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‘Bye bye, Netflix, hello Dior’ for Harry and Meghan?
After they lost their $20 million Spotify contract—by “mutual agreement” the statement said—and being called “fucking grifters” as a farewell, the U.K. Sun on Sunday reports that Netflix are unlikely to renew Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s reported £81 million ($104 million) contract, believing “the lemon has been fully squeezed.” Even though their documentary series Harry and Meghan was most-watched subscription TV show of 2022, “there are no plans for a follow-up series,” the paper says.
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Meanwhile, just to show as one door closes and another opens, the Mail on Sunday reports that Meghan could be on the verge of signing up to be the new face of Dior.
The paper says rumors “swirling around LA” suggest “she may be on the brink of signing a major deal with French couture house Dior to make her a face of the company.”
A source is quoted as saying: “There have been rumors for weeks that she's about to sign a deal with Dior which has put the gossip mill into overdrive. If she pulls that off, then no one will remember that her silly little podcast got cancelled after one season.”
Intriguingly the paper adds that her managers at talent agency WME “knew the Spotify announcement was coming,” with a source adding: “It might be a shock to everyone else but we’ve been working on the rebranding of Meghan for weeks.”
Prince Harry arrives for the coronation of King Charles at Westminster Abbey, London, Britain, May 6, 2023.
Andy Stenning/Pool via REUTERS/File PhotoPerhaps her husband could join her in the deal—Harry wore Dior to King Charles’ Coronation, and at the High Court in London for his phone hacking case against the Daily Mail.
Bosses at Netflix, however, according to the Sun, feel Meghan “lives in her own bubble” and does not seem to have “grasped the economic reality.” A source told the paper: “There is a less friendly attitude from some at the top. The feeling is that the lemon has been fully squeezed. The big bucks Harry and Meghan signed on for do not exist today.”
If true, it would signal that their broadcast partners believe either that Harry and Meghan have few juicy royal secrets left to divulge—indeed the documentary series was relatively tame, Harry leaving most of his anger and revelations for his memoir, Spare—or that the public have little appetite to hear much more of it. Or both.
The Sun on Sunday reports that Harry and Meghan were “prepared to see out their contractual obligations with Netflix,” including Harry’s Invictus Games series set for later this summer.
Royal kids steal the limelight on Charles’ birthday
Saturday saw King Charles’ first official birthday celebrations, marked with the ancient ceremony known as the Trooping of the Color to which all the working royals turned out.
This means that just 14 humans appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony—the fewest ever—and there was unsurprisingly no cameo from Prince Andrew or his children. Needless to say, the Sussexes were also not there. The Duke of Kent and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, all of whom still carry out official royal engagements were on display, but carefully stood a few feet away from the main group, which comprised Charles, Camilla, all five Cambridges, Princess Anne, her husband Sir Tim and Edward and Sophie.
Inevitably, perhaps, all the focus was on the royal children.
Front and centre was everyone's favorite cheeky-chappy, Prince Louis, who delivered a crowd-pleasing array of hand gestures and face pulling to the delight of his devoted fans.
The gestures reached their apogee as the Royal Air Force's acrobatic team, the Red Arrows flew over the top of Buckingham Palace. His earnest salute reduced his brother Prince George, and his sister, Princess Charlotte, to helpless giggles. Another moment that is making the headlines is an encounter between Princess Charlotte and Sophie Wessex, who appeared in one video clip to be telling her younger relative to “sit down.”
However according to lip reader Jeremy Freeman, in the Daily Star, Charlotte asked her aunt: “Sophie how long will it be?”
And then Sophie replied: “I think it's now.”
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William: ‘It’s hard sometimes to see what the royal family does’
As part of his desire to take on homelessness as a cause, just as his mother Princess Diana once did, Prince William says his children “will definitely be” exposed to the issue—he and Kate Middleton just deciding how and when. Yesterday, as reported by The Daily Beast, William told the U.K. Sunday Times of his plans to build public housing on his Duchy of Cornwall estate. In the same interview, he said he was planning to raise awareness of the issue with his children.
“When I left this morning, one of the things I was thinking was, ‘When is the right time to bring George or Charlotte or Louis to a homeless organization?’” he told the paper. “I think when I can balance it with their schooling, they will definitely be exposed to it. On the school run, we talk about what we see.
“When we were in London, driving backwards and forwards, we regularly used to see people sitting outside supermarkets and we’d talk about it. I’d say to the children, ‘Why are they there? What’s going on?’ I think it’s in all our interests, it’s the right thing to do, to expose the children, at the right stage, in the right dialogue, so they have an understanding. They [will] grow up knowing that actually, do you know what, some of us are very fortunate, some of us need a little bit of a helping hand, some of us need to do a bit more where we can to help others improve their lives.”
Britain's Prince William during a visit to Loftus Road, the home of Queens Park Rangers in west London, ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, to hear how the club has provided invaluable support in the immediate aftermath and in the years since the fire, as well as meet some of the affected community who they have worked with.
Aaron Chown/Pool via REUTERS/File PhotoWilliam told the Sunday Times that he was frustrated that government, councils and charities have for too long been “managing” homelessness instead of “preventing” it. “We can do it,” he said. “It’s not insurmountable, this challenge. If anyone does become homeless [we can say], ‘OK, here’s the way back, here’s the pathway’. We can visualize that and we can show people that there is a way to do it.”
William did not talk about his feud with Harry, or any other royal gossip and rumors, or indeed anything personal. However, the paper said he “concedes that not everybody sees the point of the royal family.” William told the paper: “We’re all very busy and I think it’s hard sometimes to see what the family bring and what we do. But the amount of causes, the interests, the dinners, the meetings, the visits, whatever it is, that we do day in, day out, throughout the year, we’ve always been involved in that. It’s part of what we do. It’s trying to spotlight other causes, other people, other interests, and help people where we can. We’ll continue to do that.”
As for himself, William claimed to try and do things away from the media and public gaze, even if he was seen selling copies of homelessness magazine The Big Issue last year in London. “I try and do these things subtly, when there’s no media and no one else knows about it. It’s very hard to make it not about me—[that’s] what I don’t want to do. That was about promoting homelessness. If you’re doing to go and do genuine gestures, you do them privately, you don’t do them with an audience.”
Seyi Obakin, chief executive of British homelessness charity Centrepoint, said he and William had slept on the streets one freezing December night 14 years ago.
The Times reports that at dawn, as they walked through London, Obakin asked William about the experience. “He said it was very uncomfortable, but it was only one night and what worried him the most was the mental state of a young person who had to do that every night, who doesn’t know what the next day is going to be like.”
Obakin added: “He (William) can draw other support to the cause that ordinarily would not be there, from people who might say, ‘If he’s involved, if he’s interested, actually I might pay some attention to this stuff too’. That’s what he can do. He can’t do politics, but he can do human.”
The weekend is turning into something of a media blitz for William who also released an adorable Father’s Day photo with his children.
Harry’s legal cases cost taxpayers $1.3m
Prince Harry’s action against the British government, saying he should be allowed to hire a U.K. police guard, has cost the British taxpayer £502,326 ($644,183), the Sun reports. That court ruling went against him, and the bill for his bid to overturn it has come to over £500,000 ($641,200). Home Office officials are said to be furious at these “spiraling costs.” Harry has to repay £10,000 ($13,000) in costs.
Harry wants to hire his own police guard when visiting the U.K., claiming it was wrong to remove the armed guard he had as a senior member of the royal family. The Metropolitan Police and Home Office said allowing Harry to hire his own police guard would set an unacceptable precedent for other rich people to hire their own armed guards.
This week in royal history
Happy 41st birthday to Prince William this coming Wednesday. He was born on June 21, 1982.
Unanswered questions
What will Harry and Meghan do without their Netflix and Spotify deals, and will she, or them both, go the fashion/Dior route? Will Prince William’s homeless accommodation plans come to fruition? What next for Harry and Charles’ relationship after friends of the royals told The Daily Beast that Harry’s attack on Camilla in his memoir Spare had left father and son’s relationship seriously imperiled?
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