POLO

[Sunblessed]

Ha! They really are trying their damndest to make out they’ve not made a trashy reality show!!

https://variety.com/2024/tv/global/prince-harry-meghan-polo-netflix-series-rich-famous-stereotypes-1236243547/

POLO is now on NF. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to watch though!

If she was a feminist activist she wouldn’t have married for titles , fame and privilege just based on her husband. She’d have made her own way and kept her own name. It’s always been about money and fame for her.

and she would have been asking her mother to walk her up the aisle rather than her soon to be father in law, whoshe barely knew and who she apparently didn't really like, but he happened to be the King of Great Britain in waiting, so that was all good, great for posterity, the only woman he would ever walk up the aisle other than his own wife, she is just so transparent,

I think it would have been possible (though not straightforward) to have married into the RF as a genuine feminist activist. The signs would have been along the lines of a small scale wedding, keeping her name or at least being clear about circumstances when she would use her pre-marriage name, not becoming a working royal until working through the boundaries of that role (it could potentially have been a positive under some circumstances).

Basically having recognised and acted on the contradictions of joining the RF, assuming she had fallen in love with Harry and wanted to make a life with him. It could have been done with integrity and a thoughtful balance of the demands on him with her principles.

Instead I can't see any evidence that she had any feminist principles, once she 'snagged her man'

Exactly.

I don't think Meghan ever understood the distinction between the celebrity class and royalty. Celebrities make fluffy speeches about equality and poverty while bullying their underlings and accepting freebies from corporations, celebrities aren't closely scrutinised because their PR is tightly protected, celebrities talk about the environment while flying in private planes. Celebrities only recognise the hierarchy of fame and wealth, not of institutions. A celebrity can understand curtseying in public because that's a performance, but not in private.

I see her claim to feminism as existing purely through the lens of celebrity, useful for branding purposes but abandoned when it suits her.

Exactly in Suits where she was taking direction on where to stand, what to say, how to position and deliver a line she was able to do it perfectly.

I was a fan of the first few seasons of Suits so it was a shock to see how awkward Meghan was in real life because she was a decent supporting character in Suits and I thought she was going to glide through the ‘performance’ element of the royal family duties.

Yes, but we're talking about the brand here, not the person behind it.

For example. I'm sure that JK Rowling, Rihanna and Beyonce, behind the scenes, are also just muddling along like the rest of us trying to work it out. And all 3 women certainly have experience of having to move between different worlds (single motherhood/working class Bahamas/rural Texas to world stages and red carpets).

That hasn't prevented them from building strong, differentiated personal brands that have showed themselves to be compelling, profitable and able to self-sustain. How have they done this? To build a really good brand you need:

1. A good product that people will want to buy, whether it's a book, an album of songs or fancy underwear
2. Hard work, gumshoe work for a long time patiently promoting the brand
3. Ensure that EVERY INTERVIEW OR PERSONAL APPEARANCE YOU DO links back to the brand and the key messages
4. Really good editors, producers, agents, marketing and PR advisers, whose advice they heed and carry out

In my view the H&M brand is diffuse, vague and keeps changing, and that's why people don't want to buy. so @Thoughtsareswirling was entirely right in what she said.

When they signed their NF and Spotify deals, H&M said that they wanted to make contain which 'entertains and uplifts'. That's a fantastic brand mission, imho. So now they need to get out on the promotion circuit and explain how Polo and ARO etc etc fits in with that brand mission.

Back to the original brand values, back to the mission. Remind people of what they exist for. Why people should be interested in them.

If they do this and keep at it, do the hard yards, then they might start to see some success again.

If she would just drop that tedious "Duchess of Sussex" handle then none of these failures, lack of due diligence and deferred start dates would matter. There must be many celebrities making the same errors of judgement/having the same bad luck, but we rarely hear about them and hers would probably slip through the net.

I'm never quite sure whether the royal title helps or harms her in the US. People say that Americans get turned off by royal titles, not sure whether it would prevent them from engaging with ARO or not.

Meghan herself has spoken out strongly against the colonialism and institutionalised racism the title represents, so if she's still using it I presume she's invested in a couple of focus groups and learned that commercially speaking, it's a net benefit to continue using it. It must be quite difficult for her, though, as she clearly holds some trauma from her time in the RF. I suppose she has the option to eventually drop it after a few years of ARO becoming very successful in its own right.

I believe it's important when talking about the title and the type of wedding they had to remember that this isn't just her decision. Didn't Harry, in Spare, complain he wasn't allowed to marry at Westminster Abbey like William? Even though his wedding wasn't a state occasion.

Imagine the symbolic power if Harry and Meghan had chosen to marry quietly: without the whole thing being televised, without the carriage ride to nowhere after the ceremony, without the title bestowed on marriage. It would have been a new way of being royal and really been slimline. But that isn't who Harry is, it is never who he was. He tried to project the image of an accessible man of the people but he clings to his title, his security and his rank and status and his expectation that he can keep his inherited money and make more whilst only receiving positive press.

Even if Meghan wanted something different in her wedding, and I'm not saying she did or didn't, Harry didn't want to accept anything less than William.

Given the antipathy Meghan seems to have shown her sister in law, I would suspect she was also in favour of a large state occasion wedding. She would not want to be outdone by the Waleses either 🤷‍♀️

Yes, it might be both of them.

"Exactly in Suits where she was taking direction on where to stand, what to say, how to position and deliver a line she was able to do it perfectly. "

She's a great imitator - let's be honest that is her trademark.

But that isn't who Harry is, it is never who he was. He tried to project the image of an accessible man of the people but he clings to his title, his security and his rank and status and his expectation that he can keep his inherited money and make more whilst only receiving positive press.

I'm not so sure about this. Famously, Harry asked Oprah to call him 'just Harry' and has spoken a number of times about royal life being a 'gilded cage'. That's why he wanted to be free.

The question that interests me is not how they feel about the titles (they both indicate that they feel antipathy towards the white supremacist history that the titles present) but why they continue to use them for their showbusiness and commercial endeavours. After all they can retain the titles without using them on credit rolls al Polo. I'm assuming there must be a commercial benefit to using them in this way.

I think the nation and the rest of the world were behind a huge wedding. It was watched and enjoyed by millions and many felt it represented an important new chapter for a more modern and relatable BRF with woman of colour warmly welcomed into the family and the country. I personally remember largely a lot of excitment and optimism from the majority of the general public although this was alongside unacceptable racial slurs in some parts of the mainstream media and social media.

They didn't think the titles or the Commonwealth roles were part of white supremacy when the queen handed them to them. They were graciously prepared to collaborate with the queen when they first proposed leaving. it was only when this was refused that they put a new lens on it all. Quite the about face.

On the wedding, Uncle Andrew had Westminster Abbey. Maybe they expected what he’d had?

But that overlooks that was a step down from what the heir had. Prince Charles married first time in St Paul’s (bigger church, longer carriage ride) and Andrew had the Abbey, as did Princess Anne; but Prince Edward was at the smaller and more private St George’s Windsor, with no carriage ride. All were televised.

It had all scaled back a bit from that - Prince William got the Abbey, Harry got St George’s plus carriage ride (televised) Princess Eugenia got St George’s (not televised but some video of arrivals/departures and lots of stiils released) and Princess Beatrice (covid) had small private wedding with small number of stills released. The Phillips offspring married much more quietly. And the Edinburg’s have not yet married, but it’s now inconceivable that they’d get anything posher than St George’s not televised.

I don’t think Harry was treated differently to the usual pattern

the thing is what Harry says and what he really thinks are 2 entirely different things. I don't buy the just wanting to be a regular guy guff for a minute personally but whatever the truth there is no doubt that he has exchanged one type of cage for another and looks much more miserable as a result.

Eugenie’s wedding was televised. The BBC said they weren’t interested but ITV decided to do it.

At the time - Andrew, Anne and Edward were the children of the reigning monarch.

Harry and Eugenie were grandchildren - I’m not sure they should have had the full TV special treatment.

the thing is what Harry says and what he really thinks are 2 entirely different things

I think this applies to both of them. They both pay a lot of lip service to whatever is current or perceived to be the “the right thing to do” (feminism, environmental concerns, podcasts, Netflix content that inspires, linked not ranked etc etc) but in practice all that seems to
matter to them is money and fame coupled with the occasional personal crusade against the press when they don’t like what has been said about them. All without any sense of humour

Every time Harry comes to NYC, we have to provide him with two police cars, one in front and one in back like a royal cavalcade, on top of his regular security. His last visit was the day the UnitedHealth CEO was killed. If Harry had not made comments about his divorce, no one would have known he was in the city. Someone who genuinely wanted to be a regular guy would be content with his regular security and leave the NYPD to fight actual crime

Maybe. I don't know (don't care) what went on behind the scenes BUT I do think it was a major PR error to criticise the senior royals to quite the extent they did. Because it set up a sort of media trench warfare, where you were either with the Sussexes and against the RF, or vice versa. Social media horribly amplified this, of course.

The problem with this phoney war is that it seems to have given Hollywood the idea that they could only pick one side to be on. And Hollywood is nothing if not conservative and risk averse. If Hollywood thinks that socialising with the Sussexes might jeopardise any future relationship with the RF (ie no hope of royal garden parties, shaking hands with the King bla bla bla) then the choice is easy: drop the Sussexes. And this is exactly what appears to have happened.

Yes their major error was talking and writing about the private lives of the Royal family. They can come back from that but it will take a long time. Why Harry thought it was a good idea when both his parents had already proved that it wasn't is beyond me.

It was a major error because it is relatable. I'm not fussed about who had the bigger bedroom in a castle, who was allowed to marry where and with what uniforms, who was served more sausages by their butler etc etc. It's a lifestyle that is totally outside my experience.

But talking about your family in public, that I can relate to and that I would hate. That made me think less of them both but worse of Harry because he was raised in never complain never explain.

It was also completely tone deaf entitled - complaining about your incredibly privileged life because it was a fraction less privileged than your older brother.

Complaining about your Dad stopping funding you at 36 years old which means you might have to dip into your $20 million trust fund when the rest of the world has been suffering the effects of a global pandemic for a year.

Being rich doesn’t automatically make you happy but Meghan and Harry have never once in those interviews and book and documentary shown that they understand just how privileged they are.