In 1978 when Princess Margaret put down her ivory cigarette holder long enough to sign the paperwork to end her marriage to the Earl of Snowdon, the world got very excited about how big a deal it was that a princess was getting divorced. (Cue the ‘end times’ mood music from the right.)
Truth be told, the royal family has been getting up to the same thing, or trying to, since Henry VIII decided to dump Catherine of Aragon. A real shout out to George IV who tied the British House of Lords up for months trying to legally dump his wife Caroline of Brunswick in 1820. Charmer!
Last year, rumours of a new royal split started to trickle out from the House of Montecito. Was everything quite okay with Prince Harry and Meghan the Duke and Duchess of Sussex?
Their increasingly dour faces didn’t help, along with claims that Harry sometimes took himself off to a nearby hotel on his lonesome. As the Telegraph reported in May, “The omens are bad”.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attend Invictus Games Vancouver Whistlers 2025’s One Year To Go Winter Training Camp on February 14, 2024 in Canada. Picture: Andrew Chin/Getty Images
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attend Invictus Games Vancouver Whistlers 2025’s One Year To Go Winter Training Camp on February 14, 2024 in Canada. Picture: Andrew Chin/Getty Images
Now, comes fresh news from the snowy slopes of Canada, confirming that a major Sussex change is afoot – the couple are indeed splitting. Professionally, that is.
The last week has seen both Harry and Meghan make big announcements, with a new business deal in the bag and a big new TV interview beamed around the world. However, where these latest developments differ is that each only included one half of the formerly inseparable professional twosome.
Mark the time, note the date. Harry and Meghan Inc. is officially kaput.
First, hitherto little known podcast company Lemonada Media made global headlines after it was revealed that Meghan – and only Meghan – had joined their stable of talent.
While both Sussexes were hired by Spotify way back in 2020, this time around only the former Suits star got her name up in lights on industry bible Deadline.
So what of her other half?
Last week the couple was in Whistler for a series of promotional events for the 2025 Invictus Games during which Harry gave an interview to Good Morning America (GMA) – and only Harry.
While the duke has tended to undertake Invictus media outings solo, this being his baby and all, these two outings, Lemonada and GMA, one after another, really drives home that Harry and Meghan have truly divvied up their working lives and never the twain shall meet.
At some point in the last year, the couple seems to have built a sort of professional Berlin Wall down the middle of their working lives.
Remember way back when in March 2020 when the duke and duchess decided to go the full Stars and Stripes? They were signing so many deals together such that I’m pretty sure they invested in matching ceremonial Mont Blancs. Harry Walker Agency, Netflix, Spotify, and Wall Street asset manager Ethic all got both the ‘salt and pepper shakers’ that were Harry and Meghan. (Who can forget when Meghan told The Cut in 2022 “We’re like salt and pepper. We always move together”?)
Meghan and Harry appear to have divvied up their work tasks and each gone solo. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation
Meghan and Harry appear to have divvied up their work tasks and each gone solo. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation
However, the ground has clearly shifted. The start of 2023 saw Harry release his super-sized serve of feelings, Spare and undertake the attendant publicity onslaught solo, but hey. It was his tale, his truth, his journey. Meghan going AWOL from his side seemed like a temporary recalibration.
But then came … the diverging. The last nine months have seen Harry and Meghan drift off on different work paths, with the duchess joining the books of the biggest of Hollywood whales, agents WME in April and Harry learning how to fix a shed. (OK, that is pure speculation but what else has he been doing?)
Their Spotify deal is long since dead and buried and their Netflix deal is looking increasingly like it’s about to get its last rites.
Earlier this month Netflix head of content Bela Bajaria dialled up the pep, saying that the Sussexes “actually have, like a bunch in development” including “a movie, a TV series and a couple of unscripted shows”. But, like, peppy PR cheerleading does not a successful career necessarily make.
Since then, a Hollywood source with knowledge of the situation has told the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff, the Netflix deal is a dead duck.
“There is an across-the-board acknowledgment that Netflix will want to get out of, or scale down further, the deal at the earliest contractual opportunity.”
And if Netflix goes, that’s the final shared Sussex domino. If the couple are not busy brainstorming à deux to make all that “inspirational” and ‘hopeful’ programming they originally promised us, then their work divorce will be official.
(They still have their Archewell charity which, while doing great stuff, is hardly making waves or inroads or doing anything that might impress Bono.)
Harry and Meghan seen working away in their Netflix docuseries. Picture: Netflix
Harry and Meghan seen working away in their Netflix docuseries. Picture: Netflix
Take Netflix off the table, and the duke and duchess face wholly separate paths.
Meghan, one would imagine, would continue to pursue whatever WME mastermind Ari Emanuel has been cooking up, though this association has so far borne no fruit aside from the Lemonada deal. There will be some new podcast at some stage though don’t hold your breath. Spotify had to wait nearly two years for the duchess to get Archetypes to air.
For much of last year there has been continued noise about Meghan (any second now!) launching some sort of online business or website, all of which has come to naught. So too her staging a return to Instagram. Still nothing.
At least Meghan has irons in the fire. What the dickens will the self-exiled duke actually do with himself in the years to come?
The Invictus Games remains a clear cut, ring-a-ding success story but aside from that, I’m not sure what he is going to do with this mornings and his afternoons and all the other working hours of the day while Meghan is off ideating in the other room.
There have previously been claims that he has a documentary about conservation in Africa possibly in the works, what with Harry having served for years as the president then joining the board of the conservation group African Parks. But last month a series of reports levelled stunningly horrific claims of rape, torture and abuse against the armed guards of African Parks. Hard to make the alleged violent physical and sexual assault of the Baka people by African Parks rangers into a bit of upbeat middlebrow programming isn’t it?
Prince Harry in Malawi during a tour of Africa on September 29, 2019. Picture: Dominic Lipinski – Pool /Getty Images
Prince Harry in Malawi during a tour of Africa on September 29, 2019. Picture: Dominic Lipinski – Pool /Getty Images
A year on, Penguin Random House hasn’t popped up to announce they want the duke to write them another bestseller and he does not seem to have done anything in his guise as Chief Impact Office of billion dollar coaching start up Better Up since March last year.
(Though last August, the company’s staffers staged a revolt after a round of lay-offs and told the Daily Beast that, day to day, the Duke of Sussex did “zero things” for the company and calling him “a distraction”.)
For Harry, the phone, as far as is publicly known, is not exactly ringing off the hook.
Where does that leave us? Two people who seem to have given up on trying to sell themselves to corporate powerhouses and the world as a package deal and who have now decoupled. The band will not be getting back together.
(One assumes they are still physically working side-by-side at their shared desk, the unbidden star of Harry & Meghan and countless Zoom outings.)
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This all applies to their 9-5 lives, however come 5.01pm, release the doves. On Valentine’s Day the duke and duchess were photographed hand-in-hand enjoying a romantic dinner at high end Italian joint, Il Caminetto, because nothing says eternal and everlasting love like a few shared starters and an extra glass of vino.
How will post ‘divorce’ Harry and Meghan fare out there in the cold, hard working world? Their two roads might have diverged in a wood (with apologies to Robert Frost) but they still have a mortgage to pay. Ari better work his magic
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.