The formerly pro-Sussex publication The Cut — part of the ultra-woke New York magazine — ran a savage little piece last week.
Column inches, it seems, rank among many things the Sussexes lost in 2024. In just three paragraphs, writer Danielle Cohen eviscerates the pair and their new Netflix docuseries, ‘Polo’.
Calling the couple’s attempts to generate a hit ‘tortured’, Cohen cited the litany of bad reviews — ‘tedious’, per The Telegraph; ‘unintentionally hilarious’, per The Guardian — before going in on the Gruesome Twosome herself.
‘Seems like this one is bound for the same fate as Markle’s beleaguered jam company,’ she wrote. ‘Though the couple co-produced the show, it seems to have been more of Harry’s pet project — he’s a longtime polo player and apparently “had a vision”.’
If this ‘vision’ was akin to reports of his aborted podcast idea — interviewing the likes of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their daddy issues — no wonder it’s a flop.
Meghan, of course, has remained delusional as ever, telling Town & Country last year that she and Harry ‘have so many exciting things on the [Netflix] slate’.
Sure. Who wouldn’t believe someone whose podcast fizzled, whose animated series was axed, whose launch of the lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard has failed to achieve liftoff?
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Even Harry and Meghan’s most ardent fans are abandoning them. The formerly pro-Sussex publication The Cut ran a savage little piece last week. In just three paragraphs, writer Danielle Cohen eviscerates the pair and their new Netflix docuseries, ‘Polo’.
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‘Seems like this one is bound for the same fate as Markle’s beleaguered jam company,’ Cohen wrote.
Here’s the thing: America has moved into a new phase of this relationship. We no longer even rubberneck with these two. We have become utterly uninterested. And that’s the death knell for Brand Sussex.
Was it fun to hate-watch their first Netflix series, Meghan mocking her curtsy to the Queen, Harry looking on mortified, both of them bitching endlessly? Of course!
Was dissecting ‘Spare’, with its humiliating revelations about Harry’s frozen ‘todger’ and his mother’s face cream as the ultimate salve, a guilty pleasure? You bet.
However, just as the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference, America has grown bored. We’ve heard and seen it all.
We’ve become that guest at the party cornered by the griping dullard that nobody wants to talk to, looking haplessly about for a more sparkling conversationalist. Or at least a top-up on the Champagne.
The same holds true, apparently, for H&M’s overlords at Netflix. As my colleague Alison Boshoff reported this weekend, one source at the streaming giant says execs are ‘exhausted’ by the couple — and Meghan in particular.
‘It’s so much work with her,’ the insider said, ‘and, bluntly, the “deliverable” does not seem to be worth it.’
Another Hollywood executive warned that Meghan’s forthcoming Netflix show about cooking, entertaining and friendship — yes, who among us wouldn’t take notes on the art of maintaining healthy relationships from Meghan Markle? — better be a smash.
‘Her show,’ this source said, ‘will have to be an enormous hit to turn around their deal’ — reportedly worth $100 million — ‘and their reputations in this town.’
Ah, yes. Let’s get to those reputations.
Meghan signed, with great fanfare, to be repped by Hollywood powerbroker Ari Emanuel at WME in 2023.
Now: Were Meghan or Harry at WME’s glittery Emmy party in September? No.
Did Emanuel – despite his significant pull to kill or at least soften stories about his clients – manage to stop that month’s savage Hollywood Reporter article? You know, the one headlined ‘Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan’ that described the duchess as ‘relentless’?
No, he did not.
That same publication, by the way, reported in June that Harry’s ‘Heart of Invictus’ docuseries was — according to Netflix data — one of the streamer’s biggest bombs of 2023, capturing just 300,000 eyeballs.
‘Went by without notice’, the report said.
So much of what the Sussexes do these days goes by without notice. And why not? Now that their information supply has been choked off by the Palace, these two can no longer provide the only content America ever cared about: royal gossip.
To so many of us, they have been revealed as profoundly uninteresting people whose one-time circumstance — proximity to the Crown — was the only thing that made them compelling, let alone relevant.
And so: no invitations, apparently, to White House state dinners for them.
Nor, it seems, to the lavish, starry 70th birthday party that their neighbor and one-time interlocutor Oprah just threw for Gayle King.
No offers, it seems, to host the Met gala, or jet off with Bezos in his spaceships, or even to have tea at Ellen’s — the latter having decamped from Montecito to, irony of ironies, the Cotswolds.
Meghan was, however, invited to a friend’s baby shower last week, alongside guests Blake Lively — who’s had her own bad year, PR-wise — and Crystal Kung Minkoff, former cast member of ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’.
‘Real Housewives’ increasingly feels like Meghan’s lane, does it not? Though hers is a late-stage storyline, the same old conflicts now hashed and thrashed to bits, leaving viewers logging off and network execs questioning whether to renew for yet another season.
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Here’s the thing: America has moved into a new phase of this relationship. We no longer even rubberneck with these two. We have become utterly uninterested. And that’s the death knell for Brand Sussex. (Pictured: Royals together in Sandringham for Christmas in 2018).
One wonders what the vibe is chez Sussex. The royal family, of course, are preparing for their annual Sandringham get together, with the Duke and Duchess of Despair once again left off the invite list.
Kate Middleton, the most beloved and admired family member, ends the year having completed chemotherapy, triumphant at her annual ‘Together at Christmas’ carol service.
Prince William just held a friendly pow-wow in Paris with our President-elect Trump, who raved about how ‘really, very handsome’ William is and mentioned that King Charles is ‘fighting very hard’ against his own cancer diagnosis.
It seems Donald Trump may know more about the royals’ health battles than Harry at this point.
Meanwhile, long-time Sussex pal and hagiographer Omid Scobie — who they still consort with, despite his epic blunder of leaking the so-called ‘royal racists’ by name — unveiled the couple’s ‘Happy Holiday Season’ card on Monday, featuring a new image of their children, fast growing up.
Little Lilibet, already aged 3, has met her grandfather, the King, just once.
You might think the Sussexes’ top priority would be in forging, somehow, a relationship between the ailing King and his small grandchildren in America.
Alas, there are jams to sell.
