At the close of last year, the Duchess of Sussex vowed 2024 would be a big one for her family. “We have so many exciting things on the slate,” she teased at Variety magazine’s Power of Women event in Los Angeles, where she walked the red carpet alongside the likes of Hollywood A-lister Margot Robbie. “I can’t wait until we can announce them.”
Four years on from Megxit, the shock announcement by Meghan and Harry that they were stepping back as senior members of the royal family, the couple need the duchess’s words to be more than just hype. After severing ties with Harry’s family and his home country in the most spectacular style in January 2020, their fresh start in the US has been far from the unmitigated success story they both might have hoped for.
Last year, which started with the incendiary launch of Harry’s memoir Spare, was a particularly challenging one. Their $20m Spotify deal was axed, with one of the company’s executives branding them “grifters”, and they reported a £8.7m fall in donations to their charitable Archewell Foundation. Pearl, the animated series Meghan created for Netflix, was cancelled, and to add insult to injury, The Hollywood Reporter listed them among 2023’s “biggest losers”.
