Meghan's Netflix deal made prior to U.S. move

The Duchess of Sussex was in discussions with Netflix about her animated television show in 2018, when she was still a working member of the Royal family, it has emerged.

The series, called Pearl, was announced last week as part of the Duke and Duchess's deal with the streaming platform, which was signed in September 2020.

It comes after Prince Harry told Oprah Winfrey in their televised interview earlier this year that such multi-million dollar deals were “never the intention” but suggested their hand was forced when his family cut them off financially after they relocated abroad.

He said that during COVID, a friend had asked “what about streamers?” — such as Netflix — to which Meghan interjected: “Yeah, we genuinely hadn't thought about that before.”

But the animated series had been in the pipeline for several years, The Daily Telegraph has confirmed.

The Duchess had been in conversation with Netflix and was working on the project with David Furnish, Sir Elton John's husband, who is a close friend of the couple.

Furnish hinted that the series had been a long time in the making in his statement last week, when he said he was delighted they were “finally able to announce this exciting animated series.”

The series, which is still in development, will focus on the “heroic adventures” of a 12-year-old girl who is inspired by a variety of influential women from history.

“Like many girls her age, our heroine Pearl is on a journey of self-discovery as she tries to overcome life's daily challenges,” the Duchess, 39, said in a statement.

Netflix said the series was created by the Duchess, who will serve as an executive producer along with Furnish.

During their Winfrey interview, the Sussexes insisted that the lucrative deals they have signed with both Netflix and Spotify were “never part of the plan.”

The couple's team insisted that any discussions with Netflix dating back to 2018 were exclusively about the Pearl project. The series was originally just one of many “one-off creative advocacy projects” brought to the Duchess as a working royal.

They included the Together cookbook that raised funds for the victims of the Grenfell fire and Vogue's September issue, which she edited in 2019.