It all started so well, didn’t it? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, hemmed in by the restrictive constraints of the British monarchy, abandoned their gilded, pampered, Palace lives in order to move to Los Angeles to prove that they were capable of achieving success on their own terms. In an enormously skewed way, if you squinted, Megxit could be seen as nothing less than the perfect demonstration of the American Dream.
Better yet, they found success almost immediately. A five-year $100 million development deal with Netflix. A $20 million exclusive agreement to make podcasts with Spotify. Then a reported $20 million advance from Penguin Random House for Harry to write Spare, and, allegedly, another half a million from the same company so that Meghan could write a 169-word picture book—that’s around $3,000 per word. The Sussexes’ impact as entertainment moguls was vast. Hollywood was theirs for the taking.
