Prince Harry and Meghan’s flop era has outlasted their success era

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are now more than three years on since their last major hit, meaning their flop era has lasted longer than the period in which the world seemed to bend to their will.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived in America in March 2020 intent on securing their financial independence but with little clarity on where the money to fund their new lives would come from.

Despite the British media rooting for their failure, they quickly went stratospheric, landing their Netflix deal in September 2020, recently valued at $60 million by Variety, ensuring they would have an income for years to come.

For a while, they appeared unstoppable as paparazzi agencies were made to fold or apologize, newspapers buckled under the pressure of their lawsuits, and broadcasters clamored to interview them.

More recently though, U.S. magazines have been telling a very different story about a crumbling TV empire and diminished expectations about their content.

Why It Matters

There is still hope for Harry and Meghan, who have three Netflix dramas brewing and a documentary about girl scouts that is yet to hit screens. But as time passes the memory of them as successful is at risk of fading.

Harry and Meghan’s Success Era

Some may have forgotten already but the Sussexes really did appear hugely successful for quite a long time fueled not only by signing their Netflix and Spotify deals but also the impact of their March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview.

In the sit down, Meghan accused an unnamed royal of having “concerns and conversations” about how dark her unborn child’s skin might look once born. It was later revealed in the biography Endgame, by Omid Scobie, that it was King Charles III, though he had said to Meghan in a letter that the comment was driven by curiosity not concern.

Needless to say, the allegation came less than a year after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer and brought a racial justice lens to public attitudes to the couple’s rift with the Monarchy.

Beyoncé was among big name stars to take their side, texting Meghan to say she had been “selected to break generational curses that need to be healed,” in a message the duchess read aloud during footage later broadcast through her 2022 Netflix biopic Harry & Meghan.

The Me You Can’t See, Harry’s Apple TV mental health series with Oprah, was also hailed as a success and delved into the “total neglect” the prince said the royals showed Meghan over her mental health.

This commercial success was augmented by some legal triumphs, as in 2021 when Meghan beat The Mail on Sunday in a lawsuit over a private letter she sent her father.

Splash News and Pictures was also sent bankrupt in both Britain and America, in part driven by a privacy lawsuit filed by Meghan and Harry over photos of Meghan carrying her baby, Prince Archie, in a public park in Canada.

Another agency, X17 was also forced to apologize for using a drone to photograph Archie playing in the private grounds of Tyler Perry’s Los Angeles mansion following a Sussex lawsuit in California. As Newsweek revealed back in summer 2020, the images were published in German magazine Bunte.

The couple’s only Spotify podcast was Meghan’s show Archetypes but it won a People’s Choice Award and a Gracie Award after it debuted in August 2022.

At the end of 2022 they debuted their first Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, a biopic charting their love story and messy exit from the royal family which gave the streaming giant its biggest ever documentary debut.

A month later, in January 2023, Harry’s book Spare was released and became the fastest selling non-fiction book ever, selling 1.43 million copies during its first day on sale in the U.K., U.S., and Canada.

Harry and Meghan’s Flop Era

In reality, the cracks were already showing before the book had even hit shelves. As far back as August 2022 Meghan did a sit down interview for The Cut and journalist Allison P. Davis observed she “sometimes converses like she has a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain directing what she says.”

Another warning sign emerged in December when Variety responded to their Netflix documentary with the headline: “It’s Well Past Time for Harry and Meghan 2.0.”

Spare, though, despite its commercial success, triggered a major backlash against the couple including over passages in which Harry described having frostbite on his private parts, which he soothed using Princess Diana’s preferred Elizabeth Arden lip cream. One social media user posted the audio book version, narrated by Harry himself, and described the story as a “Freudian nightmare.”

Late night comedy shows were remorseless in their take downs and even comedian Trevor Noah, who had been a guest on Archetypes, could not resist a dig during the Grammy’s.

“James Corden is a 12-time Emmy winner and the host of The Late Late Show,” Noah said, introducing the British comedian. “He’s also living proof that a man can move from London to L.A. and not tell everyone about his frostbitten penis.”

By June 2023, the couple’s Spotify deal collapsed and efforts to spin the parting of ways as amicable were somewhat undermined when Spotify executive Bill Simmons said on his own podcast: “I wish I had been involved in the Meghan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation. ‘The F****** Grifters,’ that’s the podcast we should have launched with them.”

In fact, a Rolling Stone headline in July 2023 proclaimed: “Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Are in Their Flop Era.”

Most troubling of all for the couple, they simply have not landed a commercial success that is not tied to their messy break up with the British royal family.

Following Harry & Meghan, they launched Live to Lead, also in December 2022, Heart of Invictus, in August 2023 and Polo in December 2024 but none made the top 1,000 shows on Netflix in any six month period.

In 2025 though, Meghan moved to relaunch herself as a lifestyle influencer complete with a cooking show, With Love, Meghan, and a linked online shop As Ever.

Reviews of With Love were scathing, with Vulture describing the series as “an utterly deranged bizarro world voyage into the center of nothing, a fantastical monument to the captivating power of watching one woman decorate a cake with her makeup artist while communicating solely through throw-pillow adages about joy and hospitality.”

Meghan filmed two seasons and a festival special in 2024, all of which were released in 2025. No third season is planned though it may return for future seasonal one-off specials.

As Ever continues and with no sales data available it is difficult to assess the performance of the brand. In January, social media critics spotted a glitch in the website design which allowed them to determine the full size of Meghan’s inventory, revealing $21.8 million of unsold stock across 650,190 products.

Of course, that could reflect well on the business if she sells it all but other signs hint at the possibility she may struggle, certainly with the perishable goods.

Specifically, Netflix has now pulled out as an equity partner in As Ever in what was described as a mutual parting of ways. The move makes it difficult to argue for the possibility As Ever is regularly turning over revenue in the ballpark of $20 million.

Meghan and Harry’s story is far from over and there is still time for them to pull things back, but three years is a long time to go without a clear home run and after so many strikes.