Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 's latest Netflix project not enjoying the initial huge success of their debut venture will have 'hurt' the couple, a royal commentator claims.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex both executive produced and appeared in the series Live to Lead, which takes a look at influential leaders throughout history and how they changed the world.
Following on from the success of their documentary series - which beat The Crown in the ratings - Live to Lead is the second Netflix project from Harry, 38, and Meghan, 41, as part of their multi-million pound deal with the streaming giant.
Released on New Year's Eve, the collaboration from the Sussexes and the Mandela Foundation focuses on the stories of inspirational leaders such as Swedish activist Greta Thunberg's, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the late Nelson Mandela.
But while their six-part docu-series Harry & Meghan became the UK's most-watched subscription TV series of 2022, despite only being released in the last month of the year, follow up series Live to Lead hasn't yet made similar huge waves following its release four days ago.
"It is one of the first tests commercially of their brand strategy to pull people in [with] personal drama and hope they stay for the philanthropy," a PR expert who goes by the social media alias Royal Tea claims.
"With little to no PR, a Saturday/holiday release, and no gossip to drive organic press, it didn’t even crack the Top 100 TV shows.
"The way it’s being handled feels like a throwaway project to fulfil a contract. Maybe they had to hit a certain number of Netflix projects by the end of this year."
They add: "The one thing that is clear is that the Sussex name alone isn’t enough to drive views, which will hurt them."
Harry and former Suits actress Meghan produced the series alongside Ben Browning and Chanel Pysnik for Archewell with Geoff Blackwell Ruth Hobday producing for Blackwell & Ruth and John Sloss for Cinetic.
Live to Lead's release over the weekend follows the huge success of Harry and Meghan's explosive arrival on Netflix at the start of December - with the first episode of their personal docu-series seen by an average of 4.5m people in seven days after its premiere.
The first episode of Harry & Meghan, which looked back on how the Duke and Duchess of Sussex began their love story, was watched by an average of 4.5 million people in the seven days after it hit screens on December 8.
It beat the 2.8 million people who logged in to watch the first episode of The Crown's new series on Netflix in the same year, released on November 9, by more than a million and a half views.
Harry & Meghan also beat other popular Netflix classics, including the last series of Ricky Gervais' After Life (4.1 million), supernatural thriller Stranger Things (3.9 million) and the period romance Bridgerton (3.4 million).
