Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are "quite far down the pecking order" in Hollywood, a former friend of the Duchess of Sussex has claimed.
TV presenter Nick Ede says the pair had believed they would be "number one people on the block", but the title of "Hollywood royalty" belongs to the likes of the Kardashians and Beyonce.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex snapped up their secluded Montecito mansion for $14.65million (£11.8million) in 2020, just a few months after stepping back from the Royal Family.
Living in the home, the couple now count US TV royalty such as Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres as their neighbours.
Nick, who hosts The Royal Agenda on Royalty TV, believes Harry and Meghan have "underestimated" the amount of influence they would have after relocating from the UK to the US.
"I think the thing is that you forget that in Hollywood royalty isn't somebody with a title. It's J.Lo, it's Sharon Stone, it's Beyonce, it's the Kardashians. That's their royalty.
"And also the Obamas or Clintons. If you've been in office, apart from Trump, then you're seen as being a top dog. I think they have underestimated that in many ways," he said in a new interview.
Nick also claimed the couple "thought that they would be number one people on the block," but insisted they're not.
"They're kind of quite far down really in that pecking order. And I think that's been an issue with them, in that sense of stepping down," he told the Express.
Harry and Meghan's life in America is a far cry from their life in the UK and their former "small" home of Nottingham Cottage.
Meghan says her new home makes her "feel free" and is "calm and healing" to live in the luxury home in the gated community in Santa Barbara.
In an interview with The Cut, the 41-year-old gushed over her 18,000-square-foot home, where she lives with Harry, 38, and their children Archie, three, and Lilibet, one.
The property boasts nine bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, as well as a tennis court, tea house and two-bedroom guest house.
There's also a chicken coop, a pool and a pool house, and two palm trees joined together at the bottom of the garden.
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