Cool reception to Meghan media blitz suggests US
not yet sold on former royals
Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, at the
9/11 Memorial in New YOrk lats year.
.webp)
Edward
Helmore in New York
Sat 3 Sep
2022 07.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/03/meghan-harry-duke-duchess-sussex-media-blitz
Meghan
Markle launched a US media blitz last week with a podcast and a lengthy
magazine profile, but the somewhat cool reception she and husband Prince Harry
are now receiving in America suggests there are still bumps in their road ahead
as they seek to establish themselves as bona fide celebrities.
The push
came with an interview in New York magazine’s the Cut, titled “Meghan of
Montecito”, and it touted the launch of Markle’s Spotify podcast Archetypes.
Meghan has
had no trouble attracting A-list names to sit down with her in the interview
series. First up was retiring tennis legend Serena Williams. Second, singer
Mariah Carey. The women discussed living under the pressure of the public eye,
their racial identities and more.
But for the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the US media response, which has been relatively
neutral to date in the US, came with some barbs of criticism of the way Meghan
highlighted her experiences of royal life in Britain. She had, as the Cut
noted, “taken a hardship and turned it into content”. Last year the New Yorker
warned that the royal couple seemed fixated with a backwards-looking “trauma
plot”.
“Meghan
Markle needs to leave royal trauma behind”, the Washington Post said in an
opinion page headline. “In truth, the only way for the Sussexes to build a
truly new life, and have a wider impact on the causes they care about, is to
stop making themselves the center of the story.”
The CNN
host Don Lemon commented on the second episode of Archetypes, titled The
Duality of Diva, in which Meghan revealed to Carey that the first time she was
aware of being treated as a Black woman was when she dated and then married her
royal husband.
“If there’s
any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I
started dating my husband,” Meghan said. “Then I started to understand what it
was like to be treated like a Black woman because up until then, I had been
treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”
Lemon, who
is African American, said: “It is a bit shocking that at thirtysomething years
of age, she is just understanding what it’s like to be a Black woman in
America. It’s a bit surprising to me.”
The
conservative tabloid New York Post went further, noting inconsistencies in
Meghan’s privilege and her re-airing of the discrimination story she revealed
on Oprah last year. The Post put her on its famously punchy front page under
the headline “Toddler and tiara” and depicted Meghan as a “spoiled princess”.
“For the
past three years she’s had a global platform, yet all she does with it is
complain that she’s been censored, silenced, shut out. Meghan Markle has been a
public downer longer than she was a working duchess,” wrote the New York Post
columnist Maureen Callahan. “It’s long past time for a new talking point.”
But the
attention hardly damaged the podcast’s launch. Meghan’s Spotify series went in
at No 1 in the US as soon as it was released, pushing the controversial but
highly popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast from the top spot. It was still
there as of Thursday, according to latest figures in the trade bible Variety.
Meghan and
Harry are essentially are still on their transition to a fully fledged US media
brand; a process that has been under way since they set foot in the US two
years ago. They have to walk a tightrope between leveraging their royal links
with an American public that is broadly fascinated with the British
institution, while also seeking to carve a path that will eventually allow them
to stand as celebrities in their right, having rejected traditional royal life.
“Meghan
Markle started out in a fairly populated crowd of American television shows,
made a complex transition to be being part of the uber-narrative of the royal
family, and now she’s making the transition to being an integrated media
power-presence,” said Bob Thompson, media professor at Syracuse University.
“The
potential for becoming a mega-brand is certainly there. We’re in the midst of
seeing it, but transitions aren’t always easy and aren’t always pretty.”
Maiysha
Kai, lifestyle editor at the Grio, a Black-focused news and entertainment
outlet, said there may be no other way for Markle and her husband to achieve
their stated goal of leaving the royal orbit and achieving financial
independence than to revisit their experience of it – even if that is most
likely to generate negative headlines.
“Her
experience in the royal family is the experience most people want to hear
about. Of course, I hope there’s new stories to tell in the future, but they
would be entirely remiss not to capitalize on this while they can,” Kai said.
But
America’s celebrity-industrial complex is a strange place, and Meghan is far
from the first to seek to leverage a high-profile moment of fame into a
broader, long-lasting and highly lucrative celebrity life. A relevant reference
point, Kai said, is how the Kardashian family has turned a societally negative
experience (Kim’s sex tape) into a multibillion-dollar family empire.
“I wouldn’t
say that marrying into the royal family is like doing a sex tape, but I would
say there is a parallel in turning something into a lucrative positive,” Kai
said.
Kai
acknowledged that the current moment in the Sussexes’ campaign for an American
celebrity life was a tough one. “I think what we’re going through is the normal
celebrity fatigue. You eat it up and eat it up, and then you’re done,” she
said.
At the
moment, Meghan’s podcast is the main thing US media consumers have to go on
when it comes to the couple’s contributions to American life. Future guests are
said to include actors Constance Wu and Issa Rae, journalist Lisa Ling and
comedian Margaret Cho – all likely to spark interesting conversations on
gender, race and identity.
Thompson
said that, judging by the podcast, Meghan might aspire to be someone who is
already the closest thing America has to homegrown royalty: the chatshow queen
Oprah Winfrey. But if that is the case, there is a long road and a lot of work
ahead for the royal couple.
Oprah,
Thompson said, “had for a quarter-century a daily talkshow speaking to a huge,
undifferentiated mass audience from which she could launch sorties into the
rest of the culture – a book club, a magazine, movie roles”.
Oprah also
had time to learn how to strike a balance between the confessional and
personal, and a more neutral role of interviewer as interlocutor between an
audience and a celebrity interviewee. “Oprah did it with a degree of skill that
didn’t simply hijack the subject back to interviewer,” he points out.
And that
may take time. Meghan’s plan, Thompson said, was to “carve out a specialized
audience. It may be a fragment of what used to be, but you can still do a lot
with that”.
It is that
most American of stories: a beginning with big dreams.
Harry and Meghan to touch down in UK for first
time since Jubilee
9 hrs ago
By PA News
Agency
The Duke
and Duchess of Sussex are back in the UK this week for the first time since
returning for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Harry and
Meghan will appear at events in London and Manchester, as well as jetting off
to Germany to mark the one year countdown to the Invictus Games.
It is not
known what day the couple will arrive on British soil, or if they will visit
the Queen in Balmoral, but it is thought unlikely they will bring their
children Archie and Lili on the working trip.
They will
head to Manchester on Monday for the One Young World summit, an event which
brings together young leaders from more than 190 countries.
Meghan, a
counsellor for the organisation, will give the keynote address at the opening
ceremony.
They will
also meet a group of summit delegates doing “outstanding work on gender
equality”, One Young World said.
The couple
will then head to Germany for the Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023 One Year to Go
event Which is taking place on Tuesday, before returning to the UK for the
WellChild Awards in London where Harry will deliver a speech on Thursday.
Their visit
to the UK will be the first time they have been back in the country since the
Jubilee celebrations in early June, when they attended the service of
thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral.
It comes
just days after Meghan’s wide-ranging interview with The Cut in which she said
it takes “a lot of effort” to forgive and hinted that she can “say anything”.
In the
interview, running to more than 6,000 words, Meghan said that “just by
existing” she and Harry were “upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy” before
they stepped down as senior working royals.
Harry and
Meghan’s trip falls in the same week the new prime minister is due to be
announced and asked to form a government by the Queen.
The monarch
will appoint a new prime minister at Balmoral for the first time in her reign.
The
96-year-old, who has faced ongoing mobility issues, traditionally holds
audiences with outgoing and incoming premiers at Buckingham Palace.
But Boris
Johnson, who will tender his resignation, and the new Conservative Party leader
who will be asked to form a government – either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak – will
travel to Balmoral Castle for the key audiences on Tuesday.
Security
will be at the forefront of Harry’s mind as he travels from his home in
California for the high profile appearances.
The duke,
who quit as a senior working royal in 2020, is bringing legal action over a
decision not to allow him to pay for police protection for himself and his
family when in the UK.
This summer
he won a bid to bring a High Court claim against the Home Office.
His
challenge concerns the February 2020 decision of the Executive Committee for
the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec) over his security, after
being told he would no longer be given the “same degree” of personal protective
security when visiting.
The royal
family has been bracing itself for Harry’s forthcoming tell-all book, which he
has vowed will be an “accurate and wholly truthful” account of his life.
The memoirs
were expected to be published in late 2022 by Penguin Random House but a
release date has yet to be confirmed.
There will
be concern in royal quarters that the duke will delve into his rift with his
brother, the Duke of Cambridge, his troubled relationship with his father, the
Prince of Wales, his view of stepmother the Duchess of Cornwall and the
turbulent fallout of Megxit.
Harry and
Meghan accused the royal family of racism in their controversial Oprah Winfrey
interview last year, saying an unnamed royal made a racist remark about their
son Archie before he was born, and that the institution failed to help a
suicidal Meghan.
Although
not confirmed, it is thought unlikely the couple will bring Archie and Lili on
the working trip.
The
youngsters travelled with their parents to the UK for the Platinum Jubilee and
Lili celebrated her first birthday at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, but Archie
and his younger sister did not attend any public events.
Harry and
Meghan kept out of the limelight for the majority of the weekend, with the
Queen deciding only working royals should grace the Buckingham Palace balcony
during the historic festivities.
The
Sussexes renewed their lease on Frogmore Cottage earlier this year.
If Harry
and Meghan stay at their UK base, they will be just minutes away from the
Cambridges, who are due to have relocated to their new home, Adelaide Cottage
on the Windsor estate.
The
location of the Cambridges’ new home raises the chances of a private meeting
between Harry, Meghan, William and Kate, despite their troubled history.
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