spare, a month later, in January 2023.
The sensational memoir, in which Harry revealed that William knocked him to the ground and broke a dog bowl during a row over Meghan’s alleged “bullying” of staff, was widely lampooned for featuring a passage in which the Duke confessed to thinking of his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales, while applying Elizabeth Arden cream to his frostbitten penis.
The pair were mocked on the long-running cartoon South Park. Photo / Comedy Central
When the US cartoon South Park then roasted the couple as “a dumb prince and his stupid wife” in an episode mocking their World Privacy Tour, it marked a new low — compounded by Harry being completely sidelined at the coronation in May.
The couple claiming to be the victims of a “near-catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi” later that month didn’t help matters either, not least when the NYPD and a taxi driver contradicted their somewhat hysterical version of events.
Shortly after Harry gave evidence in court in his hacking trial against Mirror Group Newspapers in June, Meghan’s Archetypes podcast was axed and Spotify executive Bill Simmons disparagingly described the pair as “grifters”. With recent reports of a fallout with David and Victoria Beckham, it’s little wonder the increasingly isolated Sussexes have come up with this “novel” idea for a reboot.
Perhaps surprisingly, no one is more determined for them to make a success of the project than the royals themselves. As one palace insider pointed out: “If the film flops then they’ll no doubt revert to mud-slinging.
