Meghan and Harry 'Underestimated' Difficulty of Life Outside Palace

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle "both completely underestimated" life without the "amazing convening power" of the palace, according to Tina Brown.

The former magazine editor gave a damning verdict of the couple's commercial efforts since they stepped back from royal life in 2020 during the promotion for her new biography The Palace Papers.

Brown said "nothing is really going anywhere for Meghan" and questioned whether the Netflix contract would be renewed during an interview with The Washington Post.

She said: "They both completely underestimated what it was going to be like to be without the palace platform.

"However much they hated, and they really did I think at that point, the constraints and the pettiness essentially of the palace and the advisors, try doing it without the palace and the advisers.

"What the palace does of course, it has amazing convening power, there's no one who won't take a phone call if they say 'Buckingham Palace on the phone, Kensington Palace on the phone.' Every major invitation in the world comes through that conduit. All of that is now gone."

She added: "I think that Harry is in a much better spot because he, brilliantly actually, started this Invictus Games and that's what his brand should be."

However, her view of Meghan's commercial future was less optimistic and she asked: "Netflix is not doing so well, are they going to renew that contract?"

Brown said: "Meghan doesn't really have a brand, is the truth. You feel that she is grasping at whatever is the 'Twitter caring' of the moment. It's vaccinations, it's Ukraine, it's women's rights, it's my 40th birthday, let's have a mentoring scheme. Nothing is really going anywhere for Meghan."

She added: "The whole problem with entertainment deals is you have to produce. They've signed with Netflix but what have we seen? Nothing really except this upcoming documentary with Invictus.

"Creating entertainment that works is very hard to do. Their Spotify podcast seems to have gone nowhere."

Harry and Meghan announced their multi-year, multimillion dollar Netflix deal in September 2020 vowing to produce content that "gives hope."

However, more than a year and a half later they have yet to release their first content for the platform, with Harry's Heart of Invictus documentary and Meghan's children's animation Pearl both still being made.

The Sussexes also appeared to hit a stumbling block with their Spotify deal when they objected to Joe Rogan's discussions about the coronavirus vaccine, hosted on the platform.

However, Meghan is to now produce a weekly show called Archetypes for Spotify which is due for release this summer.

Brown suggested Meghan and Harry's discomfort in royal may have partly been tied to financial constraints within the palace and the allure of the celebrity lifestyle.

She said: "In terms of the hierarchy of the palace, in terms of the Monarchy, Harry was a wonderful addition to the royal line-up but he really wasn't going to get the kind of status, the kind of pulling power in terms of assignments, the kind of dwelling, all the things that you get when you are first in line. That was for her very galling.

"She was essentially marrying for the first time, this woman who was 36 and had been earning her living very successfully from the age of 21 was suddenly completely dependent on her husband for money and he was at the same time completely dependent on the bank of dad—which was Charles—and at the same time had to ask granny for one of the houses on the royal estates to live.

"That kind of infantilizing was very maddening to Meghan. She did not like it."

Brown added that the couple were drawn to the "glorious houses" and lucrative deals of the celebrity world.

She said: "They wanted to be able to have a commercial arm to their activities. That was the stumbling block. Meghan certainly saw the deals that were there to be made that they had to leave on the table because they were royals."

She added: "It was as if Meghan couldn't resist everything that was offered on the celebrity buffet.

"I don't see it so much as greed, as a hunger to avail herself of the kind of wonderful global leverage that major celebrities have, to be able to do their cause work, to be able to appear in the way they want, to be free to say what they want to be able to live in glorious houses without strings attached."