Prince Harry in his Netflix documentary with Meghan. Photo / Netflix
OPINION:
Henry VIII is not only known for his penchant for acquiring (and getting rid) of wives but for going to war too. At various points, he took on the Dutch, some of the Irish and the Scots, and waged three wars against the French over 35 years leaving you to wonder how he even found time to do any wooing.
Basically, he was willing to pick fights.
Someone should have told him that stirring up the trouble can come at a serious cost, a lesson that our current royal Henry, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, could probably do with learning.
On Thursday night, the release of the first volume of he and wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix documentary landed like a glossy depth charge.
With the first three episodes now available for your viewing, ahem, pleasure the most obvious and immediate outcome of the show would seem to be war. War with the royal family and war with the British press.
Like sloshing 50-year-old Laprohaig on an open flame, something his great-aunt Princess Margaret probably accidentally did once or twice, the Sussexes’ series amounts to what has only been read far as positively combustible stuff (Actually Margaret was a Famous Grouse gal, but you get the idea.)
In Harry & Meghan, the UK media comes in for a pasting, their multitudinous sins of the ‘80s and ‘90s somehow conflated with the present, while Buckingham Palace and all who sail within her are accused of looking down on Meg because she was an actress. (Imagine all those chinless faces when they found out about her Deal or No Deal stint …)
Not only that, Harry explains, but there is a “huge level of unconscious bias” inside the royal family and The Firm ignored the racist abuse she was facing.
Fleet Street has responded exactly how you would expect, getting out their biggest and shoutiest fonts while the Palace has pushed back against the assertion they refused to take part in the show. (A betting woman would predict a weekend of feature-length stories full of “royal sources” cropping in what would be the usual sort of guerrilla campaign.)
Like Henry deciding he wanted Calais back, here we are again: accusations flying and emotions running high.
So, I think there is only one question that needs to be asked: Was it worth it for the Sussexes?
Not only doing the show but also upping sticks and moving their collection of plush sofas halfway across the world to get away from his family?
Oh yes sure, there is the money part here. It has been regularly reported that their deal with the streaming giant is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $153 million and the Duke and Duchess’ bank accounts are now likely much fatter thanks to Netflix’s deep pockets.
But there is oh-so-much on the other side of the ledger here. At what cost has Harry’s “freedom” and ability to share his “truth” come?
Most obviously, there is his family. Relations between Harry and his father King Charles and brother Prince William are generally reported to be about as frosty as a freezer full of forgotten, iced-up Paddle Pops.
You only have to look at the fact that it has not been confirmed that the King’s younger son and his wife will be attending his coronation to see how bad things are.
Then there are the Duke’s friends. In Harry & Meghan, we are presented with a steady stream of Meghan-istas, a dedicated coterie of supporters who sing her praises with the zeal of someone in a saffron robe.
What of poor old Aitch (as Meg calls him) then? The only friend the production team seems to have been able to find that was specifically a Harry pal is an old Etonian simply labelled “Nicky” who looks like he could be a Four Weddings-era Hugh Grant impersonator.
Even then, the mysterious Nicky only really crops up to talk about meeting Harry at Eton aged 13 (“we were actually in the rooms next door to each other, so we could lean out the window and talk after lights out”) and the overwhelming media presence (“day one we left the house to a scrum, nothing I’d ever seen, of flashing lights and the media all there”).
That none of Harry’s former crew were either approached or willing to go in to bat for him on camera does not bode well for him having a robust network of longtime confidants.
Then there is the question of Harry and Meghan’s careers.
So far, they have not built much of a reputation for creative output. Despite signing an estimated $200-million plus in deals with Netflix, Spotify, and Penguin Random House, not to mention a billion-dollar Silicon Valley “start-up” and a Wall Street investment firm, the only work they have turned out aside from the doco are her children’s book and podcast series Archetypes.
Nor have they quite managed to really cement themselves as leading philanthropic forces in their new homeland.
Today, what are the Sussexes known for? As dynamic forces who are changing attitudes and laws à la his mother Diana, Princess of Wales who single-handedly revolutionised public feeling about Aids and leprosy, broke taboos about eating disorders and managed to force the world to get their act together on landmines?
Hardly. The two people are best known for their positively Cromwellian enthusiasm for taking apart the monarchy brick by brick on camera.
This series will only cement the fact that Harry and Meghan have built their post-palace public identity in opposition to the royal family and not for their own personal achievements or humanitarian work.
Watching the doco, I could not help wondering about what exactly is the point of this lengthy, expensive exercise. I really don’t think that it will change anyone’s heart or mind. Those who view the Sussexes as brave souls who have spoken truth to power and stood up to a racist institution will only applaud louder and those people who think they have betrayed his family and the values of the late Queen will simply be even more incensed.
Harry & Meghan might humanise the duo but I don’t think it will particularly move the needle in terms of public perception of them.
In having agreed to do this doco they run the danger, in having willingly turned their life into small-screen fare, of being reduced to little more than celebrities in the eyes of the world.
There are other risks here too, such as audience fatigue. Harry and Meghan have clearly been put through the ringer but does their journey deserve six hours of high-definition retelling? (Whole genocides get less airtime.) How much more of the victim narrative can audiences take before we start reaching for the Hendricks?
Yes, Harry and Meghan have suffered, but how much capacity does anyone has left to dole out sympathy to two very wealthy people who are in good health?
More than six million families worldwide have lost a loved one to Covid; the images from Ukraine are heartbreaking, in the UK food banks are struggling to cope and millions of families won’t be able to afford to heat their homes this winter.
In opening themselves up to the cameras, in “letting the light in”, as that great bit of Victorian punditry goes, to their private lives at length, will there come to an inflection point when curiosity about them drops off (and viewers) and exhaustion and boredom kicks in?
Nor do I think their chances of them getting a second equally vast Netflix deal is particularly high given that their cupboard of family revelations and secrets must be about bare by now. (Or at least surely will be after Harry’s memoir, the spikily-named Spare, is released in early January.) Having pointed fingers and criticised the royal family to the nth degree, is Netflix going to keep ponying up huge sums of money so they can have Harry host a baking competition or for Meghan to star in Squid Game part four?
So, money aside, has this all been worth it for Harry and Meghan? The family feuding, the TV revelation-dishing, that swathes of British citizenry are possibly comparing pitchforks as I type, and the geographic, emotional and cultural chasm that would seem to exist between the Duke and his former life?
Only time, and very possibly Netflix’s cameras, will tell.
New York Times: Men are leaving fiction reading behind. Some people want to change that.