Meghan Markle makes her next move: She’s barely been seen in months. Now the Duchess of Sussex, 41, is back with a swanky new ‘Rich Mom Energy’ look and an elite Hollywood agent… so, in Coronation week, what’s she cooking up? asks ALISON BOSHOFF
- Until this week,Meghan Markle has made only a few public appearances lately
- During the release of Spare in January, she was not at her husband’s side at all
- Now she has reappeared twice with a bang, including for a Ted Talk introduction
She is never out of the news for long — and the question of her presence, or otherwise, at the Coronation was a saga which played out over many weeks before it was announced that Prince Harry is to attend, solo.
However, until this week, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has made only a few public appearances lately.
Last month she released a picture of herself visiting a shelter for homeless pregnant women but before then she was last seen at a public event on December 7, at the Ripple of Hope awards in New York.
During the release of Spare in January — and the publicity tour undertaken by Prince Harry — she was not at her husband’s side at all.
But now she has reappeared, with a bang; twice. She filmed an introduction to a Ted Talk by her favoured photographer Misan Harriman which was released on Tuesday. It has already been noted that the 2023 Meghan looks notably ‘made-over’.
Meghan filmed an introduction to a Ted Talk (pictured) by her favoured photographer Misan Harriman which was released on Tuesday
Prince Harry and Meghan react at the NBA playoffs round one game four between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies with employees
Meghan was last seen at a public event on December 7, at the Ripple of Hope awards in New York (pictured)
Gone are those girl-next-door freckles, banished in favour of airbrushed made-up perfection. The charmingly informal old hairstyle — tendrils and all — is replaced by a severe Gwyneth Paltrow-style poker-straight blow dry. A more complete display of ‘rich mom energy’ it would be hard to find.
Two days later it emerged Meghan has signed to WME, the foremost Hollywood talent agency — more of which later.
READ MORE: Previously unseen footage of Meghan shows her crowned homecoming queen at high school as the Markle family prepares to fight back
Then on Monday night she was a surprise face in the crowd in a VIP box at the LA Lakers basketball game with Harry — an event at which anyone remotely famous can absolutely bet they will be photographed.
Wearing a £595, pink linen Maxwell two-piece shorts suit from the Los Angeles designer brand STAUD, she declined with a giggle to kiss her husband for the ‘kiss cam’ and appeared to be having a very jolly date night with — deep breath — her lawyer, her manager and a contingent of colleagues from the Sussexes’ Archewell business including at least three publicists, plus executives from both the podcast and the TV arms of their empire.
Sussex-watchers are, predictably, agog. Everything from her clothes, handbag and even her choice of bar snacks has been analysed — as has that sleek new look and powerful new representation.
Jill Smoller, the agent who has helped Meghan’s tennis star pal Serena Williams to an off-court fortune via endorsements, is now on her team at WME. Harry is not included in the deal, other than as a part of Archewell.
But the timing of this sudden interest in the Lakers, and apparently random office outing, is significant and intriguing.
The Duchess of Sussex has signed with one of the most powerful agencies in Hollywood, William Morris Endeavor
Agent Jill Smoller will be among those working with Meghan. Smoller is best known for her work with athletes including Serena Williams and is considered a female pioneer in the world of sports agency
WME CEO Ari Emanuel, left, brother of Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, will also be working with Meghan. Managing partner Brad Slater, right, is also part of the duchesses package, he’s known to cater to some of WME’s biggest movie star clients
Surely it is not just a coincidence that a bombshell Panorama-style documentary about the couple aired 11 days previously in France? The celebrated and serious weekly TV documentary show Envoyé Spécial took a hard look at the Sussexes earlier this month — and didn’t seem very impressed with what they found.
An episode entitled Harry & Meghan, Royal Business focused on Archewell, the organisation which was founded by the couple in 2020 and includes both their charity foundation and the for-profit businesses which make TV shows, such as the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, and radio podcasts, like Meghan’s Archetypes. In one scene, a reporter for the show gained access to the address that is listed as the official headquarters of Archewell.
READ MORE: Meghan’s playful turn-down and Harry’s ‘comedy grimace’: Body language expert breaks down flirty moment Duke leans in to kiss Duchess at LA basketball game
He found huge but deserted offices on Wilshire Boulevard with no trace of Harry, Meghan or any other staff.
Eventually, he was asked to leave by an unidentified woman who wouldn’t say whether the couple had ever been there but told him: ‘They’re not here. This is a lawyer’s office. This is a law firm.’
That’s enough to make anyone choke on their matcha chai latte, particularly Harry and Meghan who have a considerable reputation for disliking the media already, with Harry criticising it for writing smears, and the ‘racial undertones’ of comment pieces about his wife.
So what better way to counter the negative publicity than by being finally seen on a wholesome outing with their large team?
It’s safe to assume that they also will have been angered about some of the allegations made in the show, which originally broadcast on April 13.
Markle appeared to brush off her husband’s advances at the LA Lakers game on Monday night
It contended that the couple must have received at least $135 million (£107 million) via business deals, including their arrangement with Netflix, but asked what was happening with the non-profit arm of Archewell, the Archewell Foundation.
READ MORE: Meghan hits the big league! Duchess of Sussex signs with Hollywood power agency WME, whose other clients include Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and her friend Serena Williams
Reporter Julien Duponchel had looked at its accounts. ‘In the latest report they claim to have raised $13 million [£10 million] for charity. Listed in this table are the 22 cheques they distributed to charities. In total, $2.9 million [£2.3 million],’ he said. He went on: ‘Other significant expenditure, $1 million [£800,000], but this time for their operating budget and costs. Result — $9 million [£7 million] is ‘sleeping’ in the foundation’s accounts, and is currently useless. Why isn’t all this money being used to do good, as this foundation intends?’
Archewell, however, says it will spend the next year working on ‘three main pillars’ — building a better online world, restoring trust in information, and uplifting communities, which will presumably use the $9 million being held in reserve.
These figures were published in January this year and refer to activities between 2020 and 2022. The $2.9 million was donated to causes including refugee resettlement, Covid-19 vaccines and supporting academic fellows and humanitarian relief.
Tax returns for the period show that less than $4,500 (£3,600) came from public donations, with $13 million coming from two anonymous backers.
Duponchel said that he sent ‘hundreds’ of emails and called dozens of times, but got no response at all from anyone on the Archewell team.
Duponchel then tracked Prince Harry down to a conference in San Francisco which he was attending in his role as the ‘chief impact officer’ at the online life-coaching firm BetterUp.
Tax returns for the period show that less than $4,500 (£3,600) came from public donations, with $13 million coming from two anonymous backers
The French journalist, with a hidden camera in his backpack, gets to within a few feet of Harry in San Francisco and manages to film him before he is challenged by a bodyguard. A source at the show says this week that they have yet to receive any complaint about their investigation, which is not to say that Harry and Meghan won’t challenge some (if not all) of the allegations that Duponchel has made if they believe he is wrong.
Meghan’s motivation for signing for WME is also being widely debated. The trade magazine Variety reports that WME will be representing her personally and Archewell ‘the content creation label’.
It adds: ‘Film and television production, brand partnerships, and overall business-building will be explored. Acting will not be an area of focus.’
The focus for Meghan, it seems, is moving from philanthropy to turning a buck, or as Variety puts it: ‘The relationship signifies that Meghan is looking to zero in on her enterprise efforts.
‘Her lifelong advocacy for women, mothers and girls will remain a thread in her professional work.’
She has ambitions to make a ‘romcom’. Plans for her feminist animated children’s series, Pearl, which was to centre on a 12-year-old who is inspired by the stories of influential women in history, were quietly abandoned by Netflix last year.
You can expect WME to team her up with high-profile producers, writers and show-runners to get some projects off the ground, which don’t feature her on camera. In short, her ambition is to become a wealthy entertainment mogul, like friend Tyler Perry.
Meanwhile, there are signs that the Sussexes’ representatives are under pressure on another front.
Last weekend, the Daily Telegraph ran a sympathetic story which suggested that Meghan had decided not to attend the Coronation after an exchange of letters with King Charles. That followed the Oprah interview in 2021, and her assertion that she had been asked by an unnamed royal about the colour of son Archie’s skin.
The newspaper said that she had ‘expressed her concerns about unconscious bias in the Royal Family in a letter to the King’. Writer Victoria Ward added: ‘A source has said that the Duchess feels she has not received a satisfactory response to her concerns, and that is believed to be one factor in her decision not to attend the Coronation on May 6.’
The Telegraph said that Meghan had ‘expressed her concerns about unconscious bias in the Royal Family in a letter to the King’
You might feel that harmless enough, but it provoked a rare denial from the couple’s press secretary Ashley Hansen who insisted: ‘The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago.
‘Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating.’
Yet this air of superior nonchalance at the ridiculousness of it all has been undermined this week, as the article as been republished online no fewer than 11 times, with revisions made in the second, fourth and fifth iterations.
This suggests quite strongly that there has been a to and fro between the Sussexes and the newspaper over the ‘ridiculous circus’ they claimed they wanted nothing to do with. So what was changed?
Firstly, an assertion that the remark about Archie’s skin colour ‘had been considered an innocuous observation’ has come out. A paragraph has been inserted which doubles down on her previously stated distress over racist abuse during her time as a working member of the Royal Family.
‘The Duchess has expressed disappointment at the lack of support she received from the institution during her time as a working member of the family when she felt she was subjected to a volley of racist abuse from which she was unable to protect herself.’
Perhaps most significantly there have been a number of changes made to say that the chief reason why she isn’t coming to the Coronation is because it is Archie’s birthday. Among the lines inserted are: ‘Sources close to the Sussexes insisted that she decided to stay in California because it was Archie’s birthday’ and ‘the desire to put her own family first by staying with Prince Archie on his fourth birthday, which falls on the same day, was said to have been the deciding factor’.
Ah — family first. Something which Prince Harry feels never happened for him and which comes across as a not-too-subtle jab at the Royal Family. They didn’t consider Archie’s birthday when choosing the date — it is the ‘institution’ at fault again— and Meghan is taking the moral high ground by not coming.
It now appears the chief reason why she isn’t coming to the Coronation is because it is Archie’s birthday
It’s worth noting at this point that the couple did not send public birthday greetings to the Cambridges’ son Prince Louis, who turned five on Sunday.
Harry memorably described his brother ‘Willy’ as his nemesis in the memoir Spare and the two are said to have what appears to be an irretrievably broken relationship after its publication.
You don’t have to look too far to see the signs that the Sussex camp are still angry about events around the death of HM the Queen.
Among those telling online tweaks to the Telegraph article is a line which notes: ‘The Sussexes felt they were treated appallingly by the Royal Family.’ The amended story goes on: ‘A failure to personally inform the Duke that his grandmother had died before putting out a public statement was followed by an apparent about-turn over the Duke’s right to wear military uniform and an invitation sent in error to a state reception at Buckingham Palace.’
All of this you might think adds up to a state of near-war between Harry and Meghan and Harry’s family. However, the Duchess is evidently very keen not to look as if she is out for blood. The Telegraph article stated: ‘While the issues raised during the racism row have never been resolved, the Duchess is said to have moved on and does not hold a grudge.’
However, there’s one line which didn’t change: Meghan, it was said ‘may also have wanted to protect herself by side-stepping the inevitable criticism and attention that her appearance would have provoked’.
Which is, perhaps, the one thing on which everyone can agree.
Additional reporting: PETER ALLEN
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