Have Harry, Meghan & the Obamas hit the rocks?

The Sussexes were conspicuous by their absence from the former president’s lavish 60th birthday party. Camilla Tominey examines rumours of a rift

The Secret Service had set up a no fly zone to ensure total privacy as hundreds of A-listers descended on Martha’s Vineyard for the post-pandemic party of the year.

Revellers at Barack Obama’s 60th birthday celebrations on Saturday night were treated to hand-mixed martinis, gourmet cuisine and live entertainment at the former US president’s £12 million Massachusetts mansion. Guests including Jay-z and Beyoncé, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and George Clooney flew in for the exclusive bash, which featured specially branded napkins and face masks, and tongue-in-cheek backstage passes for the assembled VIPS.

Yet as hundreds of America’s most high-profile Democrat-supporting stars gathered to see Obama and his wife Michelle, 57, hit the dancefloor, one celebrity couple was conspicuous by their absence.

Ordinarily, you might have expected the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to be front and centre of any guest list drawn up by the Obamas.

The former president and first lady have a longstanding relationship with Harry, 36, after they bonded over the prince’s hugely successful Invictus Games initiative. They famously starred in a video montage with Harry and the Queen to promote the 2016 competition, and the Duke subsequently interviewed the former commander-in-chief on Radio 4. And when Michelle gave a talk at London’s Southbank Centre in December 2018, Meghan made a point of attending. The two women were said to have had a long “power meeting” backstage, during which they discussed their shared passion for girls’ education.

Despite the Obamas not attending the Sussexes’ wedding that year, it was thought that the newly California-based couple would be shoo-ins at Obama’s 60th, as prominent “progressives” and new-found members of the US metropolitan liberal elite.

Meghan’s close friend the CBS news anchor Gayle King had made the cut, after all, and Oprah Winfrey – although she did not attend – is also believed to have been asked to save the date.

So why weren’t the Duke and Duchess on the dancefloor? Could this be a sign that the Sussexes’ love affair with the Obamas has gone cold?

Confusion surrounds whether they were snubbed or simply couldn’t make it after the website Page Six, which broke the news of Harry’s multi-million pound book deal, reported that they were “not planning to attend” the shindig.

Having welcomed their second child, Lilibet, into the world in June, the couple are currently on parental leave – although Meghan did manage to record a video with actress Melissa Mccarthy last Wednesday to mark her 40th birthday.

Although Obama turned 60 on the same day – August 4 – neither he nor Michelle were seemingly invited to participate in Meghan’s new charity initiative to donate 40 minutes of time to mentoring women returning to the workplace after Covid.

Celebrities who were asked to support the 40x40 drive included Hillary Clinton, the singer Adele and fashion designer Stella Mccartney. Yet with some criticising the scheme as “self-serving” and “woke”, could the Obamas be fearful their association with the royal couple risks attracting negative publicity?

Some in Democrat circles have suggested that the Sussexes’ attempts to ape everything the Obamas have done since they left the White House could have jeopardised their once “special relationship”.

After leaving the Royal family and moving to Montecito near Santa Barbara in March last year, Harry and Meghan appear to have used the Obamas’ modus operandi as a blueprint for their own relaunch.

Like them, they have signed a lucrative multi-million dollar deal with Netflix to produce their own documentary series, while Harry last month announced he was writing his memoirs for Penguin Random House, the former president’s publishers. His memoir, A Promised Land, was released in November 2020, two years after Michelle published her own life story, Becoming.

Intriguingly, the Obamas used a similar format to Meghan’s 40x40 initiative to personalise the weekend’s party, emblazoning everything with a bespoke 44x60 logo to symbolise the 44th president’s 60th birthday.

Then, there is the issue of the Obamas’ loyalty to the Queen.

When the couple paid a state visit to Britain in 2011, they got on famously with the 95-year-old monarch and her family. The only president and first lady to be offered a full state visit since George W Bush in 2003, the Obamas seemed to be relaxed in the company of the Queen and late Duke of Edinburgh in photographs of the three-day extravaganza, which featured a state banquet.

So intimate was the meeting that Prince Philip, then 94, turned chauffeur to drive the Obamas to lunch at Windsor Castle in his navy blue Range Rover.

The foursome had first met during the G20 summit in 2009, when Michelle was famously photographed putting her arm around the Queen, who responded by placing a hand on the former first lady’s waist. In her memoir, she explained that she had not been aware of “royal protocol” and had simply reacted after the two women had agreed that a long day wearing heels had left them with sore feet.

We were just “two tired ladies oppressed by our shoes”, she wrote.

The incident certainly did not cause any friction with the sovereign, who a few years later, when they visited London privately, gave Mrs Obama and her daughters Malia and Sasha a guided tour of Buckingham Palace.

Describing how much she liked the Queen during her 2019 book tour, Mrs Obama said: “She’s wonderfully warm. And funny. And she’s elegant and kind and considerate in really interesting ways. That kind of warmth and graciousness, and intelligence and wit.”

After the Duke of Edinburgh passed away at the age of 99 in April, the former president’s tribute was among the most heartfelt.

“Through his extraordinary example, His Royal Highness Prince Philip proved that true partnership has room for both ambition and selflessness – all in service of something greater,” Obama wrote in a Twitter statement, which Michelle also retweeted. “Our thoughts are with Her Majesty the Queen, the Royal family, and the British people.”

So it arguably will not have gone down well with a couple who have always put “family first” to see Harry and Meghan being so openly critical of their royal relatives during their Oprah interview in March. During the 90-minute tell-all, the couple accused the monarchy of failing to support them and suggested that Prince Charles and Prince William were “trapped” in The Firm.

It is worth noting that the Obamas are also close to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who were central to the 2011 state visit, which took place just weeks after their wedding. When the Obamas returned to the UK in 2016, they made a point of popping into Kensington Palace, when they were introduced to a then three-year-old Prince George, ready for bed in his dressing gown, before sitting down to dinner with William, Kate and Harry.

Last October, the former president made a point of supporting Prince William’s newly launched Earthshot Prize, tweeting: “It’s going to take a lot of big-thinking and innovation to save the one planet we’ve got – and that’s why @Kensingtonroyal’s leadership on climate change can make a real difference.”

“The Obamas didn’t like Harry attacking his family. They value family and certainly aren’t the type of people who would want their children talking to the press,” says one insider.

But perhaps the greatest clue to the Obamas’ feelings was given by Michelle when she was asked to respond to the Sussexes’ outpourings on Oprah.

“I just pray that there is forgiveness and there is clarity and love and resolve at some point in time because there’s nothing more important than family,” she said.

When it comes to Harry and Meghan, it seems, the former president and first lady remain firmly of the view that blood is thicker than water.