In 2021, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ended up hiring Liz Garbus to direct their docu-series, Harry & Meghan. Garbus already had a profile as a documentarian, and I thought she did a good job with their story. While H&M produced the series, Meghan made it clear that it was Garbus’s vision for how they told their story. While many in the British media tried to make that sound like Garbus was at odds with the Sussexes or the Sussexes were at odds with Netflix, at the end of the day, everyone involved seemed happy with the finished product, which is still one of the most-watched docuseries on the streamer. Well, Deadline published this exclusive: “BBC Docs Boss Says She Would Never Have Greenlit ‘Harry & Meghan’: ‘As A Public Broadcaster We Cannot Relinquish Editorial Control’.” Behold, Deadline desperately trying to make this completely random comment very scandalous:
Netflix’s Harry & Meghan would never have found a home at the BBC, the woman tasked with overseeing the corporation’s documentary programing has said. According to Clare Sillery, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s approach to the Netflix smash series would be unacceptable for a public broadcaster that “cannot relinquish editorial control.”
Speaking on the eve of Sheffield Doc Fest, Sillery said doc commissioning is a “question of trust and what audiences expect from us,” while she acknowledged that “in the online world people can have complete control of their own narratives.”
“But the question for the viewer is what you are paying your license fee for,” she said. “[The viewer] expects us to maintain the editorial standards that we have.”
Much has been made of the editorial control exerted by the subjects in last year’s doc series, which was co-produced by the ex-royal duo’s Archewell Productions via a multi-million dollar Netflix deal. Speaking to Deadline in April, Ian Rumsey, who oversaw the separate Prince Harry ITV interview, said Harry & Meghan had been “slightly overshadowed” by the debates thrown up around the royal couple’s involvement with the project, while a group of doc-makers at the Berlinale TV Series described Harry & Meghan as “almost a different genre.”
And it isn’t only Harry & Meghan that opted for the approach. Pamela Anderson’s Netflix feature Pamela: A Love Story, for example, counts the model’s son Brandon Thomas Lee as producer.
As she unveiled a packed Sheffield Doc Fest slate, Sillery said public broadcasters can set themselves apart from the streamers through docs that focus on telling stories in the present tense. “We’ve got very comfortable in the past tense and this has partly been dictated by the streamers’ appetite and also because we went through Covid,” she added.
[From Deadline]
“Netflix’s Harry & Meghan would never have found a home at the BBC” – well, good thing that the BBC was never in the running to air one of the most discussed docu-series in the past three years. I mean, this woman’s larger point is that different companies have different editorial standards, which… no sh-t. PBS would not have produced or aired the Sussexes’ docuseries either. Which, again, is why I’m so happy that Netflix did pay them for that content. Gasp, a streamer was willing to pay big bucks for a huge exclusive series with H&M, and that streamer gave H&M a lot of control over how they told their story. *clutches pearls* Why is this even news?
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
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