By almost any metric, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s latest effort executive producing for Netflix has been a flop.
The Guardian, giving it two stars, called “Polo” “unintentional comedy” that felt like a “spoof” rather than a straight-faced documentary about the royals’ favourite horse-based mallet sport. The Telegraph called it “tedious” and “a dull indulgence of a rich person’s pursuit.” Across the pond, Decider deemed it “a mostly boring look at a sport that very few people outside of elite circles have any particular interest in.” Not ideal when your production company’s mission is to create “content that informs but also gives hope” through a “relatable lens.”
While viewing figures aren’t available, “Polo” also failed to make the Netflix Top Ten this weekend, beat out by the likes of a festive edition of “Is It Cake? “and “The Later Daters,” the latter coincidentally executive produced by Michelle Obama, whose post-White House career is said to have been a model for the Sussexes planning their post-palace lives.
Cue the haters and the gossip
The chatter-o-meter has been similarly unkind: The Daily Beast pointed out that the lack of pre-release fanfare or press for this documentary “raises an eyebrow to say the least,” and claimed knowledge of a keen desire from everyone involved to “move on” from “Polo.” (One marketing expert they spoke to called the couple “box office poison.”)
In the Daily Mail — your cue to back up a truckful of road salt with which to take this information, given its long-standing hate-on for this couple — sources quickly piled on, telling the tabloid that Meghan’s forthcoming lifestyle series, apparently launching in February or March alongside her long-awaited American Riviera Orchard product line, is “make or break.” In fact, one anonymous source passed on tittle-tattle from inside the streamer, saying, “People say Netflix are exhausted. It’s so much work with her and, bluntly, the ‘deliverable’ does not seem to be worth it.” (Shades of the ex-Spotify exec who called Meghan and Harry expletive-ing “grifters,” and claimed he had a story to tell about the time he tried to brainstorm story ideas with the prince over Zoom, but he’d need to be drunk to tell it.)
The Cut — famously snarky, but also the outlet of choice for Meghan when she was profiled ahead of her podcast series launch a few years ago — published a short look at the “Polo” disaster (“Meghan and Harry’s projects can’t stop flopping”), which was seized on by all who love to see this couple fail as evidence of, as the Mail phrased it, “a pro-Sussex magazine turning on Meghan.” (Meanwhile, all the reporter says is that she “hadn’t felt compelled” to watch the doc, rounds up some of the bad reviews, and then wishes Meghan well for her cooking show.)
If you’ve been following this couple for any length of time, this might all have a familiar flavour: Meghan and/or Harry release a thing, certain corners of the internet and the tabloid press have Big Feelings about it, and the rest of the rational world either finds it moderately enjoyable, just shrug-worthy or actually really likes it.
They’ve had some successes, too
“People given opportunities most of us would dream of make an average-to-good product” isn’t exactly the clickiest headline, but it’s a far more accurate reflection of what Meghan and Harry have done since they left their royal lives than, say, characterizing it all as a string of bombs, flops and unmitigated disasters.
There are the clear successes, for starters: Harry’s memoir — setting aside the relational damage dishing dirt on your closest family members might have done — broke sales records and was the fastest-selling book of all time when it was released last year. Archetypes, Meghan’s podcast, hit number 1 in six countries when it debuted, and continued to chart in the top 10 in the U.S., for example. According to their production company, it averaged a million listeners per episode, with 10 million total. Their two previous Netflix projects—” Harry & Meghan” and “Heart of Invictus” — were successes in different ways: The former was the biggest debut ever for a doc on the streamer, while the second was hailed as “moving and nuanced” by one reviewer, and has 86 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Outside the world of entertainment, the couple has been busy in ways that are harder to quantify into flop versus smash. Their charity — despite getting headlines over the summer for not being “in good standing” thanks to an admin snafu — took in US $5.7 million in donations in 2023; they also launched their Parents’ Network, which supports parents who have lost children due to social media, and kept talking about their passion for making the internet a less terrible place. Harry’s Invictus Games celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Measuring the success or failure of that kind of advocacy is as tricky in Montecito as when you’re doing the same exercise with their “working royal” relatives across the pond.
There’s a different conversation to be had, of course, around whether Meghan and Harry’s output should have been more successful or better than it has, given the resources available to them. On one hand, they’re basically two amateurs trying their hands at a bunch of different things, and you could argue that it might be nice to extend a bit of grace to them as such. On the other hand, they’ve been given millions of dollars to work with the biggest names — Spotify, Netflix, etc. — and have had, however charitable you’d like to be, their share of stinkers.
Where is American Riviera Orchard?
“Polo,” yes, but also the baffling fumble that is American Riviera Orchard, Meghan’s product line that soft-launched over the summer, did a jam-based influencer awareness campaign, and then went quiet. It’s possible something to do with trademark issues over the name, which, in so many ways, reflects the triumph of enthusiasm over long-term strategy and hard practicality that seems to be the couple’s Achilles heel. (See: The flight to Vancouver when they surprise quit the Royal Family, seemingly based on an assumption they could just, like, live in Canada and do their own thing and no one, from the Canadian government through to Her Maj, would mind.) To fall on something as basic as whether or not your brand name hadn’t already been taken is baffling — but exactly the sort of mistake an enthusiastic first-time entrepreneur might make, no?
It’s those boring, behind-the-scenes things that don’t make for great headlines, in fact, that seem like they’re at the heart of what is, so often, a fumble-not-a-flop pattern for the Sussexes. Their Spotify deal ending, for example, seems to be more about wider structural changes in the industry than Meghan’s inability to create compelling, interesting episodes. (And, while delayed, she has signed on with another podcast company to keep doing that.) Even that savvy adaptation of Carley Fortune’s “Meet Me at the Lake” for Netflix? It’s still in the works, moving at the same pace it seems as any other film in an industry still recovering from multiple strikes, but it’s liable to be spun as somehow disastrously delayed if that’s what you’re looking for.
Do we still care about the Sussexes?
Their biggest miscalculation, however, is actually illustrated by their biggest successes: Meghan and Harry seem to have believed that people were interested in them beyond their ability to spill tea on the Royal Family, gambling that one or two tell-alls would pay the piper and then they’d be free to move on to other things that have nothing to do with the Windsors.
Until that changes — and that’s equally on us as audiences wanting the goss, critics setting them to a particularly high standard, and the outrage machine slanting everything as a disaster as much as it’s on them to make the most of the opportunities given to them — Meghan and Harry will be cursed to flop, over and over again.
