Isolated by their own decision from the rest of the royal family, with no prospect of reconciliation, with UK public opinion overwhelmingly against it and a lifestyle of billionaires (which they sort of are, but only to an extent), Henry and Meghan need their story to interest the United States and Americans to buy it. In this sense, it is very bad news that Spotify has canceled, after only one season, the twenty million dollar contract they signed in 2020.
Bad sign, and a warning to surfers, but not yet a disaster, because the much larger deal with Netflix to produce documentaries (one hundred million dollars) has been backed by the streaming company, and in the bank (or under the mattress in his bedroom in Montecito, or wherever) are kept the 28 million euros that Enric received from Diana’s inheritance, to which must be added the salary as an executive of the startup Better Up (around ‘a million dollars a year), and what Meghan has been able to save from her acting career.
Spotify’s decision has been influenced by the crisis of the Stockholm-based company, which in the last fiscal year recorded losses of 430 million euros after admitting that its spending plans had been too ambitious; has already laid off two hundred workers and announced that it will eliminate 6% of its workforce worldwide. But also because the content of Meghan’s podcasts, in the form of conversations with her friends Serena Williams and Mariah Carey about female empowerment (“researching and dissecting the prejudices that burden women”), gender equality, social justice, mental health and racism, has not had the expected hook. They have been, so to speak, slack.
The latter is indeed worrying for the Sussex brand. Must the Americans – their core audience – have started to tire of what Henry and Meghan have to say? Of their troubles with the Windsors, how they feel discriminated against, their views on this and that? Their plan A, say people close to them, is to stop milking the scandal cow, and build a life with advertising and audiovisual businesses (such as those of Netflix and Spotify). But there is always the possibility of a new autobiography or denunciation book, with material (if any) that has not yet been used.
Desperate dukes, in need of money, is the most dangerous option for the palace. In principle, the agreement between Enric and the publishing house Penguin (which published En la sombra, a book for which it is speculated that he received an advance of twenty million euros, and which has sold like hot cakes) is for four books, and it is in the interest of the British royal house that they be as innocuous as they can be, without further accusations or reasons for scandal. But what else can the youngest son of Charles III explain to attract attention?
If what Enric and Meghan have to explain lacks interest, then they will have a problem, because, although they are not poor, their expenses are enormous (to begin with, in security), and they take a train to Santa Barbara (California) of life that is not easy to maintain without decapitalizing, paying for a house of fifteen million euros and making out with people much richer than them. By Hollywood standards, they are merely middle class. His goal of creating a billion-dollar empire may be unattainable, especially if his aura fades.
The jury is still out on the matter. The door to Spotify and Meghan’s podcast Archetypes has closed, but the couple’s Netflix series has a huge audience (in the UK alone, 2.5 million people downloaded the first episode on premiere), and has also been nominated for the Hollywood Critics Circle Awards in the non-fiction category. No one survives from pats on the back, but they can bolster their reputation as documentary filmmakers and creators of audiovisual content. His super agent Ari Emanuel and his PR agency will be delighted.
The Sussexes want to live like kings by telling “positive stories” of lifestyle and personal enrichment from now on, in the style of Gwyneth Paltrow. But positive stories can lack spark. Brexit has been a failure, Megxit will have to be seen.
