By Roxanne "Flashbulb" Starr
They landed in Montecito with Netflix money, a Spotify deal and the kind of tabloid heat most studios would kill for. That was the pitch, anyway: Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, as the royal family's answer to a Hollywood power couple.
According to a BBC Entertainment & Arts report, the reality has been more modest. The couple found some real showbusiness success in the years after leaving royal life — but their reign in Hollywood, as the BBC puts it, "proved short-lived."
The BBC report doesn't spell out every deal that faded or every project that didn't get a second season, and we won't pretend to know details it doesn't provide. What's clear from the reporting is a trajectory: a splashy arrival, genuine wins along the way, and then a cooling — the kind of arc familiar to plenty of famous transplants who've tried to turn celebrity into a sustainable entertainment business.
It's worth saying plainly what this story is and isn't. It isn't a blow-by-blow of contracts or box office. It's a single outlet's assessment of a couple's American chapter, and readers deserve to know that's the extent of what's been confirmed here. If more specifics on the Sussexes' current ventures emerge from verified sources, we'll follow up.
What hasn't changed is the appetite for the story itself. Six years after stepping back from royal duties, Harry and Meghan remain among the most-watched exports the British monarchy has ever produced — whether the cameras are rolling on a hit show or not.
If I can't source it, you won't read it here.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Entertainment & Arts.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."