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Give them their due, Meghan and Harry seem to have played a blind role with their deal with Netflix. We have wondered about the valuation they give their celebrity: it turns out to be around £ 100 million, if the reports are to be believed.
It’s no wonder they bet the £ 11 million Californian house, nine bedrooms, and 17 bathrooms.
We don’t know what audiences will do with their hopeful and inspiring documentaries, but the Duke and Duchess of Sussex can afford to hire professionals to make the shows, plus a ton of liberal money is being moved toward the causes they support. . It may irritate your critics, but the awakening is commercial.
The exiled couple is a triumph of their own narrative. They have taken very seriously the guidance of the self-help guru Brené Brown: “Either you enter your story and acknowledge your truth, or you live outside your story, fighting for your worth.”
Celebrity is an act of faith. The British tend to say: “It is up to other people to judge.” Americans have more quickly understood that a new world is ready to take them by their own estimation.
Influential publicists, fans, and friends like Oprah Winfrey are there to help the couple achieve what they want. Be virtuous, rich and reserved.
Meghan has carefully studied her role model, Michelle Obama, and she exhibits some of the same luminous charisma. I wonder if she would like to be on a political ballot if Michelle ever changes her mind about staying out of politics.
Or perhaps Brené Brown has a bolder narrative: Michelle Obama as a supporter of Meghan’s presidential candidacy. Michelle and Meghan have talked about finding a ‘voice’.
SARAH SANDS: Harry and Meghan (pictured earlier this year) appear to have played a blind role with their new deal with Netflix which, if the reports are to be believed, is worth over £ 100 million.
Meghan’s ‘ordeal’ in Britain was, in her opinion, the subjugation of her voice. A colleague who was on a broadcast of the Royal Family’s short-lived Fab Four (how touching it is to remember the two couples so happy together) remembers the microphone moving down the line: William … Kate … Harry …
Meghan, at the end of the line, wasn’t about to wait. I do not have voice? she asked coldly. At last, it can be heard, loud and clear. It is obvious that she is delighted to be home again.
Can California feel like home to Harry too? Three years ago, he was a guest editor of an edition of BBC Radio 4 Today and, as a regular editor, I spent time with him. My first trip to Kensington Palace to discuss their plans for the show was around this time of year.
We had had the twentieth anniversary of Diana’s death and the palace gates looked like Lourdes: a shrine of offerings to the aggrieved princess, filled with photos and mementos of her life.
I wonder … Can we ever see Meghan fighting for the White House?
The Greek tragedy of a son’s revenge for his mother’s suffering could have been an irresistible subject. Instead, I thought about how sane Prince Harry was to set aside the sanctification of Diana and the populist attempt to use her image to destroy the monarchy.
But he was very depressed with the press and was willing to move forward with his agenda of filtering the cruelty of social media, seeking positive leadership and supporting the British troops.
While we were discussing the program’s order of execution, I slyly suggested that its address book was much more elegant than mine. President Obama would return your calls. Prince Harry was organized and pragmatic.
I was happy to make those calls. And he offered to do some of the interviews himself. He asked former President Obama about the direction of the United States, facing Trumpism by implication.
Sarah Sands, outgoing editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today show, writes: We’ve wondered about Harry and Meghan’s valuation of their celebrity: it turns out to be around £ 100 million, if the reports are to be believed.
And he added some daring and quick questions, including asking Obama his opinion on his fiancee’s television drama, Suits. Obama sounded … fatherly.
Netflix will also want access to the Prince’s power of attraction and they may have ideas about his interviews. During his guest edit of Today, Harry suggested that the host should ask Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick a question. It was that the officials were doing a good job in difficult circumstances. I made a face that it wasn’t really a question.
Harry seemed to me brimming with ideas and passion and that he just needed a hand to restrain him. I was happy that Meghan was a smart and sensible influence. She claimed that she didn’t really know who he was when they met.
Perhaps I was naive, but I was so glad that she apparently did not notice the heartbreaking image of the boy walking behind his mother’s coffin, at perhaps the most televised funeral since that of President Kennedy.
We interviewed Prince Harry at the end of the show and he said how delighted he was that Meghan was joining her relatives for Christmas, because she hadn’t grown up with this kind of family unit.
I remember smiling at his loving and reconciled expression as he spoke. How impressive that he could find such comfort in his own family, given his own well-informed problems.
NOBLE CAUSE: What would Prince Harry look like building bridges with Scotland
I reflected on all of this last week as I looked at the shrine building at Kensington Palace for the 23rd anniversary of Diana’s death. Those of us who have been through divorce know that it is a state of flux.
Lives are rebuilt and grievances are resolved. Was Princess Diana, now 57, the same vulnerable, beautiful and destructive force that she was in 1997? Of course, no.
Had she fled Britain, as she threatened, to become a Hollywood humanitarian? Or could Sloane Ranger, a doting grandmother from Norfolk, have returned to her roots?
This year I noticed that the anger of the crowd had subsided. The letters DIANA were written like on a wedding cake. The photographs of her among the flowers were more radiant than reprehensible. A banner congratulated their children for continuing their work.
And there is work to be done. Harry is a prince and his country needs him.
In the first of the punishments he gave his family, he and Meghan declined an invitation to Balmoral. Apparently something small at the time, its importance is magnified now.
Nicola Sturgeon is calling for another referendum on Scottish independence, the ballot boxes north of the border are moving and the threat to the Union is more serious this time than in the 2014 referendum. It was pretty close then.
Movies about nature are fine, but there is a bigger prize to fight for: the future of the UK.
I remember an urgent conversation between then-Prime Minister David Cameron and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
It was at the opening of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games on September 10, 2014 at the Olympic Park in East London. At the time I was editing the Evening Standard and was Boris’s guest at the ceremony. The referendum was the following week and Cameron stopped to speak before taking a seat.
Boris asked him if he was going to be okay and Cameron replied that he thought so, but that he was tense. That night, I measured the popularity of the respective bosses by welcoming veterans and their families.
Cameron received a polite applause, Boris a great applause, Prince Harry a deafening applause. Prince Harry and Boris Johnson joked together, united by optimism and a common touch. And patriotism.
David Cameron won the Scottish referendum and later disclosed that he had sought the Queen’s help, asking if she could “raise an eyebrow” on the Scots’ vote for independence.
SARAH SANDS: We don’t know what audiences will do with Harry and Meghan’s documentaries of hope and inspiration, but the Duke and Duchess of Sussex can afford to hire professionals to do the shows.
Boris Johnson needs all the help he can get from the Royal Family this time. Downing Street has made the Union its priority. The reason Brexit negotiations are stalling firmly on fish is that the Scots (for whom the industry is worth around £ 600 million a year) must see the benefits of exiting the EU.
We need to nurture every union link. We need more than the economy and the common currency to keep things together. What about emotional ties? What about the monarchy and the military? Prince Harry can evoke both.
The monarchy encompasses two important concepts, the Commonwealth and the Union. We are off to a bad start, because Harry and Meghan have undermined the Commonwealth by framing it as an instrument of oppression.
They surely cannot think the same of Scotland. What can Harry say now about the Union? Come on, Harry. Nature documentaries are fine and will pay the bills, but there is a bigger prize to fight for.
The survival of the UK is at stake.
You must evoke Shakespeare’s Henry V in Agincourt: “ By Jupiter, I am not greedy for gold, / Nor do I care who feeds me from my shores; / He doesn’t miss me if men wear my clothes; / Such external things do not dwell in my desires: / But if it is a sin to covet honor, / I am the most offensive living soul.
Doesn’t that sound like a more poignant cause for a noble prince than being just another waking warrior from the west coast?
