It was a week of curiously timed press potshots aimed at errant royal couple Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – or Princess Markle, as one American news anchor accidentally called her.
The Princess of Wales invited the media along to a hospital visit where she announced she was in remission (despite having said she was “cancer-fee” back in September 2024) and recommended “loads of sunlight” as a cancer recovery necessity (despite chemotherapy, notably, making patients painfully photosensitive). Prince William arranged a visit to an airbase, but cancelled due to “weather”. And King Charles visited a food bank via helicopter.
All attempts one might (ungenerously) suggest were designed to keep Harry and Meghan out of the headlines, or at least paint the Duchess of Sussex in a bad light. Meghan was due to launch her new Netflix cooking-and-hosting show, With Love, Meghan, on January 15, but she chose to postpone until March due to the devastating impact of the Los Angeles wildfires.
Still, Vanity Fair went ahead with its February cover story, American Hustle: Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit. Featuring a glamorous press shot of the couple and an illustration, the 8,000-word piece is what is known in the biz as a “write-around”. Harry and Meghan declined to be interviewed, so the story focuses on juicy tidbits from mostly anonymous sources briefing on their experiences working with the celebrity royals on their Spotify and Netflix deals.
Furious fans have branded it a “hit piece” and a “takedown”, but in reality it’s a much more nuanced take on the tiring phenomenon of celebrities moving into creative industries (podcast making, documentary producing) where they have little expertise and experience beyond being super attractive and very famous. Still, there were plenty of eyebrow-raising reveals to be read.
Here are the biggest bombshells from the piece, in a write-around’s write-around:
Meghan and Harry are very horny for each other
The piece is very clear that Harry and Meghan are still extremely warm for each other’s forms, seven years and two babies since their wedding. “They are so hot for each other,” a person close to Harry and Meghan told Vanity Fair. “Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?”
Cute! Although, maybe a bit creepy too? The couple’s intense connection and closeness in the face of their many detractors has, the article suggests, created the perfect conditions for “a folie à deux emerging” where they share and reinforce delusional beliefs. Meghan has also taken on a caregiving role for her wounded, motherless Prince. “ I don’t want to be like, oh, it’s an Oedipus thing or whatever,” said the same source. “But it kind of feels like she’s reparenting him in a way.” This would make the revelation from Spare that Harry had a Proustian moment remembering his late mother Diana while slathering his frostbitten willy with Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream even weirder, if that’s possible.
Their celebrity contacts book is a little bare
One of the problems (and it seems there were many) with Harry and Meghan’s podcast mogul ambitions was their inability to get their celebrity pals to come in clutch. Meghan’s Archetype’s show was meant to get a cavalcade of celebs on to interview, but Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Megan Thee Stallion all allegedly declined the invite. Ouch.
Meghan might just be the boss from hell, by accident
But, according to two separate sources in the Vanity Fair piece, several unfortunate underlings had a truly miserable time working with Meghan on her Archetypes podcast. Several people ended up in therapy due to the experience, took leaves of absence to deal with the stress, or even left parent company Gimlet entirely. While she doesn’t yell, according to the sources, she did ice out anyone she blamed for problems stemming from her own demands.
Obviously, no one sets out to be a bad boss, and the piece is sympathetic in attempting to find an explanation for Meghan’s behaviour. From lonely isolation as a schoolgirl to poor treatment in the UK, Meghan may have developed a bit of a victim complex. “Is it any surprise that a sense of victimhood and righteousness could continue to exist in a person who had been treated so horribly by the press and her husband’s family?” asks Peele.
But however powerless a person might feel, employees clearly have no power in a work situation where a famous boss is throwing spanners in production work. However many notes and bouquets Meghan might have sent in apology, it’s disappointing from someone who so publicly wants to do good. Then again, British Royalty does have priors for being the entire world’s very worst boss.
Harry might need some hobbies
While Meghan clearly has purpose and motivation in life, it seems like Harry might need to cultivate his interests a bit more. Even sources reputedly close to him couldn’t name any non posh-horsey interests. “A person who worked closely with the couple and “loves them” says, ‘I have no idea what [Harry’s] interests are beyond polo. No clue what his inner life is like’,” per Vanity Fair. Maybe he could take up knitting?
There was almost a Harry-reviews-hot-chocolate podcast
Due to Harry’s aforementioned lack of interests, the Spotify team was left scrabbling to find something to base his podcast around. When the Prince ordered a nice cup of cocoa at a meeting, Spotify suggested he review a different hot choc every week while chatting to a friend. The sound of the barrel being scraped, or potentially a lost great work of art? Alas, we will never know, as Harry “considered and rejected “ the confectionary beverage concept.
There was almost a Harry-interviews-sociopaths-podcast
Another binned idea for a Harry-hosted podcast was the Prince’s somewhat under-baked idea that he could invite on “world-famous sociopaths” such as mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and ask them if they had any traumatic childhood experiences that made them so villainous. Harry’s purported angle was that he, too, had a bad childhood (dead mum, sad boarding schools, mean family prepared to throw him to the media wolves to burnish their own image) but had not become a sociopath.
Peele politely calls the podcast idea a “booking challenge”, but truly it boggles the mind that this was floated as a sensible concept. Just try to imagine, for a moment, the man that’s fifth in line to the British throne asking a former KGB officer if he got enough love in is his childhood, in between commercials for mattresses and meal kits. Although, reviewing hot chocolate with sociopaths? Now there’s an idea.
Meghan won’t say naughty words
A recurring problem for the harried professionals trying to shepherd Meghan’s podcast concepts through production was the Duchess’s reluctance to say bitch or slut. This was a problem because her Archetype’s show was based on famous women refuting sexist stereotypes about themselves. Rather than saw bitch, Meghan insisted on using “the b-word” and the slut episode had to be re-worked entirely to be something woo-woo about “human, being”.
Preferring to not have a podcast potty mouth is hardly a character flaw. Maybe the palace’s etiquette lessons were simply too thorough. However, the article neatly threads the needle to show how this shillyshallying and flip-flopping drove everyone working with Meghan round the twist. Honestly, if I had to spend my working day listening to royalty discuss hot chocolate and slurs I would probably need therapy too.
