While Meghan Markle joined Oprah Winfrey and Netflix boss Ted Sarandos last weekend to headline the star-studded opening of a friend’s new bookstore near their hometown of Montecito, she and Prince Harry continue to struggle to establish themselves as Hollywood power players.
One reason for their professional troubles is that Meghan is “terrible” to work for and the couple can’t hang onto staff. That’s according to an “unsparing” portrait of the former TV actor in The Hollywood Reporter, one of the entertainment industry’s leading trade publications. The outlet’s Rambling Reporter column begins with an extensive list of executives who have quit working for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, before and after their dramatic 2020 exit from royal life in the U.K. and their move to California.
“Why’d they all leave? What explains the churn?” asks the column, before quoting a source close to the couple.
“Everyone’s terrified of Meghan,” the source told the column about the former “Suits” star. “She belittles people, she doesn’t take advice. They’re both poor decision-makers, they change their minds frequently. Harry is a very, very charming person — no airs at all — but he’s very much an enabler. And she’s just terrible.”
Uh-oh.
PALENQUE, COLOMBIA – AUGUST 17: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex are seen in the streets of San Basilio de Palenque during a visit around Colombia on August 17, 2024 in Cartagena, Colombia. (Photo by Vizzor Image/Getty Images)
While the column said that Meghan and Harry’s current spokesperson declined to comment, this view of their professional troubles is nothing new. In just the past week, it was reported that Meghan may be delayed in launching her American Riviera Orchard (AOR) luxury lifestyle brand, due to a puzzling trademark “blunder” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as Page Six said.
Meanwhile, the Puck newsletter recently reported that Netflix was “not expected” to renew the splashy, five-year $100 million contract it signed with the exiled royals in 2020 — despite Sarandos’ presence at the gala opening of the Godmothers bookstore in Santa Barbara County over the weekend.
This week, Meghan, Harry and Netflix released a trailer for the couple’s latest project, “Polo,” a documentary coming in December about Harry’s beloved sport of polo. But the Puck report also said that the streaming service didn’t expect this documentary about such an elite pastime, or Meghan’s supposedly forthcoming cooking show, to “connect” with audiences. That is, not in the same way that their 2022 docuseries “Harry and Meghan” connected with audiences, though critics have said it only achieved blockbuster status because the couple dished dirt about the British royal family.
Nearly a year ago, The Hollywood Reporter listed Meghan and Harry among the town’s “Biggest Losers” in a special end-of-2023 report, writing that they had “fled a life of ceremonial public service to cash in on their celebrity status in America.”
But after their “whiny” Netflix docuseries, Harry’s “whiny” 2023 memoir “Spare” and Meghan’s “inert” 12-episode “Archetypes” podcast for Spotify, the couple’s brand “swelled into a sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped,” The Hollywood Reporter continued. That comeuppance first came with “South Park’s” “savage” spoof of them in early 2023, followed by Spotify ending its $20 million deal with the couple and their Archewell production company, with a top Spotify executive labeling the duo “(expletive) grifters.”
Harry and Meghan were ridiculed in an episode of the animated comedy “South Park.” (Comedy Central)
Meanwhile, The Wrap, another industry publication, similarly reported earlier this year that the Sussexes had “worn out their welcome” in Hollywood. Instead, the British prince and his American wife aggravated “a long list of exhausted agents, producers and other industry veterans” with their “iron-fisted desire for control, combined with a lack of experience.”
Now comes this new report by The Hollywood Reporter, which appeared to be spurred by news that Meghan and Harry had “chewed up yet another American adviser.”
That adviser was Josh Kettler, a Santa Barbara-based consultant who had been been serving as the couple’s chief of staff until he reportedly resigned in August, after just three months on the job, The Hollywood Reporter column explained. Kettler’s announced departure occurred shortly before Meghan and Harry headed to Colombia for a four-day “quasi-royal” visit that was mired in controversy over its purpose and its costs to that nation’s government.
The Hollywood Reporter said that Kettler is the latest member “of the ever-expanding ‘Sussex Survivors Club,’ as some former employees have taken to calling themselves.”
Among other departed “Survivors,” the column lists their global press secretary, their PR head, Meghan’s private secretary, the head of their Archewell charity foundation and their production company’s COO, content chief and top marketing officer.
TOPSHOT – Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Britain’s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex return in a horse-drawn carriage after attending the Queen’s Birthday Parade, ‘Trooping the Colour’ on Horseguards parade in London on June 9, 2018.The ceremony of Trooping the Colour is believed to have first been performed during the reign of King Charles II. In 1748, it was decided that the parade would be used to mark the official birthday of the Sovereign. More than 600 guardsmen and cavalry make up the parade, a celebration of the Sovereign’s official birthday, although the Queen’s actual birthday is on 21 April. / AFP PHOTO / Niklas HALLENNIKLAS HALLEN/AFP/Getty Images
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Meghan’s reputation for being a “difficult” boss goes back to her brief stint as a member of the British royal establishment, as The Hollywood Reporter column said. In 2018, her treatment of two royal aides prompted Buckingham Palace to launch an investigation of her alleged “bullying behavior.” Meghan denounced the effort as a “calculated smear campaign” ahead of her and Harry’s 2021 interview with Winfrey, and the results of the palace inquiry have never been made public.
But some of this alleged behavior has apparently continued stateside, with The Hollywood Reporter column saying that she has become known for “noisy tantrums and angry 5 a.m. emails.”
“She’s absolutely relentless,” a source told The Hollywood Reporter. “She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I’ve watched her reduce grown men to tears.”
The Hollywood Reporter column said that his unflattering portrait of Meghan is in marked contrast with the way she tries to present herself in public, including when she and Harry visited a school in Colombia and participated in a panel discussion on ending cyber-bullying and promoting a safer, kinder environment for young people using social media, as Harper’s Bazaar reported.
While in Colombia, Meghan also talked about fostering an attitude of gratitude, which has allowed her to begin a new “chapter of joy” in her life, The Hollywood Reporter column said. “If you’re going to be grateful for your life, you have to be grateful for all aspects of it,” Meghan said.
In the past, Meghan’s response to the “Duchess Difficult” complaints has been to portray herself as a smart, talented ambitious woman who is being unfairly judged by sexist cultural standards. The Hollywood Reporter column cited one of her Archetypes episodes, in which she overcame her fear about asserting herself in professional situations.
“Just say what it is that you need,” Meghan was quoted as saying. “You’re allowed to set a boundary. You’re allowed to be clear, it doesn’t make you demanding. It doesn’t make you difficult, it makes you clear.”