Is Meghan eyeing a return to the screen?

WHEN MEGHAN MARKLE and Prince Harry first signed their £80m deal with Netflix in the post-megxit climate of 2020, they could have been forgiven for thinking that Hollywood success was just around the corner. At the time, they founded Archewell Productions to run in conjunction with their charitable foundation of the same name, to focus on TV content for the streaming service.

Four years later, with the deal up for renewal in early 2025, there had been speculation over their future with the streaming giant, with many of the key players from their production team having left. This includes Bennett Levine, a senior manager who announced his departure last month, following the likes of Ben Browning, the internal content head and former Oscar-nominated producer, Rebecca Sananes, head of audio and responsible for Meghan’s now-cancelled Spotify podcast, and Mandana Dayani, who left as president of Archewell last year.

However, Harry and Meghan’s Netflix deal isn’t over yet – and at an industry event this month, Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, said, ‘They actually have a bunch in development’ with ‘a couple of unscripted things’ as a well as a film (thought to be an adaptation of Meet Me At The Lake, the best-selling romance novel by Carley Fortune) and a series in ‘very early development’.

At the same time, the couple are said to be growing ever closer to studio head Brian Robbins, CEO of Paramount Pictures, and his wife Tracy James, with whom Harry and Meghan spent a night in Jamaica for the premiere of new Bob Marley biopic One Love on 28 January. They were flown out by Paramount and put up at the palatial Half Moon hotel before posing on the red carpet alongside Robbins and James, who are also said to own a home near the Sussexes in Montecito. Reports claimed that they could be working on a deal with the studio to make more docuseries, such as the Harry & Meghan six-parter for Netflix, as well as Harry’s Heart Of Invictus documentary.

A Hollywood source tells Grazia that while the duke and duchess’s star power hasn’t necessarily set the world on fire yet, they still have a huge amount of bankability and appeal in the industry. ‘Where Meghan and Harry go, people watch and listen, and that’s priceless,’ says the source. ‘They are being seduced by various Hollywood names to work on different projects, they just need to make smart decisions.’ With the team at Endeavor, the hugely powerful talent agency headed up by Ari Emanuel (the inspiration for Entourage’s Ari Gold), behind them and connections with stars such as Oprah, Ellen Degeneres and Gwyneth Paltrow, Harry and Meghan now have to prove their ‘post-royal’ success, says one royal source, adding that with the story of Megxit now fully mined for content, another tell-all wouldn’t ‘worry’ The Firm.

One recent tabloid report even suggested Meghan could make a return to acting, after a seven-year hiatus, to film a Suits spin-off. While such hopes may be misguided, TV undoubtedly has huge earning potential for the couple, and they need cash to maintain their lifestyle. For now, as well as strategising their next steps, Meghan will focus on her lifestyle and wellness site The Tig, said to be relaunching soon, and looking after the children. ‘Headlines about their success or lack of it don’t bother them,’ says one source. ‘They always say they look at the bigger picture – and that looks bright.’