From Windsor White to the House!

Same publisher. Same Netflix and Spotify deals. Same chats with Oprah. Even a same birthday... So do Harry and Meghan want to copy the Obamas all the way to Washington?

wHEN starting a new life, it’s always helpful to have the support of close friends. And if the friends in question are the former president of the United States and his wife, so much the better — as Prince Harry and wife Meghan are discovering.

As the Mail revealed last year, the couple have been taking advice from Barack and Michelle Obama about life outside the Royal Family. Harry has known them for years, bonding over humanitarian and military issues, as well as his inspirational Invictus Games for injured military personnel and veterans. Meghan is a huge admirer of the former U.S. First Lady, secretly attending a talk Michelle gave in London in 2018.

So when launching their new life in the U.S., no wonder it was to the Obamas that Harry and Meghan looked for inspiration.

Since leaving the White House in 2017, they have earned a fortune by selling rights to their autobiographies, embarking on lucrative speaking tours and setting up a production company and charitable foundation. The couple are now said to be worth $135million (£97 million), and everyone loves them.

Who can blame the Sussexes for adopting a remarkably similar blueprint? Book deals, podcasts, Netflix deals, charitable deeds — they’re matching them step for step. Surely a run at the presidency is only a matter of time . . .

FROM NETFLIX TO MEGFLIX

IN 2018, the Obamas signed a $50 million (£35 million) multi-year deal to produce films and documentaries for Netflix. Projects include a documentary of Michelle’s arena-filling book tour and a biopic about Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa mountaineer who, along with Sir Edmund Hillary, became the first to climb to the top of Mount Everest, in 1953.

But Harry and Meghan’s deal is said to be double that, at an eyewatering $100 million (£70 million).

One of their first offerings will be a collaboration between Meghan and David Furnish — husband of Elton John — to produce an animated show called Pearl about ‘a 12-year-old girl who finds inspiration in influential women’. Some have speculated the series will be based on Meghan’s own life.

PODCAST PLUTOCRATS

THE Obamas’ multi-million-dollar deal with audio-streaming giant Spotify in 2019 was followed last July by the premiere of The Michelle Obama Podcast, in which the former First Lady discusses relationships with key people in her life.

Then, earlier this year, Renegades: Born In The USA was launched, featuring long-time friends Obama and rock legend Bruce Springsteen chewing the fat about everything from modern manhood to the state of present-day America.

At £18 million the Sussexes’ deal is said to be one of the largest ever signed for a new podcast. Thus far the content comprises a 35-minute ‘holiday special’ episode.

PECKING ORDER IN POLITICS

WHEN a friend recently asked Michelle Obama whether she could ever be persuaded to run for president, she replied: ‘Absolutely not. I love the life I’m having now.’

But what about Meghan? Ever since the couple moved across the Atlantic, speculation has been growing that she is eying up a place in the history books — as America’s first woman president.

The couple have made little secret of their political beliefs.

During the U.S. election last year they levelled a thinly veiled attack on Donald Trump by urging voters to ‘reject hate speech’.

And earlier this year there were reports that Meghan had been networking among senior Democrats with a view to building a campaign and fundraising teams for a tilt at the U.S. presidency. Watch this space? Yes we can!

BIRTHDAY TWINNING

ON AUGUST 4, Barack Obama celebrates his 60th birthday — and Meghan her 40th. The former president is said to be marking the day with a lavish party at his Martha’s Vineyard holiday home.

How Meghan intends to celebrate is unclear. But, with Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney reportedly on the Obama guest list, there’s the risk of old friends falling out over shared friends . . .