Harry and Meghan have developed a reputation for being "really difficult to work with" across multiple high-profile relationships — from the Royal Family to Spotify and Netflix — royal experts have said, raising fresh questions about the couple's ability to build a sustainable commercial empire five years after quitting as senior working royals in 2020.
The question put to royal expert Bronte Coy cut to the heart of the Sussex story: why does every major relationship end the same way? His verdict was delivered without hesitation.
"People are basically saying that they're really difficult to work with," he said. "And that's the theme there, and it's from a number of sources now, a number of different outlets and that is the problem with them moving forward, trying to build an empire post-royal life."
The comments come after reports emerged that bosses at the $350billion streaming giant have lost patience with the couple, with insiders telling Variety that the mood inside the building towards Archewell Productions had soured beyond repair.
"The mood in the building is 'We're done,'" one insider is reported to have said.
Years of association with the world's biggest streaming platform have yielded not a single work of fiction — a track record that has reportedly worn down even the considerable patience of Netflix chief Ted Sarandos, who is said to now demand legal representation be present before agreeing to speak with Meghan, 44, directly.
Across eight 33-minute episodes, the mother-of-two delivered cooking segments, celebrity cameos and homemade craft projects that drew withering notices from critics. The follow-up series failed to reverse the show's fortunes, and Meghan's team said the format would live on only through one-off seasonal editions.
The As Ever lifestyle brand has also been cut loose, the Express has reported. When the venture launched a year ago, Netflix arrived as a fully committed commercial backer — deploying its own staff and development resources behind a product range built around jam, rose wine and edible flower sprinkles, with the streamer's infrastructure underpinning the entire operation from day one.
Meghan, based in Montecito, California, had spoken enthusiastically about the arrangement at the time.
"Then Netflix came on, not just as my partner in the show, but as my partner in my business, which was huge," she said.
But the mum-of-two is now said to have welcomed the break, believing the streamer's risk-averse approach was throttling the brand's potential. Both sides described the parting as amicable, with Meghan taking over the development teams herself.
The gap between the brand's curated image and its commercial reality became impossible to ignore after a glitch in the Archewell website laid bare an inconvenient truth — more than $21.8million of product was sitting in warehouses as of January, according to Newsweek, despite the company having previously claimed a sell-out. Variety separately established that Netflix had accumulated a surplus of tea and bakery lines running to more than $10million.
A thread of continuity with Netflix remains. The couple hold a first-look arrangement with the streamer — a pale shadow of the $100million deal that brought them to Hollywood after they quit as senior working royals, which lapsed last year — and development work on unspecified projects is said to be continuing.
The streaming partnership that preceded Netflix ended with equal awkwardness. Spotify and the Sussexes went their separate ways in 2023 after Meghan's Archetypes series limped to a close following just 12 episodes — with both sides claiming the split was by mutual agreement.
Coy who spoke with the Sun, said the Sussexes had arrived in America with ambitions to become television producers but had struggled to move beyond factual content — a sector he described as currently "having a torrid time" while drama remains "what's still alive."
"They went to America with dreams of being TV producers and all they've really been able to do is try to monetise their lives through factual content," he said.
He added that drama remained the commercially viable format but the couple had repeatedly failed to break through.
"They've not been able to land those dramas and it does feel like the reason is because they actually didn't have any of their own really fantastic ideas for fiction shows," he said.
"What Meghan's always leaned towards is monetising her life which I think is probably an exhausting thing to do because you need to be able to go home and live your life and for that to be separate."
