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 …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
