Has Hollywood turned on the Sussexes? Industry bigwigs reveal all

The beautiful and the powerful of Hollywood circulated over ginger margaritas and spicy tuna bites on the rooftop of the Waldorf Astoria after the Emmy awards on Sunday night.

Guests included A-listers such as Kevin Costner, Brie Larson and Javier Bardem, influential bosses like David Zaslav of Warners, and rising stars including the actress Eve Hewson – Bono’s daughter.

The party was thrown by WME, the Hollywood talent agency whose biggest boss, Ari Emanuel, is the patron of all who gathered there. He out-clouted everyone present, and considering that last year he was paid $65 million (£49 million), he out-earns most of them, too.

Missing, though, was one of Emanuel’s most famous ­clients, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. She signed with him in April 2023 in what seemed to be a certain harbinger of some big-ticket commercial tie-ups and maybe more deals in entertainment to go alongside her ­existing Netflix gig. But – just three days after a ­brutal take-down in the usually placid industry bible The Hollywood Reporter, which labelled her as ‘Duchess Difficult’, neither she nor husband Prince Harry were showing their faces.

They weren’t nominated for any Emmys either – obviously.

Meghan has not made a TV show since Netflix’s incendiary Harry & Meghan documentary in 2022; Harry was a featured talking head in a documentary about his Invictus Games, which went out in 2023 to some of the lowest ratings of the year on Netflix.

Whether they didn’t get an invite or declined to go, their attendance at the event would have made the couple appear at least sanguine in the wake of the article which talked about her working practices, saying she was ‘just terrible’, ‘a dictator in high heels’ and had ‘made grown men cry’.

However, for whatever reason, the pair stayed home.

It matters if you work in TV and don’t go to the Emmys. People notice and judge which rung of the ladder you are on accordingly.

One senior figure, who has watched Harry and Meghan’s progress in Hollywood with interest, said this week that they seem to be reaping the kind of ‘schadenfreude with extra venom’ at which the entertainment business excels.

He adds: ‘It was only a matter of time before the industry Press started taking shots. It’s hard to find anyone with a good word to say for their film and television credibility.’

The article in The Hollywood Reporter was published on September 12. Headed: Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan, it was ostensibly about their chief of staff, Josh Kettler, leaving after only three months, as first revealed in this newspaper by Richard Eden in his diary pages.

It mentioned their woeful record in hanging onto staff with those leaving including Toya Holness, their global press secretary until 2022, Christine Weil Schirmer, who quit as Harry and Meghan’s PR head in 2021 and Keleigh Thomas Morgan of Sunshine Sachs who stopped looking after the couple around the same time. Others who have left include Catherine St-Laurent, once head of the Sussexes’ charity Archewell, Archewell COO Mandana Dayani; content chief Ben Browning and marketing chief Fara Taylor.

A source claimed to the ­Hollywood Reporter: ‘Everyone’s terrified of Meghan. 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.’

Another source said: ‘She’s ­absolutely relentless. She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I’ve watched her reduce grown men to tears.’

The startling allegations – described by a source close to the couple as ‘inaccurate’ and ‘one-sided’ – recall the kerfuffle in 2018 over whether Meghan had bullied staff at Buckingham Palace. There was an investigation after complaints and concerns were raised, but its results have never been made public.

Meghan strenuously denied the ­allegations and denounced them as part of a ­’calculated smear campaign’.

In all, the Hollywood Reporter article was just the kind of ­unflattering ‘hit piece’ which you might expect the talent agency WME to have strangled at birth for their client, Meghan. One senior Hollywood publicist tells me: ‘First of all, everyone industry-wide, EVERYONE reads The Hollywood Reporter. It’s really striking that WME did not stop this running.’

She adds: ‘WME normally – you would think – would have been threatening and denying access to other stars. Was this done here?

‘The only thing the Sussexes could rally with was ‘no comment at this time’ from a spokesman.’

And perhaps even worse it came only weeks after another take-down in an industry publication.

That was part of a feature about the ‘worst deals’ of the ‘peak TV period’ which ran on the Hollywood news website, Puck. Again, the site – run by former Hollywood Reporter editor Matt Belloni and with a quarter of a million subscribers – is a must-read in the industry.

Harry and Meghan’s reported $100 million Netflix deal (which runs out next September) was mentioned in the same breath as Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who signed a mega-deal with Amazon in 2019 that has yet to yield a single minute of ­television drama.

Published on August 20, it woundingly misspelled Archewell as ‘Archwell’.

Of Harry and Meghan it notes: ‘The streamer is not expected to renew its five-year, $100 million deal signed in 2020 . . . Meghan’s passion project, the animated kids show Pearl, had already been canceled’.

A senior producer says: ‘I don’t think mainstream Hollywood ever took them seriously. From day one Archewell felt to most industry onlookers more like a brand ­building exercise than a genuine production operation. Netflix were handing out vanity deals like candy at the time and so everybody just shrugged their shoulders and assumed their company wouldn’t get much done despite the generous backing.

‘But even Harry and Meghan ­naysayers would have been shocked at how little they’ve ­actually achieved.’

‘And in the more austere climate of the industry in 2024 when thousands of people have lost jobs and the entertainment industry economy is struggling, there’s now a genuine dislike and distrust towards them by some.’

All of which might make their handlers feel a little nervous about the fate of that cookery show which will embrace Meghan’s love of ‘gardening’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘friendship’ alongside recipes. It is as yet untitled.

The show will mark a significant moment for Meghan as it’s also going to launch her lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard (ARO). The brand was announced in April but so far there are no products and no announced partners. As with their efforts in TV production, it seems to be moving with glacial slowness.

All that has happened so far is that lawyers acting for the ­Duchess have sought to trademark the name and a logo for dozens of uses – and not been approved on various grounds.

Not, perhaps, the most promising start.

Netflix is understood to have offered to run the ARO brand for Meghan, which makes sense as it has huge experience of global marketing and merchandising. And Netflix boss Ted Sarandos, in London this week for the Royal Television Society conference, is a voice on her side. He said of Meghan: ‘I’ve been out with a lot of famous people before – the way that people react to Meghan is otherworldly.’

What are we to expect from Meghan’s cookery offering? The episodes are being directed by veteran Michael Steed, who worked with the revered chef Anthony Bourdain.

The show-runner with overall responsibility for it is yoga enthusiast Leah Hariton, who previously made Selena + Chef in 2020 featuring actress Selena Gomez. The shows are being produced for Netflix by The Intellectual Property Corporation, an off-shoot of Sony Pictures Television.

Archewell’s head of unscripted content, Chanel Pysnik, will be one of the executive producers, as will Meghan. Unusually, none of this information has been lodged with the production website IMDB, which is what you would expect to happen as standard.

It’s a very Meghan way of working – she likes to keep everything she can secret until the last possible moment.

Her working practices, according to a source with direct knowledge, are a little unorthodox. I’m told there is little separation between different projects and different arms of Archewell, so those involved in TV production can find themselves talking about charity work and vice versa.

Along with the desire for secrecy about projects, there is a passionate engagement with the manner and timing of any announcements. There are no offices – the couple take meetings at home, both often barefoot.

There was at one point an office in Malibu but the lease expired during the pandemic. And yes, the source says that decision-making is ‘a problem’ for them.

For the cookery show, which will be accompanied by a cookbook, I hear Meghan is taking advice from model Chrissy Teigen, who’s made cookery shows and released cookbooks herself in the past.

She and Meghan seem to have become close – she was given some of the early batch of ARO jam that went to famous friends.

Others on Meghan’s side include Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner and comedian and TV host Ellen de Generes, probably one of her closest remaining friends in Hollywood. Another is make-up magnate Victoria Jackson, whose brand she plugged for free by wearing it at the ESPY (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly) awards in July, where Harry won an award for his work with military veterans via the Invictus Games Foundation.

Meghan allowed her make-up artist and Ms Jackson to post on Instagram about it.

TV producer Tyler Perry, godfather to daughter Lillibet, also remains on side.

Some notable friends may have fallen away, though. The Clooneys, who attended their 2018 wedding, and hosted the couple in Lake Como the summer after, seem to have less connection to them nowadays.

Harry and Meghan were not seen at the Clooneys’ annual humanitarian awards in New York. They have also not been spotted at any parties thrown by their neighbour Oprah, who conducted that interview with the Sussexes back in 2021.

The Obamas haven’t been pictured with them for years – Harry and Michelle Obama were once close but the Sussexes were not guests at Barack’s star-studded 60th birthday party on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 2021.

Music producer David Foster was once spoken of as a ‘father figure’ for Harry, and his wife Katherine McPhee was at school with Meghan.

They had a number of double dates in 2020 but aren’t seen out with them any more and the couple weren’t among the talking heads on the Harry & Meghan documentary in 2022.

At the ESPY awards in August, Meghan wore a Staud dress, designed by Ari Emanuel’s wife Sarah Staudinger. It was a canny piece of flattery, but it’s clear that what she really needs now is a hit.