Continuing HR article, Netflix

[Twistybranch]

See all these wise posters, lots of what we have said has been ‘confirmed’ by other sources

article in the DM:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/royals/article-13874743/Harry-Meghan-Hollywood-turns-Sussexes-ALISON-BOSHOFF-venom-schadenfreude.html

https://archive.ph/xgEdv

One senior Hollywood publicist tells me: 'First of all, everyone industry-wide, EVERYONE reads The Hollywood Reporter. It's really striking that WME did not stop this running.'
She adds: 'WME normally – you would think – would have been threatening and denying access to other stars. Was this done here?

Thats exactly what we all thought! it’s strange how they are letting this stuff out.

As we have all seen in recent days, the dark art of covering up and killing stories- look at Al Fayed and what he got away with. So WME have done nothing???

Also, Harry attending an event in his own because Meghan is sick. No. This is part of separating their ‘brands’- I doubt she will attend any future events like these with Harry.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13875773/sick-meghan-markle-prince-harry-kevin-costner-charity-event.html

Seems like the wheels are falling off to me!

Also, in the first DM article- they are talking about how Archewell productions has always been seen as a brand exercise and not a serious production company. That’s why the output has been so little and more certainly why they won’t have their contract renewed and this is why the PR for their tv work has fallen off a cliff.

Also, hasn’t Meghan pulled out of events before because she was ‘sick’? I’m pretty sure she’s used that a few times

It’s obviously not true

I agree, they are now on phase ‘god knows how many’,

I think the next iteration of the H&M story will be an attempt to have Harry as the Royal ‘statesman’ face, and Meghan as the commercial face. Although I think it will be difficult for Meghan, personally, to step away from the benefits of her British Royal family title, she has really leaned into her Duchess title despite her very short tenure as a working Royal, and despite being so vocal and nasty about how very miserable she was in that capacity. Will we see Harry doing the country visits alone? I don’t think Meghan could cope, she desperately wants to be feted, even if it’s by crooks.

I really think using that Royal title was her first big misstep, It is so disingenuous and inauthentic, and she has never managed to create any credibility around it, in fact, it has been the very opposite.

I think there was some legal or commercial decision some time ago (right at the beginning of Megxit) to run some parallel but separate business enitities in order to keep revenue streams maximised?

I see their current situation as trying to achieve half in half out by stealth.

PH needs his RF and British 'aura' topped up - hence his testing the waters of rehabilitation with friends - more frequent visits to UK - in order for MM and H&M to throw this RF light on their commercial and status efforts and interests in the US - otherwise he is just a Brit living in California like thousands of others.

However not sure that he has worked out that he has burnt his bridges and many people consider his words and actions to vulnerable family member s as unconscionable.

His postion is he has had his say - got it off his chest - that he is now ready to reconcile after his brother apologises to him.....

He has zero insight on the impact of his relentless and malicious behaviour on others. He holds no accountability.

The next few years with the cold, monotonous, powerful wind of silence will sting him emotionally and commercially.

The next few years with the cold, monotonous, powerful wind of silence will sting him emotionally and commercially.

I certainly hope so. Cold silence is much less than Harry and Meghan deserve - they can consider they've got off lightly for their spite and stupidity.

I don't feel sorry for Harry. He's got ample money to live a very nice private life without these ill-advised commercial initiatives - the problem is he wants to continue being royal. I'm sure that, if they hadn't continued to be so nasty and just shut up and got on with their lives, soft old Charles would have bunged them a tenner from time to time - and perhaps he already does!

It's not just about needing money. It is somehow about their need for constant adulation and status.

I believe that if they had behaved themselves in the short time they were working members of the RF (2018-2020) - their half in half out would have been considered much more flexibly - but by that time they had wreaked havoc - with relentless 'abrasive, rude, difficult' behaviours tantamount to persistent and consistent bullying of staff and family members despite unprecedented and exceptional allowances and conditions afforded to them.

I've said elsewhere that they need to shut up, downsize, disappear and regroup. Any public engagements should be very limited and with existing charities that Harry is involved in longterm (Invictus and Sentabale, Diana Awards) If he is unable to do anything about the ongoing awful Africa Parks situation, he should resign and disassociate himself. No more acceptance of laughable awards. No "foreign tours". Total break and reset.

Any new commercial venture should start small and be built from the ground up after a lot of thought and planning, focussing on one area rather than scattergunning. They need to seek good advice from people who are not afraid to tell them hards truths and most importantly, actually take it. They're not going to starve on their millions if they live a less ostentatious life and if a reconciliation with the RF really is what they want, a long period of silence would be a start.

If they carry on as they are, I can only see the criticism becoming louder and the Hollywood environment more chilly.

Lol at the DM use of quotation marks in the headline “sick” - that’s telling

That article is behind the dm paywall, can someone copy?

I agree, and suspect their request was pretty similar, aggressive and bullying ... although MM can behave if it works for her, I think PH is less manipulative and more about entitlement

Why do so many people feel the need to shit on this couple?

@Uricon2 - I dont think this is physiologically or psychologiacally possible as they are both dependent on their narcissistic supply - constant attention seeking and admiration behaviour - special treatment, importance, and validation to feed their sense of entitlement and self-centeredness.

"They will deliberately find or create situations in which they are regularly at the center of attention, often to stave off their underlying narcissistic depression. Narcissists are never satisfied—no matter how much validation they receive, it will never be enough. Narcissists seek individuals who are easily lured by their charm and naive to manipulation and exploitation. Once the supply is received, the narcissist will soon become low or empty, always needing more. Feeding narcissistic supply is like trying to fill a bottomless pit—and when they don’t get it, they may react with narcissistic rage"

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-supply/

Why do this couple feel the need to shit on so many people?

Touché

Prince Harry giving an award makes more sense. I vaguely remember some drama between Kevin Costner and Meghan from this event last year so maybe she hasn't been invited back.

The sick excuse could be because she has seen how much sympathy Catherine got. American work culture is much less forgiving of workers being sick so it seems a bit of an odd thing to put out.

That all sounds like an excuse to me!

"One senior Hollywood publicist tells me: 'First of all, everyone industry-wide, EVERYONE reads The Hollywood Reporter. It's really striking that WME did not stop this running.'
She adds: 'WME normally – you would think – would have been threatening and denying access to other stars. Was this done here?"

Wow that really is almost word for word what a previous poster wrote on here! Seems like we were all pretty close to the mark.

Maybe WME have fed her to the wolves?

After 18 months they have not secured her any work - so assume no fee to them despite their time and investment to date - maybe they are trying to off-load her?

Also they would have worked intimately with her and her team over the past 18 months and potentially, seen, heard or directly experienced repeated problematic behaviours.

Here’s a copy paste. @TheStroppyFeminist

The beautiful and the powerful of Hollywood circulated over ginger margaritas and spicy tuna bites on the rooftop of the Waldorf Astoria after the Emmy awards on Sunday night.

Guests included A-listers such as Kevin Costner, Brie Larson and Javier Bardem, influential bosses like David Zaslav of Warners, and rising stars including the actress Eve Hewson – Bono's daughter.

The party was thrown by WME, the Hollywood talent agency whose biggest boss, Ari Emanuel, is the patron of all who gathered there. He out-clouted everyone present, and considering that last year he was paid $65 million (£49 million), he out-earns most of them, too.

Missing, though, was one of Emanuel's most famous ­clients, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. She signed with him in April 2023 in what seemed to be a certain harbinger of some big-ticket commercial tie-ups and maybe more deals in entertainment to go alongside her ­existing Netflix gig. But – just three days after a ­brutal take-down in the usually placid industry bible The Hollywood Reporter, which labelled her as 'Duchess Difficult', neither she nor husband Prince Harry were showing their faces.

They weren't nominated for any Emmys either – obviously.

Meghan has not made a TV show since Netflix's incendiary Harry & Meghan documentary in 2022; Harry was a featured talking head in a documentary about his Invictus Games, which went out in 2023 to some of the lowest ratings of the year on Netflix.

Whether they didn't get an invite or declined to go, their attendance at the event would have made the couple appear at least sanguine in the wake of the article which talked about her working practices, saying she was 'just terrible', 'a dictator in high heels' and had 'made grown men cry'.

One senior figure, who has watched Harry and Meghan's progress in Hollywood with interest, said this week that they seem to be reaping the kind of 'schadenfreude with extra venom' at which the entertainment business excels.

He adds: 'It was only a matter of time before the industry Press started taking shots. It's hard to find anyone with a good word to say for their film and television credibility.'

The article in The Hollywood Reporter was published on September 12. Headed: Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan, it was ostensibly about their chief of staff, Josh Kettler, leaving after only three months, as first revealed in this newspaper by Richard Eden in his diary pages.

It mentioned their woeful record in hanging onto staff with those leaving including Toya Holness, their global press secretary until 2022, Christine Weil Schirmer, who quit as Harry and Meghan's PR head in 2021 and Keleigh Thomas Morgan of Sunshine Sachs who stopped looking after the couple around the same time. Others who have left include Catherine St-Laurent, once head of the Sussexes' charity Archewell, Archewell COO Mandana Dayani; content chief Ben Browning and marketing chief Fara Taylor.

A source claimed to the ­Hollywood Reporter: 'Everyone's terrified of Meghan. She belittles people, she doesn't take advice. They're both poor decision-­makers, they change their minds frequently. Harry is a very, very charming person — no airs at all — but he's very much an enabler. And she's just terrible.'

Another source said: 'She's ­absolutely relentless. She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I've watched her reduce grown men to tears.'

The startling allegations – described by a source close to the couple as 'inaccurate' and 'one-sided' – recall the kerfuffle in 2018 over whether Meghan had bullied staff at Buckingham Palace. There was an investigation after complaints and concerns were raised, but its results have never been made public.

Meghan strenuously denied the ­allegations and denounced them as part of a ­'calculated smear campaign'.

In all, the Hollywood Reporter article was just the kind of ­unflattering 'hit piece' which you might expect the talent agency WME to have strangled at birth for their client, Meghan. One senior Hollywood publicist tells me: 'First of all, everyone industry-wide, EVERYONE reads The Hollywood Reporter. It's really striking that WME did not stop this running.'

She adds: 'WME normally – you would think – would have been threatening and denying access to other stars. Was this done here?

'The only thing the Sussexes could rally with was 'no comment at this time' from a spokesman.'

And perhaps even worse it came only weeks after another take-down in an industry publication.

That was part of a feature about the 'worst deals' of the 'peak TV period' which ran on the Hollywood news website, Puck. Again, the site – run by former Hollywood Reporter editor Matt Belloni and with a quarter of a million subscribers – is a must-read in the industry.

Harry and Meghan's reported $100 million Netflix deal (which runs out next September) was mentioned in the same breath as Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who signed a mega-deal with Amazon in 2019 that has yet to yield a single minute of ­television drama.

It is interesting isnt it?

thanks @LoobyLous

ha ha@Hiji - hard agree!

Yes.

It tells me that they have learned nothing from KateGate

Even if you, personally, believe that it's a little too convenient, it is bang out of order for the DM to print and thereby stoke insinuation and speculation.

Yes, we know she has considerable form as a liar, but on health I think everyone deserves to be believed (yes, I know sometimes it's the mark of a scam, but this isn't that territory) and that they are entitled to privacy, whether it's something trivial or something potentially serious.

Yes, that's what I said. WME are very powerful and preventing negative publicity for a client is part of their remit. The fact that they chose not to do so here signifies that the Sussexes, or certainly Meghan, are finished in Hollywood.

I never really understood what sort of work MWE were supposed to find for her. Yes, she was an actress, but at the time she signed with them, it was made clear she did not intend returning to that career. Any TV work would be handled by their NF contract. So what did that leave? Maybe some sort of brand endorsement deal, but it's clear no major names want to work with her. I don't think ARO is going to materialise either.

Things happen quickly in the entertainment biz, and if Meghan has been with one of the most powerful Hollywood agencies for well over a year now, without any sign of any projects in the pipeline, then it's hard to see where future contracts are going to come from.

One senior Hollywood publicist tells me: 'First of all, everyone industry-wide, EVERYONE reads The Hollywood Reporter. It's really striking that WME did not stop this running.'
She adds: 'WME normally – you would think – would have been threatening and denying access to other stars. Was this done here?

Thats exactly what we all thought! it’s strange how they are letting this stuff out.

This angle interests me. Because all the criticism of the Palace PR has been since 2018, and has a consistent theme "they must be doing XYZ because everyone knows that's how PR is done" or its close variant "they're incompetent because they're not playing the game"

And perhaps the Palace has never been in that game, does not and never has done its communications like that, does not "feed" one to the wolves to buttress another (no-one has ever produced an example of that happening). Perhaps it really does just churn out endless stuff about what the Royals are up to, and make efforts to get coverage for all of them. With some crisis management when something awful does leak out.

If there is/was an expectation that Royal communications were going to be like Hollywood PR, then the person with those expectations is going to have quite an awakening at some point. But it's not going to change how the Palaces go about their communications, no matter how much anyone tries to shoehorn the Palace actions into the Hollywood mindset and claim it's coming up short.

If the RF wants to change how people see it, it tends either to change the substance of what it does or to just carry on with what it's already doing until people get used to it and see its value. The monarch doesn't need to court publicity - they're on completely different timelines

https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/17/meghan-says-exciting-things-slate-working-harry-19837146/

This is an interesting read of the Variety interview less than 10 months ago.

"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 which is really fun."

Still waiting.....