They had left the royal family. They were so popular with so many people and all of a sudden they were out [music] in the wild, so to speak, and no one knew what they were going to do next. When the family arrived, they are staying at Tyler Perry’s palatial home. It sort [music] of sets them up as the people that they then go on to become, which is elite celebrities, [music] you know, the absolute A-list.
That is very much and has been Harry and Megan’s aspiration. [music] That’s where they’ve wanted to land. Hollywood royalty. They eventually found a place of their own. Monteito. >> I’ve been to Monteito. Okay. And it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s paradise and it’s an A-list [music] heaven. We have Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, Gwyneith Paltro, all neighbors of Harry and Megan. That’s why they like it.
They wanted to move their A because it was attractive to [music] A-list stars. They wanted to look like that they were A-list stars. It was something that they felt that [music] they could base themselves away from the paparazzi in Los Angeles. As for their plans, they didn’t know what they were going to do. But what Megan wanted, [music] what she’s wanted all along is to live in an A-list area, hang out with celebrities, and act like a a superstar.
>> [music] >> I think there was actually quite a sense of excitement about what they were going to do. I mean certainly there was a huge interest and so much speculation in Hollywood. The celebrities you have the biggest movie stars on the planet people like Tom Cruz, Brad Pit, all the big names, but they don’t have what Harry and Megan had, which was proximity to the throne.
That’s something you can’t buy. There’s a level of prestige behind this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of year old institution that people want to be close to. they want to hear about. There’s a real premium on that. So Harry and Megan really eclipsed that idea of celebrity at that time particularly because again they were this untarnished brand where we hadn’t heard [music] what they were going to say.
They were now free from the institution and they were able to speak. Netflix and other [music] big streaming services were absolutely circling. There was a lot of money to be spent. Netflix at that time was spending huge [music] amounts of money on signing people for exclusive deals.
And there was no bigger target than Harry and Megan. these two rare beasts in a world of celebrities around Hollywood. They were an elite and premium package. Brand Sussex had never been stronger. >> So, I think there was a sense of almost endless opportunity for them. I think the world was waiting to see what Harry and Megan were going to do next.
Harry and Megan’s arrival in the US was supposed to mark the beginning of a new chapter for them, a really positive new era of them finding freedom and really marked the end of what had been an unbelievably turbulent period in royal history. So for quite a few months, people knew things were going wrong.
People knew that Harry and Megan were not happy and they had fallen out with their family. But no one really expected how big a [music] story this would be. >> Back at this time in January, it’s the start of a new year. We knew there had been the rumblings of a winter of discontent. They’d got back from um a tour of South Africa, which I’d been on with Megan and Harry and little Archie.
And um you know I think to all intents and purposes that tour had gone very well until the final day of the tour when Harry used a public speaking opportunity to have a crack at the media for how they treated his wife and to sort of really be very dismissive of the press [music] pack who traveled around South Africa with the couple and their and their young child.
So I think we all had an indication that things were not as well as they might have been. But I don’t think anyone was [music] expecting that, you know, at the start of the new year, we were going to get this incredible announcement. They took 6 weeks off and didn’t spend Christmas with the royal family, which obviously raised a lot of eyebrows.
And then just a few days after all of that, when they’d finished their holiday, [music] came the bombshell. So, the Sun had the biggest royal scoop of the century on their hands. It was not only that they had fallen out with William or that Megan wasn’t talking to Catherine. They wanted to leave the country.
They were stepping down as working royals and they were going abroad. We splashed it on the front page. Big headline, pictures of Harry and Megan saying, “We are off again.” Within a couple of hours, Harry and Megan did confirm our story. And then we have the front page of the decade with the headline Megit. And it was probably, I would suggest, the biggest exclusive definitely this century relating to the royal family.
It was huge. >> I remember going straight to the Entertainment Tonight studios to cover this story, trying [music] to reach every member of the Palace Press Office that I could [music] and every single line going to voicemail. And it was very evident [music] that these palace courtiers were locked in crisis talks because they weren’t expecting the announcement either.
It was absolutely thrown onto them. I think Harry and Megan have subsequently tried to paint their own narrative that makes it appear that it wasn’t quite the bombshell that it was. But I was told by palace courtiers very close [music] to the late Queen Elizabeth II that she was absolutely blindsided by this.
The courtier who I spoke to described the talks that were going on between the queen and her grandson as embionic. [music] Certainly not a fully hatched plan ready to be executed. So to say that the queen and the palace were caught off guard was something of an understatement. It was clear there was a lot to discuss and the royals very [music] very quickly by mid January, just a few days after this announcement had arranged to gather at Sandringham for what we quickly dubbed the Sandringham summit.
And the day that that happened, it was [music] a frenzy like we hadn’t seen for quite some time. There were the media camped out outside Sandringham just waiting for news of what in the world this new Harry and Megan royal in andout plan was going to look like. >> So Harry and Megan have been quite petulant.
They put a statement out saying that they were leaving. They they accused of blindsiding the queen of not letting her know of their plans [music] in full before they announced it on their social media site. Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh at the time, he was so furious with what was happening, he didn’t even turn up to the Sandreham summit.
>> I think there was a a sense certainly [music] um for the Queen, for Prince Charles, and Prince William that they were going to sort of talk Harry out of this moment of madness, make him see reason, and sort things out. But Harry was absolutely resolute. >> I don’t think they had thought it would have the impact it did. the couple.
I think they thought they would be able to say, “Look, we’re not the frontline couple. We’re getting a lot of attention. We want the heat to come off us a little bit.” And um I think that he misread the rooms really misread the way that the royal family is. I [music] think he thought he could sweet talk his grandmother, the queen.
>> Here’s Prince Harry and Megan saying, “Well, we still want to work for the royal family. We still want to represent the Queen, but we also want to have the opportunity to earn our own money and to become commercially independent.” [music] And I think that’s where, you know, the well I think the queen saw a lot of red flags in Harry and Megan’s proposal, but that was the key one.
>> Absolutely no way was the queen going to back down on the commercialization of the monarchy in a way that it was so overt and it’s for personal gain. There’s no way she would have allowed that. The Queen’s opinion was very much that either you were in the royal family or you were out.
And this sort of halfway house that Harry was proposing had never worked in the past really wasn’t feasible. Um, and that this sort of outline of what Harry and Megan saw their future being, which was, by the way, all over their brand new website was essentially people thinking, well, you you want to have your cake and [music] eat it.
It’s so difficult to know what Megan’s motivation is [music] because she’s quite mandacious actually. I mean, she said she never knew who Harry was when she met him. I mean, come on. That’s a ridiculous thing to say. Oh, I didn’t even know anything about the royal family. There’s photographs of her standing outside the Buckingham Palace.
What did she think it was? A post office. You know, [music] I think she had a plan to militarize things for her early on. Actually, [music] whatever hopes Harry had, and they were high, I think it was never going to happen. She knew that the monarch is more important than one individual, and that’s why she acted [music] as she did.
They had the Diana experience. Diana her true story, which was an absolute bombshell at the time. Um, I think they [music] knew he was Diana’s son and they knew exactly how much damage he could cause and they [music] also know he was quite capable pressing the nuclear button. [music] At the end of the Sandringham summit, the agreement was essentially that Harry and Megan would leave.
There was no budging Harry. He’d clearly made his mind up. The Queen’s instructions was that this needed to be wrapped up very quickly. >> [music] >> She did not want this dripping into the press. And within a matter of hours actually of the summit coming to a close that afternoon, we received a statement, quite an unprecedented statement actually, out of Buckingham Palace [music] expressing the Queen’s regret at Harry and Megan leaving, but her acceptance that [music] it was their wish and that a plan was going to be formulated for their departure. But
what’s really really important to note [music] is that that was never what Harry and Megan had pitched. So clearly it wasn’t what they wanted. [music] They wanted to be half in and half out. They wanted to earn their own money in some ways, but they also wanted to be part of the institution and representing [music] the monarchy.
So all of a sudden they’re making up policy on the fly of what the rest [music] of their life was going to look like because the plan that had been hashed out wasn’t their initial idea. And clearly they hadn’t [music] worked out all the finer details of what that was actually going to look like to be fully out of [music] the royal family.
I don’t think it’s implausible that those key players at the table realized even at that point that [music] actually the endgame was probably going to be California. But I I think the the exposure into the private [music] lives of the most senior royals has been unprecedented. And I don’t think it was anything that [music] Charles, William, or indeed the late Queen could have or would have [music] predicted.
Well, within weeks of of Harry and Megan relocating to Canada, it was very evident that they was making plans for their future. The very first step was setting up Archwell which became basically two divisions. The production side, so content creation and the philanthropic side. And that’s what that they then used as their basis for all the deals that would later come.
[music] By the end of 2020 and into 2021, we started to see the roll out of those [music] deals. The first of which was of course their biggest and most famous one, the Netflix deal, which was rumored to be worth around £74 million. Just a couple of months later, we heard they then signed another mega deal [music] with Spotify.
After that, a four-part book deal. After leaving the royal family, Harry and Megan were so valuable, and they’ve signed all of these mega deals. They needed that to work. Not only because it was their entire career and reputation at stake, but also because they needed to fund this [music] new life. This the Sussexes had an incredible story to tell.
I don’t think anyone was prepared for them to tell [music] it quite in the detail that they did. >> I think in Harry and Megan’s case, it started going down for them in the United [music] States when people heard their story. The more that they spoke, the more that they shared, the less people like them. Well, I tell you, I remember speaking to someone at the palace before the Oprah interview went out.
We all knew it was coming. [music] Duke of Edinburgh was in hospital at the time, and one senior source just saying, I’m I think we’ve got reason to be concerned about this. I think they’re really going to try and do some damage. So, it had been basically a year since Harry and Megan had officially left royal duties.
And after the Oprah interview, I think everyone all over the world, particularly within the palaces, was genuinely stunned at how much [music] information they decided to divulge. >> Oprah was like their nuclear button pressed. They felt it justice. They wanted to in a way create Mary Hell. That interview was an an incredible interview and some of what was said was absolutely shocking.
At that point, really the most personal things we’d heard from them was during that last tour in Southern Africa when Megan confirmed she was not okay and when Harry [music] confirmed that there was tension with his brother. He said they were on different paths. Fast forward 18 months and what they told Oprah was getting right into all that family drama, all of those tensions, all of [music] the issues they had within the palace and it was genuinely explosive. It was a bombshell interview.
Of course, the allegations of racism within [music] the royal family when she spoke about a member of the royal family voicing um concerns about the color of their then unborn son’s skin. That was just one of those, you know, drop the mic moments that you sort of almost wanted to sit up and rewind it immediately to check that you’d heard that correctly.
You know, it was such an extraordinary thing to have said. [music] It’s appalling. It’s disgusting. And forget about her. Him to do this, throw his father and his brother under the bus like that. I mean, I mean, it’s just classless. About the race thing. I’m sorry. I married a white guy with blue eyes.
It’s normal in our family to say, “Do you think it’ll be dark like me or white like you?” That’s not called being racist. >> It was an absolute exercise in torching the House of Windsor. And I came away with a very distasteful [music] taste in my mouth. >> Members of the royal family having conversations about the color of Archie’s skin. That is racist.
For anyone to come forward and speak about their own struggles with mental health and tell their own personal story, that takes [music] courage. That’s certainly something the president believes. >> You believe that the royal family, Queen aside, is [music] racist. >> It polarized people and saw not just the royal family, but actually I think Britain [music] almost being accused of being racist, which it’s not.
The royal family isn’t racist and Britain isn’t a racist country. It opened up this explosive and and pretty ugly narrative actually [music] and Prince William was at an engagement after the Oprah interview had aired [music] and he was asked by one of the press pack, you know, is the royal family racist? Now, usually [music] Prince William would ignore such a question, but he stopped and he turned around and he said, >> “We’re very much not a racist family.
” >> I mean, you could see the anger in his face. So that was a real insight into how much this had distressed the royal family [music] and the huge impact that these comments were already having. >> The Oprah Winfrey interview was an earthquake in the [music] royal family within Buckaded Palace.
They knew it was coming. They didn’t know what was in it. [music] And then when it dropped, we had silence from the royal family. >> Sir, can I ask what did you think of the interview? >> I don’t think there was panic. I wouldn’t describe it as panic within the royal family. I think they they sat down, watched it, talked about it, and then waited to see what the public reaction was.
>> Well, I think the public perception after the Oprah interview is fascinating. It wasn’t just the case that everyone in Britain was either behind or against Harry and Megan. There was [music] division in Britain. Um there was division over in the States. I think for the most part people felt very sorry for Megan and I think you [music] know you could sense this feeling that the tide was turning against the royal family and that they were sort of being put under the spotlight [music] in a very negative and damaging way. I think
certainly in America that was when Harry and Megan had more support than ever before. It’s very rare for the palace to comment on such a a personal issue, but I think the damage was so widespread and was continuing this. You know, this story did not stop running and running and being debated around the world that I think the palace realized the only way to put a stop to it was to issue a [music] comment.
>> It’s all about timing. The royal family are very good at timing. They knew they had to act, but they did wait a long time and there was a huge pause and that whole time was filled [music] with everything that was said in the Oprah Winfrey interview. We subsequently have been told and understand [music] that the Princess of Wales, Katherine, had some input in [music] that statement.
It’s never been confirmed by the palace, but certainly these were the words of the Queen, but the message was very simple. Those few words were incredibly poignant and profound and loaded with meaning. Recollections may vary. What we were hearing really from the very top, from the queen, was that actually this wasn’t necessarily her recollection of what had been said.
So Harry and Megan came back for the Platinum Jubilee. There were many events that weekend. One of them was the St. Paul’s Cathedral Thanksgiving. Um Harry and Megan turned up. There was a huge crowd of people out there and so ultimately predictably there were a few [music] booze. Now look, there wasn’t a baying mob shouting at Harry and Megan, but there were people there that quite clearly didn’t want them to be present.
didn’t believe they should be there. [music] And look, they must have been upset about that. But they must have understood that everything that they’ve done, there’s going [music] to be people in Britain that would stand on the street and boo them. When they did the Oprah Winfrey interview, they were angry.
They [music] were furious. And they wanted to get their complaints out so the world could hear. Their strategy after that was suddenly to become A-list media celebrities, to appear on Netflix, to earn lots of money, and maybe do the chat show circuit. But that backfired because everyone remembers how angry they were.
They weren’t able to come across as friendly, loving, and kind because of that interview. The actual series itself, no one really knew what to expect and then it arrived. And I’ll be honest, when I was watching it, there were parts of it I really enjoyed. I liked seeing parts [music] of their story that we hadn’t seen before. >> We got to see what their lives were like and we got to learn about their courtship [music] and certainly from the perspective of a royal correspondent that was really interesting.
>> But on the flip side, they really really delved into issues that you couldn’t help but feel were unfair to the royal family knowing that they didn’t have the same platform right of reply. you know, things like family issues with William, [music] things like issues with the king.
You’re watching all that unfold in this manner, it just felt very one-sided. It felt really unfair. Ultimately, the Netflix show was an entertainment series. So, I think to many people in America, it was just on their list of box sets of something to watch, but it was more damaging than that because it was a complete trashing of the family for entertainment, for money.
>> The actual [music] series itself was released just a couple of months after Queen Elizabeth had died. And at that time there was this incredible outpouring of support for the royal family who was you know there the monarchy but there also a family in mourning [music] for someone who was so unbelievably beloved throughout not just the UK but around the world and so the timing of it wasn’t great from that aspect because there was a lot of support for the royals and there was a lot of criticism for them [music] in
that series. So the timing of it it felt quite jarring. There were some bits [music] that, you know, had they been in the editing room should absolutely have come out. I mean, that moment where Megan sort of mock curtsies [music] and, you know, explains what it was like meeting the queen for the first time and how she sort of expected Curtsy.
I mean, you could see Harry [music] just looking like he wanted the ground to open. >> Pleasure to meet you, your majesty. >> It was those sorts of things, I think, that did them no favors. She was the powerhouse in this relationship and she seemed to be the dominant one and he looked quite undecidedly uncomfortable in a lot of that that filming.
So I think a lot of people were beginning to wonder what has he done here? I think the Netflix show went down very badly with the palace and one of the reasons was some of the adverts, some of the trailers that were put out ahead of the December screening were almost deliberately released on the days when the royal family were doing major jobs.
I was in Boston and William was there for his Earth Shop prize and on the day that we arrived, what happened? Bosch, there was a huge Netflix trailer. But when Netflix actually came out, I mean, I I I God knows what was going on in the minds of Buckingham Palace, this was really them opening up and trashing the royal family like we’d never seen before.
The royal family again didn’t comment. They had taken a whole new line on this. Okay, they released the statement after Oprah. Recollections may vary, but after Netflix, they [music] decided just to shut it down, just to let Harry and Megan shout as much as they want on the other side of the [music] Atlantic.
It was once said to me that, you know, they tried many things with Harry. Okay, they’d uh given him everything he wanted. Um they’d sent [music] him to his bedroom, you know, they’ kicked him out of the house. And now after the Netflix show, they just decided, well, we’ll just ignore him. Well, I think at this point public perception is interest and curiosity and fascination because this couple does command that.
But I think the tide was beginning to turn a little bit in America as well. And possibly, you know, people thinking, we’ve heard all of this before. They really needed to be careful not to sort [music] of tiptoe too much into victim narrative. Well, they didn’t tiptoe. they sort of dived head first into that. You know, you very much felt watching this, it was Harry and Megan against not just the royal family, but at times, you know, the whole of the British media um and maybe even Britain [music] [music] Spare is probably the greatest royal
book of of all time. Beyond what anyone ever imagined. You’d had the docy [music] series, you’d had Oprah. I remember being with a group of journalists thinking, well, how explosive can this autobiography been? We couldn’t have been more wrong. It was genuinely jaw-dropping to read. [music] There are a lot of huge details in the book, but also it was those personal ones he revealed.
>> It was packed with revelations [music] and anecdotes that I think had they just run in a paper and not had Harry sort of storytelling a company with that people wouldn’t believe it. They wouldn’t think it was true. I think Spare when that released and people started reading some of the some of the bits that are a little bit odd and silly and weird in Spare, I think that was the end for Harry’s reputation as a serious man.
If you think of the the bits where he’s writing about losing his virginity and he’s talking about the Elizabeth Arden cream in relation to his mother, Princess Diana, he’s talking about his older brother having a larger bedroom than him at Balmoral. I think it was a massive strategic error. And I think reputationally for him, it was a massive turnoff. He he became a joke.
I don’t think that he thought that his book would be received that way. I think that he [music] thought it would be treated as a as a serious book explaining a really complicated character, but most people laughed at it. Most people lost sympathy. [music] They they read it and saw, “Wow, you you’ve had all these opportunities.
You’ve had all these mentors and you’re still moaning.” And the damaging thing was it was Harry’s words that that that [music] really that really damaged it for him. Once again, I think Harry thought by releasing spare and talking so openly in that book that he might provoke a response from his father or his brother or the royal family or Buckad and Palace.
But once again, there was no public statement. There was no public response from the royal family. There was nothing. He was completely cut off. >> So in early [music] 2023, at this point, the late queen had died just a few months earlier. Harry and Megan’s Netflix series had come out. Harry had released his book. The couple had fired all their big shots and we were basically waiting to see how it would all land.
And it was around this time that public perception really seemed to shift. It’s almost as if they have hit their tipping point. It’s an overshare. It’s too much. And we’re looking at a man complaining about titles and tiaras. It’s really hard to digest. So things started happening like it seemed lighthearted, but late night TV hosts were ribbing the couple in a way that they probably wouldn’t have before.
>> He grabbed me by the collar, >> ripping my necklace. >> That South Park episode came out where, you know, a couple that looked a lot like Harry and Megan were out there on their worldwide privacy tour. And the big problem with that is that the whole privacy thing echoed what the UK press had been accusing them of, which was hypocrisy when it came to their own privacy.
And suddenly this was a call coming from within the house because this was Hollywood. This is in the US which is [music] traditionally a lot more supportive of Harry and Megan. And there they were basically echoing that same criticism. America was quite sympathetic to [music] them as a couple. They’d sort of bought a lot of of Megan’s narrative that was presented in [music] the Oprah interview.
I think there was a lot of sympathy towards Harry post spare as well particularly in America where they they felt really quite sorry for him. But I think there was a sense that [music] that public opinion and that public sympathy and support for Harry and Megan was changing. It really felt like around that time that the floodgates had been opened and that Harry and Megan were a little bit more susceptible to this kind of criticism than they ever had been before, especially in the US.
So one of Harry and Megan’s biggest deals was the Spotify deal. And Megan of course released the Archetypes podcast which was a 12 episode series. [music] Less than a year after that this deal spectacularly fell apart. At first [music] it was just a mutual statement saying that they had they had parted ways and it seemed very amicable between Spotify and Harry and Megan.
But very quickly after that the narrative changed. All of a sudden there were sources from within Spotify’s [music] camp leaking stories that there was a perception that Harry and Megan were lazy. They hadn’t delivered on what they’d promised. But the crushing blow came when one of Spotify’s executives said on the record that they were effing grifters and then threatened in a joking way to release the story about the pictures that Harry was putting forward.
[music] Basically making a complete mockery of what they were suggesting they would produce. It was that [music] first really big in the very premium brand that we’d seen for Harry and Megan because the deal has not worked out. They were not able to deliver it seemed on what they’d promised and also suddenly people were laughing at their content [music] ideas.
To describe them as grifters, I mean was pretty devastating. I think the point is that it doesn’t matter if you are a member of the royal family or not. It might get you a meeting with Netflix and Spotify. In fact, it certainly will and it it’ll probably get you a pretty lucrative deal. But the proof is in the pudding. If you’re not delivering brilliant content, you’re not going to be recommissioned.
In late 2024, we then got the Hollywood Reporter article, which was hugely damaging because it really skewered Harry and Megan in a way that they had never before. And Hollywood is Megan’s turf. This is where she started her career. This is where she was the most popular. And suddenly they were reporting on things that had been reported in the UK press years earlier, alleging that staff were having a miserable time basically working for Harry and Megan.
And that is what had been said years earlier when they were working with palace staff. And this was hugely damaging for Harry and Megan because these are two camps on different sides of the world who have no common interest really, but [music] they’re saying things that are very similar. >> When they were in the UK, they had a reputation for being very difficult bosses.
There were a lot of staff left when they were working at the palace and there was allegations that Megan well there was allegations that Megan had bullied them. There was a bullying report ultimately set up and she was investigated. At the time many people thought that people at the palace maybe they would they just couldn’t you know deal [music] with with Megan because she was such a strong personality they’d never dealt with such an independent woman like Meghan Markle.
And there may have been a case there may have been a case that maybe the palace just wasn’t prepared for someone like Megan. However, [music] in America, they’ve had the same problem, the same allegations, the same complaints. I’ve lost count of the amount of stories that have found their way into the US press, um, which was usually quite favorable to Harry and Megan, where we’ve heard the same allegations that Megan has been Duchess difficult, um, that she’s been, you know, a tyrant in high heels, that Harry is just an enabler. These were
allegations from people that had worked with them or had been in organizations that had been put in rooms and put in conferences and and dealt with deals with them. These were people that had been working in some of the biggest media organizations in the USA and they lost a lot of staff. We’re talking [music] 15 20 good qualified people that took a couple of weeks, couple of months in most cases, had one look at Megan, looked at the way they were treating it and they disappeared.
Fast forward just a couple of months and came [music] the real killer blow. Vanity Fair released a thousands and thousands of word article about Harry and Megan. And [music] again, it touched on their difficulties with staff. There was some really, really damning allegations in there about staff having to quit, but not only that, having to go to therapy after working with Megan.
[music] And of course, the whole way through, Megan has denied these allegations of bullying in the workplace. But once again, it’s the same allegations being aired by a different group of people. [music] And all in all, it just is that overall look of their brand sort of in freef fall when it came to their reputation.
The Vanity Fair cover story was very telling about [music] where the cultural reference point in America gauged Megan and Harry. And that had shifted from quietly [music] supportive, watching patiently from the sidelines to doing this deep dive into their lives in Monteito, speaking to the people who had worked with them [music] and presenting a less than positive picture of this couple who clearly set their ambitions on becoming, you know, A-list Hollywood celebrity stroke royals, but were not punching where they should be. I mean significantly falling
short. They sort of came across as being less than successful in their commercial ventures. [music] Um certainly when it came to Archwell and their philanthropic work, you know, that hadn’t sort of met perhaps the expectations that we’d had of them and and a slight sort of resentment amongst the residents of Monteito that they brought attention to this quite little enclave [music] for for the wrong reasons as well.
In that Vanity Fair piece, they [music] also spoke to people who had been in those meeting rooms with Harry and Megan when they were pitching ideas about what to produce across their audio and their [music] Netflix deal and they were making fun of them in a lot of it. They they were pointing out that their ideas weren’t great.
>> Now, some of the ideas they had simply were farle. He had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, he come up with in an ideas meeting said, “Wouldn’t it be good to get Putin talk about his childhood?” I mean, farical suggestion. [music] So, I I think that they just weren’t very experienced. And the British media were pretty hostile straight away, but the American media took a good year, two years to sort of um start making their own mind up.
And when [music] they did, they’ve been pretty damning of Megan and Harry. They see them. I think after the Grifter comment, they started to be seen as sort of seeless celebrities. So I think the it just shows the narrative has shifted [music] in a country where you know money talks and if you don’t deliver what you wanted you you soon downgraded and they’ve been downgraded.
>> Harry and Megan just seemed completely stuck because now 5 years on when you look at it the Harry and Megan Netflix series was a huge commercial success whether you love them or hate them people were watching it. It rated massive massive numbers. But then when they move away from those topics of the royal family which we’ve seen with Harry’s polo series, Live to Lead, Heart of Invictus, there was a show that Megan was working on, an animated series which was axe before it even got off the ground. None of these have landed
anywhere near the same way. So as much as I’m sure they would like to now get away from the royal narrative, the reality is that’s been their value the whole way through. And the people that are signing them can see that as well. Well, if you go to America and you are a bit of an enigma and then you decide to tell all of your secrets in one blur, it’s almost like they vomited on a page.
You know, they’ve given everything they could possibly give in the first year. There’s nothing left. There’s no secrets. There’s no mystique. Everything that they had to to barter with, they’ve given. So, what what’s left? And it’s clear they’re no longer part of the party. They desperately want to be part of the party and be, you know, come to certain events, etc.
, but they’re not really invited because nobody trusts them on this side of the fence. So therefore, what have they got on the other side of the fence in America to barter with? Nothing. Once you’ve slagged off the royal family to the extent that they did, and once they became clearly outcasts of the royal family, their image becomes slightly tarnished.
And so aists are slightly worried about becoming tarnished with their image. >> I think that the only way that Harry and Megan have been able to attempt [music] to move forward and out of this negative post royal narrative is to divide their brand a little. Initially, it was everything together. We all saw them turning up for every event together.
We saw them launching these projects [music] together. But now I think they’ve realized over the last 18 months or so that their value now needs to be separate so that they can try to carve out new paths that are not related to all of the dramas of the royal life. We used to [music] have angry Harry and Megan trying to settle scores with the UK and the UK media [music] and the royal family.
They knew that going forward that would not work. They could not have a successful career with TV shows and documentaries and be on red carpets and be popular if they were seen as angry [music] and moaning. Megan does not moan about the royal family anymore because she knows that damages her reputation. [music] So, they took a bit of time off.
We didn’t hear anything from them for 6 to 9 months. And then suddenly in 2025, Bosch Megan appeared on Instagram. Something she said she would never do. And what [music] came next was Megan portraying herself as an entrepreneur, a businesswoman. [music] It was somebody who was saying, “I’ve put the royal family behind me.
I’m now this successful business woman.” >> So, I want to start by saying thank you very much for just how gracious [music] you’ve all been and welcoming. >> I think there is a sense that after a rocky few years, they’ve actually landed. They found their stride. >> [music] >> And I think actually with that come a lot of confidence, but they’ve got to come up with original [music] content.
And there is absolutely a sense both here in the UK and over in America that they cannot keep revisiting [music] old ground. It has to be about moving forwards. Now, Harry and Megan now have to succeed. It’s been 5 years since they left royal [music] life. I think that no one would have expected it would take them as long as it has to find their footing.
I think there’s been a lot of missteps along [music] the way. And it does seem now that they have a strategy in place, which is to move forward and out of all of that toxic negativity of the past. But it is vital that [music] they make this stuff stick. They will not get a lot more chances to rebrand and relaunch.
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At a certain point, the public gets tired of having new versions of them unveiled. >> I think when Megan does her own thing, it’s very slick, very professional. A lot of Brits don’t like it cuz she’s too slick, but she does an effective job. There’s always a bit of an [music] edge when Harry’s on it because he’s almost apologetic for being there and she doesn’t she doesn’t really need that.
>> Where’s Harry? What’s he doing? I’m told [music] that he has meetings. He’s got patronages. There’s not many of them. He’s got this job at better up. We don’t hear anything about [music] that. Harry always used to moan. You know, he was always in the shadow of his older brother, Prince William, and that he was the spare.
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