This should have been a good week for Harry and Meghan. It wasn't.
The relaunch of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — new series, new products — got knocked off kilter. Can they recover?
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had a great weekend. Then, as the week progressed, the flush of positive news got pushed out by bad.
They’d gone to Florida for the weekend to attend polo matches, including a fundraiser for Harry’s charity Sentebale. Their every move was recorded by camera crews because, on April 11, their Archewell Productions arm announced that they had two new series under production for Netflix.
A series about the world of professional polo that will “pull the curtain back on the grit and passion of the sport, capturing players and all it takes to compete at the highest level.” It will be shot at the US Open Polo Championship in Florida. Harry has played polo for decades.
A lifestyle series, “curated by Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex” will “celebrate the joys of cooking & gardening, entertaining, and friendship.” It’s expected to sync with Meghan’s new American Riviera Orchard lifestyle brand.
They’re working with talented producers who have proven track records of creating hits. One of the showrunners for Meghan’s show is Michael Steed, a veteran of hit food shows including the intensely personal Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Meanwhile the showrunner of Harry’s polo series is Miloš Balać, who worked on Ryan Reynolds’ Welcome to Wrexham.
Though no titles or air dates were announced, they are the first new Archewell productions for the streaming giant since their Invictus series aired in August 2023. And the announcement comes as their initial five-year deal with Netflix nears its end in 2025.
Then, after a weekend in the spotlight, attention shifted to their projects as stars, celebrities, and friends began posting images of jars of American Riviera Orchard strawberry jam, each with its own limited edition numbering, many nestled into baskets of lemons. They were the first hint of products from the brand that Meghan launched in mid-March. Soon, the Daily Mail revealed that Meghan’s show was in production and has a film permit from April 14 to June 25 for home near their palatial estate in Montecito.
Those spurts of good news slowly got overshadowed by a series of legal decisions, government filings, and revelations that generated critical headlines, business problems, and headaches for Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Monday, April 15: A massive legal bill for Harry
Judge Peter Lane issued yet another decision in Harry’s long-running legal fight with the government over the level of publicly-funded police protection that he gets when in the United Kingdom.
Back on February 28, Judge Peter Lane ruled against Harry’s request to review that security decision — which created a bespoke system for evaluating Harry’s security each time he visits Britain — in a decision that was a firm rejection of every one of Harry’s claims. In particular, the judge said that Harry’s concerns about press and paparazzi intrusions into his privacy were valid, but were not a matter for the security committee, known as RAVEC:
RAVEC is concerned with security against persons bearing a hostile intent towards an individual, not those who, however recklessly, may cause danger in their efforts to get a photograph of a celebrity that they can then try to sell to a media outlet.
That legal loss means Harry is responsible for not only his own legal fees but also those of the government. (He is trying to appeal Lane’s decision but so far without success.)
On Monday, the judge decided that Harry was responsible for 90 percent of the government’s legal cost. Those fees, when combined with those of Harry, could push the bill that the prince has to pay to more than one million pounds (CAD$1.7 million).
Furthermore, Judge Lane revealed that Prince Harry apologized for leaking confidential information in November 2023. The prince “breached the terms of the confidentiality ring order by emailing certain information to a partner of Schillings, who was not within the confidentiality ring, and to the Rt Hon Johnny Mercer MP [the veterans minister]” His breach was detected by his lawyers and Harry apologized for the breach.
Wednesday, April 17: Harry is officially a U.S. resident
The annual meeting of Prince Harry’s sustainable travel initiative, Travalyst, generated a lot of news. In a video presentation, Harry lashed out about the damage caused by tourism even though he frequently uses private jets and takes exotic vacations.
Travalyst also filed a significant update on the prince to Companies House, the U.K. register of companies, in which it revealed that Harry’s “new country/state usually resident” had changed from the United Kingdom to the United States.
Not only does this filing mean that Prince Harry has officially cut his last link to the United Kingdom but he dated that break to June 29, 2023, the date on which he was officially kicked out of Frogmore Cottage, his home near Windsor Castle. His father, King Charles III, had refused to extend the Sussexes’ lease in the aftermath of the tawdry allegations levelled by Harry against Queen Camilla and other royals in his memoir, Spare.
That change of residency means that while Harry is still a British subject, his home is the United States. But that may be a problem, as a right-wing foundation is currently suing the U.S. government to get access to Harry’s visa application to see whether he lied about taking illegal drugs (which he detailed in Spare) and the Trump-appointed federal judge hearing the case is privately reviewing Harry’s file. And former president Donald Trump has raised the possibility of having the prince deported if he is re-elected.
Wednesday, April 17: Pressure mounts on Harry to settle one of his lawsuits
Hugh Grant, Prince Harry, and dozens of others have been suing Murdoch’s firm, claiming they were victims of unlawful information gathering by the Sun tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. On Wednesday, Grant settled because the rules around civil litigation in the U.K. meant he could be on the hook for massive legal costs in excess of $10 million. That financial pressure could also affect Harry’s desire for his day in court, which will start in January 2025, according to a judge’s decision on Friday.
Thursday, April 18: Foreign sites with the American Riviera name carry anti-Meghan messaging
While Meghan secured the AmericanRiviera.com site for her lifestyle brand, she didn’t lock down international domains using that name, leading others to snap up those site names. First came the U.K. domain. As the Daily Beast explains:
The homepage of “americanrivieraorchard.uk” simply reads “Forgiveness. Permission. Please donate to the Trussell Trust.” Clicking on that will lead to a Just Giving fundraiser for the food bank and a pointed message from a Kate Middleton fan. “Not Meghan. hope Meghan wouldn’t mind. thoughts with catherine X.”
As of Friday, the British site has raised thousands for the Trussell Trust.
Friday, April 19: Social media reveals that yet another international version of Meghan’s site, this time AmericanRiviera.ca, has been claimed by another Sussex opponent. The Canadian site asks “Please consider a donation to a worthy cause instead of supporting overpriced products from a grifter” with a link to the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Friday, April 19: More allegations of abuse at Harry’s African Parks charity
New allegations of torture committed by rangers of one of Prince Harry’s favourite charities, African Parks, appear in a new book, Entrepreneurs in the Wild, by Olivier van Beemen. Prince Harry had been the president of African Parks for six years before being named to its board of directors in 2023. The book’s claims come after separate allegations of violent abuse of local communities near African Parks-run conservation areas were detailed in the Daily Mail earlier in 2024. African Parks has called van Beemen “biased” and said that an investigation is underway, according to the Times.
Questions above and beyond the bad week
Even before other news began crowding out the good headlines, there were questions about the couple’s new ventures. They scream exclusivity — polo is the “sport of kings” while “American Riviera” is nickname for their posh area of California. Will the millionaires and billionaires who dominate the world of professional polo allow a warts-and-all, gritty look at their sport, which hiring a showrunner from Welcome to Wrexham suggests?
Right now, American Riviera Orchard is nothing but a logo, so there’s no way to know whether the audience demographics of Meghan’s lifestyle show on Netflix will be the same as those who will buy products from American Riviera Orchard.
Building a lifestyle brand, even with the help of Netflix, takes time. Not only do such companies need to source exclusive products but they need to build up their own online communities of fans and followers, which require an extensive catalogue of videos and posts. There’s also a lot of competition — Martha Stewart has been in the business for decades and still posts several new videos each day on her social media accounts. And it’s hard. Blake Lively shuttered her own lifestyle brand, Preserve, after a year.
Excellent summary. The African Parks allegations are serious enough to merit an immediate resignation of the full board, but so far board members seem to think things will blow over.
It's also interesting that after Meghan had to apologise to a UK Court for mis-remembering events (to put it kindly) related to her involvement in Omid Scobie's book, now Harry has had to apologise for breaking confidentiality requirements. Neither have suffered any apparent harm from these significantly bad choices. They portray themselves as victims of the royal family but in truth, they derive enormous privilege - even in courts of law - *because* of their royal connections.