Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Are ‘Not Doing Well’ and ‘Treading Water’ With Netflix, Commentator Claims
When they announced they were stepping down from royal duties in 2020, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, said that they would work to become “financially independent.”
The duo signed multi-million deals with Spotify and Netflix when they moved to the U.S. But in 2023, and after just one season of Meghan’s Archetypes podcast, Spotify canceled the program and ended its partnership with the couple. Since then, there have been rumblings about whether Netflix would pull the plug on its deal with the Sussexes. Now, a royal expert is explaining why that deal is in jeopardy if the duke and duchess “don’t start producing the goods.”
Netflix initially said it wouldn’t drop the Sussexes after Spotify did
When Spotify did not renew Meghan’s podcast and axed their deal, Netflix was approached for comment about whether it planned to do the same.
A spokesperson for the company told People at the time that the pair’s content creation company, Archewell Productions, is currently working on several projects with the streaming service saying: “We value our partnership with Archewell Productions. Harry & Meghan was Netflix’s biggest documentary debut ever, and we’ll continue to work together on a number of projects.”
Following the success of the Harry & Meghan docuseries, the Sussexes released two follow-up projects, the documentaries Live to Lead and Heart of Invictus. Neither generated much buzz and failed to crack Netflix’s Top 10.
Why expert says Meghan and Harry are just ‘treading water’ with Netflix now
Because the duke and duchess haven’t been able to replicate the success of Harry & Meghan and don’t seem to be garnering a ton of interest when they’re not dishing on the royal family, commentator Richard Fitzwilliams believes they’re “expendable.”
“There is little doubt the Sussexes are not doing particularly well. They are treading water at the moment,” he told Express. “The royal family has cut them off, and it’s perfectly obvious why. The whole thing was proven to be a very bad idea.
“They have so far not done anything of real success, bar the six-hour documentary Harry and Meghan, which many found hypocritical because they were obsessed with privacy, though they will reportedly be adapting the romantic novel Meet Me At The Lake. So, depending on what success they have, they could lose the contract.”
He added: “When The Crown has finished, Netflix might find them more expendable. It ends in December, but there are question marks as they haven’t given any real clues as to what they plan to do in the future. There is an argument about them being a one-trick pony — what can they actually achieve that they haven’t before? We are yet to see signs of that. The Crown is hugely high profile and very important to Netflix but is soon ending. To have two royals under contract gave them a cachet, and the $100 million payment is pivotal to the Sussexes.”
