From a media marriage made in heaven, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s love affair with Netflix is heading for a messy ‘divorce’. When Harry, 41, and Meghan Markle, 44, initially signed their huge £75 million Netflix deal in 2020 they were in a financial fairy-tale – now it’s looking a bit Grimm.
And if you’re Meghan, you know the relationship is on the rocks when the streaming giant’s boss Ted Sarandos unfollows both you AND your ‘As Ever’ lifestyle company on Instagram. Ouch! That’s awkward! A real punch in the gut. So where did it all go wrong?
Is this just the latest trend of people close to the Sussexes – staff, friends or powerful Hollywood figures – dramatically parting ways, sometimes claiming the pair are impossible to work with?
I’ve written before about the ‘Harry and Meghan staff churn’. Reports suggest they have lost at least 22 to 25 staff members since 2020’s Megxit.
They have also lost 11 publicists in approximately five years. Next time one goes, they won’t have anyone around to announce it.
After quitting the UK in, frankly, a strop at Her Majesty the Queen saying they cannot be half-in-half-out Royals, they jetted to the US expecting to get rich on TV shows and books exposing Palace secrets.
They signed the big money Netflix deal and Sarandos was once so close he even allowed them to stay with him in Santa Barbara as they renovated their new Montecito home.
When their five-year deal came to an end last summer, it was announced that the Sussexes’ contract was being downgraded to a less lucrative “first look deal” that gave Netflix first refusal on any new projects.
But there was excitement last year too for Netflix when they supported Meghan’s new ‘As Ever’ lifestyle brand.
Sorry, I really despise the name – it sounds like a cheap funeral and cremation firm.
‘As Ever’ was directly linked to the Duchess’s lifestyle show ‘With Love, Meghan’. Another insufferable name. As Ever – With Love. Did Meghan find these names at the bottom of greetings cards?
Her next new show will probably be ‘Yours Sincerely, Meghan’.
‘As Ever’ promised a lifestyle but delivered jam, wine, candles and tea. Netflix was ultimately so disappointed that this month they announced they were pulling out, leaving it solely a Sussexes offering.
Netflix was also reportedly “blindsided” when Markle and Harry opened up about leaving royal life during their ‘Harry & Meghan’ tell-all with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021.
Because with that Netflix deal, Markle and Harry released several series including their 2023 documentary, ‘Harry & Meghan,’ Harry’s documentary about the elite sport of polo (yawn), and ‘With Love, Meghan’.
The first season of With Love, Meghan was released a year ago and was widley slammed.
Then both the second season and a 2025 Christmas special failed to rank within the top 1,000 shows on Netflix in 2025. It has since been confirmed it will not be returning for a third series.
Meanwhile some odd stories have started to emerge of huge amounts of stock surplus in the ‘As Ever’ lifestyle range, with talk of £10m in unsold items sitting on the shelves.
US magazine Variety claimed Netflix was “giving inventory to employees for free,” while Page Six reported Netflix’s Hollywood offices were overrun with unsold jam jars.
It will take ‘For Ever’ for the Sussexes to flog it all.
A source says: “The issue was sales in the end. The product was not taken up in the way that people had hoped. The jam thing became totemic. There was just all this jam. We had thought there would be more to it.”
When Harry left the Army and started his veterans and charity work – and when the British public first met Meghan way back in 2016 – we thought there would be more to them too.
But knowing Megxit has simply enabled lame TV shows, wellness clichés, and relentless self-pitying books ripping into our Royal Family – we too have been left gravely disappointed.