Meghan Markle Takes a Major Risk

Meghan Markle used her first Los Angeles red carpet appearance to reveal she has "so many exciting things on the slate," risking a repeat of a formula that has proved problematic in the past.

The Duchess of Sussex dazzled at Variety's Power of Women event last Thursday, a welcome boost. Meghan and Prince Harry had a difficult year after the release last January of the duke's memoir, Spare, which was mocked by comedians and triggered a slump in their U.S. popularity. Since then, they have been rebuilding their position in the U.S. entertainment industry, while Meghan has been getting photographed with the great and the good of Hollywood.

The Variety event showed Meghan in exactly that light, as Billie Eilish, Margot Robbie and Carey Mulligan were fellow guests.

Meghan told an interviewer: "We have so many exciting things on the slate. I can't wait until we can announce them, but I'm just really proud of what we're creating. My husband is loving it too. It's really fun."

Her words earned a slew of headlines, as so many of the couple's public statements frequently do—which all sounds positive except for one potential catch.

The story of Meghan and Harry's stalled Hollywood rebirth has been one of overpromising and under-delivering. Spotify executive Bill Simmons even said they were "f****** grifters."

With that in mind, Meghan's decision to ramp up anticipation around projects that have not yet been announced carries a risk that when the work materializes audiences will not be excited, reinforcing a familiar feeling of being underwhelmed.

The Overpromise of Harry and Meghan's First Wave

Harry and Meghan's U.S. careers got off to a flying start with the announcement of a multiyear Netflix deal in September 2020, followed by one with Spotify that December. In January of that year, they had said they would "work to become financially independent."

They then went stratospheric with the Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021, which led to discussions about racism following her account of a family member expressing "concerns" about how dark her child's skin would be.

However, the couple slowly fell from that peak, with the decline manifesting itself in a major backtracking as well as critical reception of their commercial projects.

Queen Elizabeth's perfectly phrased response to the Winfrey interview—that "recollections may vary"—made it clear that the royals did not agree with Meghan's narrative in the interview, while Prince William asserted that the royals were "very much not a racist family."

That remark may have caused the future king some problems of his own in the months that followed. But ultimately, in an irony of ironies, more than 18 months later Harry appeared to suggest he agreed.

The prince told ITV that Meghan had not accused the royals of racism and introduced the idea that his relatives may have been expressing curiosity rather than concern, which he characterized as unconscious bias, though he left the facts far from clear.

Asked by journalist and friend Tom Brady about racism allegations, Harry said: "No, the British press said that, right? Did Meghan ever mention 'they're racists'?"

Harry, in other words, invited audiences to scale back their understanding of the allegations Meghan had made.

Last December, reviews in both America and Britain for their Netflix show Harry & Meghan were highly critical, with Variety running the headline "It's Well Past Time for Harry and Meghan 2.0."

Overall, Rotten Tomatoes recorded a critics' score of 45 percent and an audience score of 19 percent for the documentary.

Meanwhile, Spare earned some searing parodies, particularly Harry's description of applying Princess Diana's favored lip cream to his frostbitten penis.

Then buzz around the idea Meghan would launch a partnership with Dior in April failed to materialize, and their Spotify deal fell apart in June.

Harry and Meghan's Delicate 2023 Recovery

The Sussexes have been rebuilding slowly but surely in 2023, including the success of Harry's Invictus Games event, held in September in Germany.

Meghan has made sure she gets seen with famous names, including Kelly Rowland and Kerry Washington at a Beyoncé concert. Rowland, a former Destiny's Child singer, said that it was her first time meeting Meghan and that she was "very cool and very down to earth."

In November Megan was seen catching a private jet to a Katy Perry concert, along with Cameron Diaz and Zoe Saldana.

As the delicate rebuilding of brand Meghan continues, she might keep in mind how it all went wrong the first time around. In that respect, the second wave of Harry and Meghan's U.S. operation must either deliver more or promise less, or perhaps both.

The couple's challenge is to create enough expectation to be commercially viable but not so much as to be undeliverable.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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