Meghan’s Next Chapter in Hollywood: Royal Producer

CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Cynthia Littleton

This month marks 10 years since Penske Media acquired Variety, transforming us from a daily newspaper into a weekly magazine whose covers have become coveted real estate. In that time, we’ve kept up the energy of a Hollywood trade while also boundlessly expanding our coverage of moguls, CEOS and too many Emmy and Oscar winners to count. We visited Lady Gaga in Malibu at the height of “A Star Is Born” mania, brought the world some Harry Styles uplift in the early days of the pandemic, and even photographed first lady Michelle Obama in the White House. But there’s one story that’s eluded us until now: This week marks Variety’s first interview with a member of the royal family.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, sat down with our Matt Donnelly for two separate interviews for this week’s cover story. She was originally meant to be featured in our September Power of Women issue, alongside Malala Yousafzai and Hillary Clinton. But eight days after our first conversation, Queen Elizabeth II died and the royals went into mourning, which prevented Meghan from joining our event. As she emerged, Meghan met with us once more to discuss how the queen’s death has changed her life, and how she is processing her future.

Ramin Setoodeh

Meghan has only granted two other interviews since her 2018 marriage to Harry, the Duke of Sussex — first, a 2021 sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, in which she forcefully declared her independence, and then with The Cut earlier this year, as she figured out her next steps. In this story, you’ll see a different side of Meghan, one where she’s finally in control of her own destiny. A former star of “Suits,” she doesn’t see herself returning to acting again. (In fact, she hilariously confesses that she thought she was going to get fired from the legal drama during its first season.) Yet she’s ever more determined to launch a career in Hollywood as a storyteller and a businesswoman.

As she explains in this week’s feature, she and Prince Harry are hard at work on building up the media production arm of their company, Archewell. They’ve already signed major deals with Netflix (which, ironically, is the streamer behind “The Crown”) and Spotify, where Meghan hosts her podcast, “Archetypes.” She pushes guests such as Paris Hilton and Mariah Carey to look beyond the stereotypes and labels they were assigned by the culture, at the same time that she’s reinventing herself. We at Variety, continuing to build out an award-winning glossy with the DNA of a trade, can relate. Here’s to Meghan’s spirit of ambition — and to another decade of great magazine reads.