When Meghan Markle and her husband Prince Harry chose to “step back” from their work with the British royal family in 2020, they made their real intentions obvious as they cashed in. Soon after saying sayonara to the dying Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II, Harry and Meghan brokered a $20 million deal from Spotify, a $100 million deal from Netflix, and a $40 million deal from Penguin Random House.
How did the couple spend the stakes of nearly $200 million over the course of three years? Meghan hammered out fewer than 12 hours total of her one-season podcast, "Archetypes," on Spotify, and the couple published fewer than six hours of a Kardashian-style docuseries on Netflix. (Critics have scored it an abysmal 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences gave it an appalling 19%.) The most lucrative product put to market by the couple is Harry’s ghostwritten memoir, which was critically panned but sold 3.2 million copies worldwide in its first week.
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But that’s it. During three years of perpetual unemployment, these two jokers came out with fewer than 18 hours of total published video and audio content and 416 pages, actually written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. As the audiobook clocked in at 15 hours, that's a cumulative 33 hours worth of content (or a day and a half). Naturally, it comes as little surprise that the tech giants bankrolling Harry and Meghan’s mansion in Montecito, California, are balking and bailing on the couple.
Spotify has dumped its deal with the couple, leaking to the Wall Street Journal that the pair’s inability to meet productivity benchmarks means they won’t receive the full payout brokered back in 2020.
“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation,” Spotify’s Head of Podcast Innovation and Monetization Bill Simmons said. “‘The F***ing Grifters.’ That’s the podcast we should have launched with them.”
Now the Sun reports that Netflix is souring on the Sussexes.
“There is a less friendly attitude from some at the top,” a source to the British tabloid said. “The feeling is that the lemon has been fully squeezed.”
Baseless rumors, likely from Harry and Meghan’s camp itself, claimed that Meghan was in talks to become the new face of Dior, but within days, the fashion house denied ever even considering the former actress as a brand ambassador.
There’s the harsh creative reality that Harry and Meghan had exactly one card to play, and they’ve already played it. The couple already burned London Bridge down to the ground, selling every salacious detail about Harry’s once-beloved family for profit, and frankly, the details weren’t that shocking. The juice is no longer worth the squeeze because, frankly, there isn’t any left.
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But then there’s the economic reality of then versus now. In 2020, the Federal Reserve had kept borrowing costs at effectively zero for over a decade, and quantitative easing was a tide that lifted all boats, especially in equities markets. The Nasdaq 100 had nearly a 50% return in 2020, the second-highest rate of return since the start of the country, so a company like Netflix literally had money to burn and then some. Why wouldn’t they have gambled in the hopes that Harry and Meghan would work a little harder in the United States than they did across the pond?
Of all the industries influenced by the Fed’s monetary tightening, Hollywood celebrities now dependent on Big Tech and the insatiable demands of its investors may be the hardest hit. And “f***ing grifters” who refuse to work can no longer expect free lunches bankrolled by taxpayers and Uncle Sam.