Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: The excuses are gone - can the Sussexes ever make a comeback?

The most controversial of royal couples have experienced a year of seeming setbacks. Photo / Getty Images

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are no strangers to criticism. Even so, a takedown from The Hollywood Reporter would have hurt. The magazine, the trade bible in the world of film, television and showbusiness, has included the couple on their annual “winners and losers” list for 2023. They were not on the right side.

“In 2020, the royal duo fled a life of ceremonial public service to cash in their celebrity status in the States,” its citation as one of the year’s losers read. “But after a whiny Netflix documentary, a whiny biography (Spare - even the title is a pouty gripe) and an inert podcast, the Harry and Meghan brand swelled into a sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped - and South Park was the pin.”

The couple had, the magazine said, been the subject of “scorn and mockery”.

It is an inauspicious end to a year in which Prince Harry and Meghan initially appeared to have the world at their feet.

Off the back of their own six-part Netflix documentary, the start of 2023 looked to be the year of the Sussexes. The royal family and global media waited with bated breath to hear what was in Prince Harry’s memoir. Who else had the future of the monarchy resting so precariously in their hands?

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (from left), Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, leave after attending Christmas Day Church service at the Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham estate on December 25, 2018 in King's Lynn, England. Photo / Getty Images

Reconciliation rumours

There was talk in Sussex circles of a new era in which they would draw a line under reliving their unhappy years in Britain and set out afresh in America. The Invictus Games - always a huge boost for Prince Harry - was in the diary, the Netflix and Spotify deals were still ticking along, and their Christmas card had featured a picture of them accepting a human rights award for their “bravery” in addressing racial justice and mental health issues.

Then, ahead of Prince Harry’s memoir in January 2023, there were even growing mutterings of “reconciliation”: once the Sussexes had got things off their chests, it was thought, they could set about forgiving and forgetting.

A source close to the Sussexes said the book would be a “means of setting himself free” for Prince Harry. Tell his truth, the theory went, “and then he can move on”.

Twelve months later, and all but their most ardent supporters could be forgiven for wondering: how did it all go wrong?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Family Guy. Photo / Fox

The Spotify deal has been cancelled, the promise of their Netflix productions has stalled, and their Archewell Foundation donations have dropped by US$11 million ($17.6 million) in a year. Bill Simmons, the head of podcast innovation and monetisation at Spotify, added insult to injury by calling the Sussexes “f***g grifters”.

Claims of a New York paparazzi car chase, described at the time as “near catastrophic”, were energetically picked apart. An unfortunate set of photographs of Prince Harry, Meghan and her mother Doria arriving at an awards show through an underground rental car office saw them gain the unflattering social media nickname of the “Car Parkles”.

Strangely, in America it was a sketch from adult cartoon South Park which seems to have cut through with an episode titled “The Worldwide Privacy Tour”.

Even the golden glow of Invictus, Prince Harry’s greatest legacy project, was dimmed, with the departure of two executives from the winter games.

Endgame author Omid Scobie. Photo / ITV

Back on the showbiz circuit?

A red carpet appearance for the Duchess, attending Variety magazine’s Power of Women evening, saw her return to her acting roots, chatting cheerfully to roving reporters about the success of her former Netflix show Suits.

“Is that what this was all for?” one former palace source said incredulously at the time. “All this drama, leaving the royal family for a life of service, just to be back on the showbiz circuit again?”

The idea of reconciliation reared its head again with a curious briefing claiming the Sussex family would accept an invitation to the royal family Christmas at Sandringham, though none was forthcoming.

And then, days later, that was flattened by the publication of Endgame, the biography of the royal family from author Omid Scobie. Widely considered as a Sussex sympathiser, despite regularly defending himself against accusations of being “Meghan’s mouthpiece”, Scobie’s account echoed much of what Harry and Meghan said in their own interviews but went further to heavily criticise their British family.

Kate has been described as "cold" in the past by the Sussexes. Photo / AP

Prince William was painted as jealous and angry, the Princess of Wales as a cold “Stepford-like” wife, and the King incompetent.

No amount of denials about collaboration could separate the Sussexes from the book in the public imagination.

“The credibility of the Sussexes now seems somehow linked to the credibility of Omid Scobie,” said one observer. “The more ridiculous the book seems, the more biased it sounds, the more fuss there is about who said what in which translation, the less people will believe the claims in it.”

Even the most powerful accusations, including the accidental naming of members of the royal family with “unconscious bias”, will not work in the Sussexes’ favour, another expert believes.

Prince Harry's book on display in a book store on January 22, 2023 in Bath, England. Photo / Getty Images

Royal rift

“It takes away the power of their own story,” he says. “If and when they want to talk about it themselves, the public will feel they’ve heard it all before.”

The relationship with the royal family back in Britain is at an all-time low, with Princes William and Harry seemingly having no intention of speaking again.

Shortly after the Hollywood Reporter pronouncement, Forbes, the respected US business magazine, called the Sussexes a “compelling case study for Harvard Business School on the ultimate brand buzz failure”. A columnist advised readers on how to “avoid Harry and Meghan’s all buzz and no buyers strategy when building a brand”.

A second article urged the Prince to stop focusing on a “fading career as a bon vivant philanthropist and B-list celebrity”, and choose not to “continue pursuing an increasingly pointless life of serving as an irrelevant hood ornament for good causes”.

For Mark Borkowski, a publicist and media strategist who has followed the Sussexes’ launch in America closely, the couple have yet to find the right path to turn the momentum of their fame into long-term careers.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend the cycling medal ceremony at the Cycling Track during day six of the Invictus Games Düsseldorf 2023. Photo / Getty Images

The companies they have signed with, he points out, have “algorithms at their fingertips” to measure the success of their programmes and podcasts, with the Sussexes now having to deliver to earn their “top dollar”.

“They were overhyped,” says Borkowski. “Hollywood is fickle. When you’re making money, everyone loves you. If you’re not making money, if there’s negativity around you, you turn quite toxic.

“What they did was generate hype and made a lot of promises that haven’t been delivered.

“The one thing Hollywood and America doesn’t like is too much negativity. Attacking the royal family hasn’t gone down well, so they’ve got to come up with a new strategy.”

Friends of the Sussexes say they have not been paying attention to Endgame claims or the media negativity and are happy getting on with life with their young family.

"She's very chilled and seems happy to just sit there while Archie is running around like crazy." Photo / Netflix

Planning for the future

There are plans afoot for “more of a heavy focus on fictional, scripted content”, and they are adapting romantic novel Meet Me at the Lake - which has parallels to their own love story, including one character who lost a parent in a car crash - for television.

Meghan has said they have “exciting things on the slate”. “Things that make people feel - I was going to say ‘good’, but it’s more than that, things that make people feel something, right?” she said on the red carpet in November.

There is also a mysterious off-screen project said to be due in the new year and rumoured to be a business venture along the lines of Meghan’s old lifestyle blog The Tig.

Scobie has described it as “something more accessible... something rooted in her love of details, curating, hosting, life’s simple pleasures, and family”.

Meghan Markle’s lifestyle blog The Tig was shut down when she became engaged to her now-husband Prince Harry in 2017. Photo / The Tig

Prince Harry has just chalked up one major win in his own area of interest: his crusade to right the wrongs of the British tabloid press.

On Friday, Britain’s High Court awarded him a partial victory in his landmark claim against Mirror Newspaper Groups, ruling his phone was probably hacked “to a modest extent” and awarding him £140,600 ($285,598) damages.

“I’ve been told that slaying dragons will get you burned,” he said via his lawyer afterwards.

“But in light of today’s victory and the importance of doing what is needed for a free and honest press - it’s a worthwhile price to pay. The mission continues.”

He will be buoyed by the result, and bounce with renewed confidence into the next case.

Tellingly, three weeks ago, sources close to the Sussexes told People magazine that the couple are “embarking on a total system reboot”.

“They know of their supposed failures and how it’s viewed, but they have almost gone more tech than Hollywood. Fail big and all that,” they said. “They have swapped in and out all sorts of projects and people and are embarking on a total system reboot.”

The irony is that while the world seems to complain about hearing too much from them, it also cannot stop watching. They remain some of the world’s most read-about celebrities.

The challenge they now face is that the excuses are gone. No longer thwarted by men in grey suits, hemmed in by palace protocol, reliant on the British press he reviles and forced to dim their light by a jealous institution, the Sussexes must stand on their own two feet.