“Woke Royals”

By and large, if there is one thing that the world absolutely does not need any more of, it’s podcasts. And yet the death of Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex’s Spotify deal – as public and messy as it was – has by all accounts deprived us of an absolute corker.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that one podcast idea seriously mooted by Harry was to make an entire series about childhood trauma. Not just his own trauma, because he has obviously got enough mileage out of that elsewhere, but the trauma of a group best described as “world baddies”. As Bloomberg wrote, the concept of the show was as follows: “Harry would interview a procession of controversial guests, such as Vladimir Putin, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump, about their early formative years and how those experiences resulted in the adults they are today.”

I hope they have been ridiculed enough to cause them to disappear from the public eye.

Few falls from grace have been quite so swift

Even for those of us who are not well disposed towards the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, it is hard not to wish — occasionally — that they might catch a break. Yet apart from Harry’s well-judged and unostentatious appearance at the coronation, things have gone from bad to worse over the past six months for the couple. Tetchy High Court appearances; continuing estrangement with the British royal family; and now the apparently total collapse of their wider media ambitions. Few falls from grace have been quite so swift.

They arrived three years ago with royal star power amid a streaming boom, but have notched more cancellations and rejections than produced shows

LOS ANGELES— Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had been out of the U.K. for nearly two years when they began work on a project they believed could transform them from former royals to Hollywood power players.

The subject of endless rumors and gossip, the couple felt qualified to tackle the thorny topic of misinformation. A documentary would cement Harry and Meghan as serious creative types and help shed their reputation as exiles from the House of Windsor trading family dirt for eyeballs.

In early 2021, after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sat for a bombshell Oprah interview on the heels of their megawatt deals with Netflix and Spotify, the spitball-attracting royals seemed poised to become media machers in their own right. “They reached a whole new audience who now can’t wait to see what happens next,” the veteran royal chronicler Tina Brown told me at the time. Media analyst Rich Greenfield echoed that sentiment, saying, “I think this clearly shows, whatever their profile was beforehand in the US and globally, it’s clearly that much larger now.” A Hollywood source concurred: “I think the crossover appeal—Black Lives Matter meets The Crown—is a fever pitch opportunity.”

Meghan Markle’s public image has taken another hit as polling out of the U.K. suggests she is now more unpopular among Britons than ever.

A survey by global public opinion and data company YouGov in Britain between June 7 and June 8 found that the duchess’ net positivity rating currently stands at -47 percent. This is down six points from data compiled by the company in April.

So even Spotify is sick of Harry and Meghan. They’re ‘fucking grifters’, said an executive there after their multimillion-dollar deal to make saccharine, sub-Oprah pods for the platform came to an end. It was Bill Simmons, founder of the Ringer podcast network, which he sold to Spotify in 2020. On his own podcast – everyone has a podcast these days – Simmons said Spotify should have called their pod with H&M ‘The Fucking Grifters’. He also threatened to get drunk one day and blab about the time he tried to help witless Harry with a podcast idea – ‘It’s one of my best stories’. ‘Fuck them. The grifters’, he said.

Has there ever been a more brutally effective piece of social satire than the South Park episode that mocked Harry and Meghan?

Since it aired in mid-February, the Duchess of Sussex, previously a seemingly ubiquitous and unstoppable cultural phenomenon, has effectively withdrawn from public life. She’s made just one formal appearance – at an awards show, which ended in the farce of disputed paparazzi car chase claims – and has given precisely no interviews.

The couple’s media empire also seems to be imploding. Spotify has axed their $20 million (£15.6 million) podcast deal, with senior exec Bill Simmons ungallantly labelling the pair ‘fucking grifters’.

“This isn’t the first time people have questioned whether Meghan actually speaks to her interviewees,” Cockburn wrote, all of those months ago. “After an episode with Justin Trudeau’s wife Sophie, an old Markle friend from her Suits days in Montreal, it was clear that the conversation was recorded in separate studios, as podcast producer J.P. Davidson tweeted, “Thrilled to finally share that Sophie Grégoire Trudeau was in our studio with producer Will for her interview with Meghan Markle.”

Grifters gonna grift together

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were branded “lazy” and “f–king grifters” by Spotify employees Friday after the podcasting network canned their $20 million deal.

Bill Simmons, the sportscaster who is also head of Spotify’s international sports content, said on his own podcast, “’The f–king grifters.’ That’s the podcast we shoulda launched with them.”

The loss of a deal with Spotify might indicate that their earning power is about to fade

Not since Hollywood star Gywneth Paltrow “consciously uncoupled” from Coldplay singer Chris Martin has a separation been so deliciously dressed up. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex Part Ways with Spotify” read the reports, announcing that the Duchess’s Archetypes podcast won’t be getting a second season, after all. What Meghan wants is no longer what Meghan gets, it seems.

Perhaps it was by mutual consent but, to me, “part ways” sounds suspiciously like a more gentle way of saying: “You’re fired.”

With festival season just around the corner, it is fitting that Prince Harry’s Worldwide Privacy Tour is coming to a climax. The Duke played to a jam-packed High Court crowd last week. They were keen to hear the latest solipsistic stream-of-unconsciousness of our tormented troubadour.

For two years now, Harry has – sometimes with his wife, sometimes flying solo – bleated, neighed and whinnied in interviews, books, Netflix documentaries and talk shows. He has chased media exposure in a way that made Kim Kardashian look like Greta Garbo. Now, here was the big gig, with the world’s media outside the packed venue and helicopters hovering overhead. But would this be his Glastonbury Main Stage triumph – or his Altamont, the final demise of his credibility?

Often a partner’s most important role is that gentle whisper into the ear – or sometimes a knowing glare, gentle punch in the ribs or harshly honest private conversation ­– insisting: Just stop, now!

Since the beginning of the year, Prince Harry has entered self-destruct mode.

Having thrown virtually every blood relative under the bus and cut himself off from most close friends from his pre-Meghan era, it would seem the only person in the world who can save him from himself is his wife.

Over soon?

Prince Andrew is facing fresh questions over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after emails emerged suggesting he ‘lied’ about it in his BBC Newsnight interview.

A message written by the late billionaire paedophile and released as part of a court case in the US show he was presenting Andrew, 63, as a potential investor in 2011, despite the royal claiming to have ended all contact in 2010.