When a member of Hollywood royalty, Oprah Winfrey, took to Instagram to swoon over a “basket of deliciousness” from “my neighbour M ... yes that M” — adding a crown emoji in case any of her 19.2 million followers were in any doubt — those vegan coffee sachets, nestled in a festive hamper, were always going to fly off the shelves.
Within hours of Oprah’s post on Monday, the Duchess of Sussex announced she had personally invested in Clevr Blends, the “woman-led, mission driven” company behind the “wellness lattes” that is “dedicated to giving a tit”. Co-founded by Hannah Mendoza, from Buckinghamshire, the California-based company donates 1% of revenue to food poverty programmes.
The move marked a new direction as an investor for Meghan, who contacted Mendoza after trying one of her organic oat milk lattes. The duchess plans to “build a portfolio” of female-led start-up companies that are “in line with her values”. As she told the American business publication Fortune: “This investment is in support of a passionate female entrepreneur ... I’m proud to invest in Hannah’s commitment to sourcing ethical ingredients and creating a product that I personally love and has a holistic approach to wellness.”
So far, “sooooo Santa Barbara”, as one royal insider joked, referring to the couple’s adopted home town. But is this really what Meghan and Harry’s world-changing Great Move West was supposed to be about?
It’s just over a year since the Sussexes decamped to Canada for what was meant to be a six-week sabbatical for “much needed family time”. That was November. Rumours started in December. And on January 8, the couple dropped their bombshell: in a statement they set out their intention to “make a transition ... to carve out a progressive new role within this institution” and plans to “balance our time between the United Kingdom and north America”, becoming “financially independent while continuing to fully support Her Majesty the Queen”.
That is not how it panned out. The Queen made it clear at the “Sandringham summit” later that month that their “half-in, half-out” offer was unacceptable, and a hard Megxit was the only route if they wanted out.
The manner of last week’s coup induced a bout of queasiness in royal circles, where Oprah’s involvement was considered “tacky” and “clumsy”. Harry and Meghan had pledged their future activities would “uphold the values of Her Majesty”. An almighty plug from a talk-show host flagging her royal connections has stretched the elastic contours of the “Megxit” deal to snapping point.
One royal source compared the lapse of judgment in deploying Oprah to the recent gaffe by Peter Phillips, Princess Anne’s son, who was widely criticised for making the most of his royal connections in a Chinese milk advert. There is a fear the Sussexes may take to product placement much as their friend George Clooney has, becoming as synonymous with Nespresso coffee as his films.
Hot on the heels of Meghan’s lattes last week came the announcement that the Sussexes have followed in the footsteps of Michelle Obama and Kim Kardashian, signing a deal with Spotify — reportedly worth up to £30m — to make podcasts that “build community through shared experience, narratives and values” focusing on “finding kindness and compassion”. A teaser trailer had the couple plugging their product and laying it on thick, Meghan reminding listeners their insights will be “for free only on Spotify”, while Harry encouraged listeners to “tap ‘follow’ right now. Go ahead, go on. Tap follow and that way you won’t miss out and you’ll be able to hear new shows ... as soon as they drop.” The timing of the deal was perhaps not ideal: as Spotify handed the couple £30m, it was under pressure from a campaign urging it to raise the tiny percentage of its income that it pays musicians.
The royal biographer Penny Junor said the couple would “always be exploited for their names because ‘Harry and Meghan’ means ‘royal’, so they are inevitably trading on their royal connections. But they can never get away from that, so they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The curious thing is they left the UK because they wanted more privacy and to escape the criticism. But in much of what they’ve done, they’ve put themselves squarely into the spotlight.”
With millions in the bank, the Sussexes may find the criticism easy to shrug off. After their divorce from “the Firm”, they have — on the surface at least — got much of what they wanted: an £11m home, multimillion-pound business deals and, unrestrained by royal protocol, the freedom to opine on Black Lives Matter and the American election, issues that would have been risky territory as working royals. Meghan’s ongoing privacy case against Associated Newspapers seems to be the only dark cloud on their otherwise clear horizon.
But however happy Harry appears, he is not at peace with the loss of his military roles. The Afghanistan veteran marked Remembrance Sunday at Los Angeles National Cemetery — photographer in tow — after his request to have a wreath laid at the Cenotaph was denied by Buckingham Palace. As Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent, said: “This is what happens when an institution fails to make peace with the son of a future king.”
Anyone who knows Harry knows he would forgo several noughts on any deal to don uniform and lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. But palace aides say the decision echoed the Queen’s view that “either you work for the royal family or you don’t. You don’t make the royal family work for you.” As painful a lesson as that was, Harry surely knows that much as he might want to negotiate a way back, his official military ties are off the table. Princess Anne is expected to replace him as captain general of the Royal Marines.
Soon after their move from Canada to California in March, there were early hints Harry was struggling to find his feet as just another mega-celeb in a town full of famous faces. In April, the conservationist Jane Goodall, a friend of the couple, revealed that Harry was “finding life a bit challenging”.
But the couple have set a well-oiled machine in motion in California, hiring a posse of American strategists, including Catherine St Laurent, chief of staff at Archewell, their new charitable foundation and vehicle for their relaunch. Their newly formed Archewell Audio production company will make their podcasts with Spotify.
St Laurent, who previously worked for Melinda Gates, husband of Bill, is part of a set of advisers working with the Sussexes on their deals and public image, including Nick Collins, Meghan’s agent from her acting days, Andrew Meyer, her business manager, Rick Genow, an entertainment lawyer, and Sunshine Sachs, a Hollywood PR firm. Tim Burt, a British former financial journalist who is managing director with the American PR giant Teneo, has been informally advising them on philanthropic roles and commercial deals.
“All no doubt experts at boosting their clients’ profiles and bank balances, but none will give two figs about the impact of decisions on the royal family and institution,” notes Junor.
The deal hammered out at the Sandringham summit allowed for a year-long review period from Harry and Meghan’s official royal departure date of March 31. Aides made it clear the “door was left open” to any change of heart. But with three months left on the trial calendar, the Sussexes seem unlikely to swap the manicured estates of Montecito for Frogmore Cottage, Windsor.
“If they are happy, then the gamble of leaving has paid off,” said a royal source who knows the couple and other members of the royal family. “Even if there has been a lot of collateral damage.”
Their move this summer from borrowed LA digs to a nine-bedroom, 16-bathroom palace of their own in Santa Barbara extracted them from the goldfish bowl of Beverly Hills and landed them in one of America’s most discreet and opulent suburbs. Their new neighbours include the actress Gwyneth Paltrow, the talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah, with whom Harry is making an “enlightening and inclusive” documentary on mental health for Apple TV+. Harry is donating his undisclosed executive producer fee to charity, but royal watchers will wait to see if superlattes at £21 a pack feature in the ad breaks.
Sources close to the Sussexes say that “much of their work happened privately” this year, and while there has been some public volunteering, they remain mostly suspended in lockdown isolation, with regular visits from Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, who lives in Los Angeles. They occasionally venture to the beach in Malibu or downtown Montecito for dinner with Meghan’s old friend the actress Katharine McPhee, 36, and her music mogul husband, David Foster, 71. McPhee has described Harry’s relationship with Foster as “like father and son”.
Despite being locked down, they have managed to generate headlines, not all of them as positive as the response to Meghan’s announcement last month that she had suffered the “unbearable grief” of a miscarriage in July. “This year has brought so many of us to our breaking points,” she wrote in The New York Times. “Loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020, in moments both fraught and debilitating.”
But there have been other moments when the Sussexes’ willingness to speak their minds ended less well, notably when they waded into the US presidential election, Harry calling on voters to “reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity” and Meghan describing it as “the most important election of our lifetime”. Their comments were widely interpreted as a swipe at Donald Trump, who shrugged it off with a joke at Harry’s expense: “I’m not a fan of hers and I would say this ... I wish a lot of luck to Harry, because he’s going to need it.” It was no joke in London, and Buckingham Palace distanced itself from Harry’s remarks. The episode showed Harry and Meghan were still “feeling their way through [their changed status]”, according to a royal aide. Some courtiers feared the royal family was being dragged into a political minefield; others called it a “violation” of the Megxit agreement.
Another obstacle to future harmony arrived with the publication of Finding Freedom, a biography of the couple told mostly from the Sussexes’s perspective. They denied any collaboration, but the book sent shudders along palace corridors. It laid bare a rift between Harry and his brother Prince William, portrayed Meghan as a victim of prejudice and sexism and described how she felt the Duchess of Cambridge had not sufficiently welcomed her.
Royal aides were described as “vipers” and there seemed to be no “closure” on a saga that was clearly still raw for the Sussexes. The book did nothing to help William and Harry’s already fractured relationship — a friend of the brothers says things are “still not great” between them.
The biggest splash was the signing of a lucrative production deal with Netflix to make “inspirational family programming” that “informs but also gives hope”. Neither party has publicly talked money, but the deal is reported to be worth about £75m. For that kind of money, Harry and Meghan might be expected to include royal revelations in the highbrow, uplifting content they have promised. A nature documentary and an animated series about inspiring women are in the pipeline, but to what extent they may be pressured to provide royal-themed programming remains the stuff of nightmares in London.
Eyebrows have been raised over the Netflix deal, given the furore over the latest season of The Crown, one of the streaming network’s most successful series, which depicts Prince Charles as an abusive husband to Harry’s mother, Diana, much to royal fury. The Crown may be trickier viewing for Harry and Meghan now they are committed to its makers, but they can be soothed by the knowledge that the Netflix and Spotify deals have secured the financial independence they craved. They have paid back the £2.4m of taxpayers’ money spent on refurbishing Frogmore Cottage and no longer rely on Charles for support.
So will there be anything left to review come March, beyond “dodgy” celebrity endorsements? As far as Buckingham Palace is concerned, probably not, and aides suggest there is unlikely to be a Sandringham summit sequel. The feeling at monarchy HQ is that the Sussexes are making their way in a brave new world and good luck to them, but fewer crown emojis would be appreciated. Megxit, an all-consuming drama at the start of the year, has been overtaken by “far bigger issues that put it into context”, say royal insiders.
“Harry and Meghan have more control over their lives, but they have taken some major hits to their reputation,” said the royal source who knows the couple. “There is a portrayal of Harry in some parts of the media as to some extent having abandoned Britishness for a more progressive Californian style. That probably quite accurately reflects what a lot of the British public are thinking.
“Harry was beloved and adored for being the happy, energetic, boisterous, down-to-earth prince. But that person isn’t as evident any more, he’s been partly replaced by a rather earnest character.” Harry certainly left many people scratching their heads when during a video broadcast this month he mused: “What if every single one of us was a raindrop, and if every single one of us cared?”
Come March, there may be adjustments to the terms of divorce, but no kiss-and-make-up. There will be no sighting of Archie here this year and no joyful reunion of Harry and his brother any time soon. While the Queen, 94, will spend Christmas at Windsor, Harry will be in his new home in California, his mother-in-law likely to be the only visiting guest.
“They are a big loss to the institution and the nation,” said a friend of the royals. “The biggest loss is on the family side of things; there’s a lot of repair to be done.”
this is probably what she's like in private ......
I'm bloody pissed off 
. Be proud of me guys, because I refrained from saying "It's stupid cunts like you that have us going into another lockdown