There has been a slightly skittish energy about Prince Harry over the past two weeks, as he has left his Montecito mansion and gone solo from New York to London to Lesotho, undertaking various speaking engagements at awards ceremonies and charitable panels and summits.
You could see it in the way he nervously cracked his knuckles while waiting to address an audience in New York, and in the way he wrung his hands and licked his lips on stage a few days later at the WellChild Awards in London.
And who could blame him for feeling apprehensive? Because the past fortnight has seen Prince Harry essay a full relaunch on the philanthropic scene, after the score-settling pinnacle – or should that be nadir? – which was his book Spare.
Published in January 2023, the book earned him a fortune – maybe as much as £25 million – but left his reputation in tatters and his family relationships probably permanently damaged.
No wonder Harry, who has just turned 40, looked like a man in need of bolstering.
Prince Harry has gone solo from New York to London to Lesotho, undertaking various speaking engagements at awards ceremonies and charitable panels and summits
Harry appeared ‘anxious’ as he nervously cracked his knuckles while waiting to address an audience at an event in New York
Maybe that is why WellChild host Gaby Roslin grabbed him for a confidence-boosting kiss on the cheek on stage on Monday. For bad news seems to have a habit of following him, wherever he goes.
On Thursday night, with yet more terrible timing, the couple’s head of press Ashley Hansen announced she is stepping down to launch her own agency.
Meghan quickly stepped in, with a gushing assessment of her qualities, and Hansen said she was going to carry on looking after the Sussexes part-time.
Yet, her departure takes the number of staff to have left their employ to a staggering 19.
The couple were still reeling from a blow to their reputation – and Meghan’s management style in particular – after a report in the entertainment industry bible Hollywood Reporter, asking why Hollywood ‘keeps quitting’ on the couple.
The article, on September 11, was prompted by the departure of employee number 18, Josh Kettler, their chief of staff, after only three months, and included quotes from sources calling Meghan a ‘dictator in high heels’ who ‘belittles’ people and has reduced ‘grown men to tears’.
It left Meghan trying to mastermind an almighty, emergency PR clean-up exercise.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Harry could only forge ahead with his attempted relaunch as a global philanthropist.
The trip has served to highlight his isolation from the family and friends who once stood by his side.
He didn’t see his brother, Prince William, while he was in London: that bond appears to have been utterly ruptured, and neither side seems to even want to think about repairing it.
He didn’t see King Charles, who was in Scotland, last week either. A source says the monarch made ‘no effort’ to renew contact with his younger son. Although the door will never be completely closed, there seems no appetite to make a connection, either.
Meghan and Harry in Colombia in August as they visited the country as representatives of their Archewell Foundation
Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho arrive at a welcome event at a children’s centre earlier this week
Harry last saw him on February 6, at Clarence House, for around half an hour after flying in for a visit following the King’s cancer diagnosis.
It’s thought he also didn’t see his cousins, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, on this visit. They are said to be the family members to whom he’s remained the closest.
So, no shortage of spare rooms in the capital, yet Harry stayed, by all accounts, solo apart from his security detail, in a central London hotel.
He remains locked in legal action against the Government about its failure to provide him with bodyguards on visits to the UK.
One report suggests that one of his security team, David Langdown (known as ‘Langers’), is now his closest friend. If true, your heart breaks for Harry – once the most sociable and popular of young men, now reduced to thinking that the men paid to keep him safe are his besties.
You can understand some of his bachelor friends falling away – such as Johnny Hornby, the advertising guru who now works with Meghan’s great critic Jeremy Clarkson and actually handled the licensing application on his Oxfordshire pub.
Some friendships naturally fade over time but other, newer, friendships also seem to have cooled.
Last Friday, for instance, even while Prince Harry was goofing around with chat show host Jimmy Fallon in New York, film star George Clooney – a guest at his wedding in 2018 – was hosting a humanitarian awards ceremony with the great and the good in that city – and Harry wasn’t there.
And when was the last time you saw him with the Obamas, who used to come to his Invictus Games events?
Many are wondering why Meghan was left behind in his latest travels. After all, when he made two faux-royal tours earlier this year, to Nigeria and Colombia, his glamorous wife was firmly at his side.
Sources in California believe the new ‘solo Harry’ is Harry’s own idea. ‘I hear he wanted it this way,’ says a well-placed Californian source. ‘I believe he wants space.’
A London source suggests a slightly different explanation, saying: ‘This definitely feels like he is upping his game to cement his position as a serious player on the international stage.
‘He’s always been desperate to be taken seriously and people I know say his fall from grace will really have got to him.’
The source adds: ‘It is a surprise that he went to Lesotho without Meghan. There may be a good reason she can’t leave the kids, but she’s never been to Lesotho and that surprises me – it is like a second home [to Harry].
‘He first went there as a teenager and the royal family there is like his second family.’
They’re so close that Harry and Prince Seeiso, the younger brother of Lesotho’s king with whom he founded the charity Sentebale, call each other ‘brother’.
The source adds: ‘Sentebale is such a big part of his life you’d think he would want to share it.’
In truth, Meghan and Harry’s brand separation has been a long time coming; I wrote about it in this newspaper almost exactly a year ago.
Ashley Hansen, head of press for the Duke and Duchess, quit on ThursdayÂ
Many are wondering why Meghan has been left behind in Harry’s latest travels
At that point Harry was launching the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf, alone, having launched his book Spare without Meghan in tow. His wife, meanwhile, had signed up with super-agent Ari Emanuel and was planning, although had yet to announce, the launch of her lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard.
They had decided that he would lean into the philanthropic Âprojects that were meaningful to him, and Meghan would step out of his spotlight to concentrate her energies in the realm of showbusiness.
Yet the article in the Hollywood Reporter – in which sources were quoted saying they were ‘terrified’ of Meghan – ignited into a global talking point. Editor Maer Roshan stood by it, saying his writer had spoken to a number of people who verified that account.
Ten days later Team Meghan hit back – in the supermarket magazine Us Weekly.
This featured numerous ‘talkers’ from their current and Âformer staff explaining that the couple – particularly Meghan – were wonderful to work for.
Ex-chief of staff Josh Kettler himself was very briefly quoted, saying that the couple were ‘hard working’ and had been ‘impressive’.
Others were more gushing.
Former Archewell president Mandana Dayani, who lasted 18 months until she left in 2022, recalled ‘incredible lunches’ with Meghan during weekly meetings in her Montecito home.
She also recalled the duchess’s compassion when she visited the parents of victims of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Head of press Ashley Hansen – the same Ashley who quit on Thursday – was quoted saying the duchess was so ‘kind’ that she telephoned her husband daily when Ms Hansen was off sick.
Another anonymous source, with an eerily familiar Californian turn of phrase, noted that the couple ‘picked the best of the best from every field and watered the seeds for them to flourish’. The story, published while Harry was in New York on his longplanned trip, was in a magazine which is edited by Dan Wakeford.
His involvement is intriguing since, when Wakeford was at People magazine, he published a similar ‘truth about Meghan’ cover which gave the accounts of her five friends to counter alleged smears about her in 2019.
But Us Weekly, his new publication, is another matter entirely.
I’m told: ‘The people who read Us Weekly are people who love gossip. It is, after all, a gossip magazine – it is not the same as People magazine which tends to be only PR message-approved. This is not the place that any celebrity in recent memory has gone to tell their side of the story.’
The source adds: ‘Everyone was so surprised to see Meghan’s defence come out in Us Weekly. Not that we were surprised she responded, but that it was in what is essentially a tabloid, considering Harry’s vociferous hatred of them. From the perspective of the public, this is a big comedown for her.’
So was Hansen’s departure anything to do with this article?
Some people question whether she’d put everything into improving their press but got nowhere and left in frustration.
You can understand why. The Us Weekly story arguably made their PR crisis worse, with insiders incredulous that Meghan’s highly respected agent Ari Emanuel at WME would have sanctioned such a downmarket move.
A member of the Sussex team tells me this week that Meghan remains represented by Emanuel.
But there seems to be some distance between them, as I’m told by The Hollywood Reporter that the magazine had no contact with WME either before or after its article was printed.
What might this mean? It tends to suggest that the agency isn’t looking after Meghan very closely.
Indeed there is a feeling her star is falling and she’s not being taken seriously. Many in Hollywood have felt unimpressed by the lack of output from Harry and Meghan’s TV production company Archewell, following that $100 million Netflix deal.
It ought to be admitted there has been some jealousy over that super-rich deal, made at a high point of ‘peak TV’ when a number of lavish deals were signed, few of which have paid dividends.
Harry and Meghan’s deal felt particularly irksome as neither had a track record as producers.
Aside from the tell-all series Harry & Meghan, they have made very little else: her plans for an animated series, Pearl, were scrapped; his documentary, Heart of Invictus, rated poorly.
He’s now made a documentary about polo, which Netflix bosses apparently fear will be another flop.
The couple bought the rights to the chick lit book, Meet Me At The Lake, but there are no signs of a script being written or the project going into production.
The one big hope is for Meghan’s forthcoming cookery show, which has been shot and will serve as a launch pad for her lifestyle brand, which Netflix are going to run.
Yet there remains a sense of bewilderment that a couple, once members of the Royal Family, are seemingly reduced to trying to rein in a toxic narrative via the auspices of a gossip magazine.
Where, they must ask themselves, is the global respect and the fat fortune they hoped they might reap after Megxit?
