Meghan Markle’s hot new opportunity to appear in a Guy Ritchie Netflix drama that’s filmed in the United Kingdom has reportedly been withdrawn, due to all the backlash and chaos surrounding the sudden, shocking news that she and Prince Harry plan to leave California and move back to the U.K by the end of the month.
Tina Brown, royal author and famed former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, reported Saturday morning that the offer to the American former TV actor to appear in Season 3 of Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” “has been withdrawn” due to the backlash over the casting. Australian media, Deadline and other U.S. outlets reported Friday that the “Suits” star was in “early talks” to appear in the crime drama.
“The backlash in the U.K. was so intense, it became untenable to go forward,” Brown reported on her Fresh Hell Substack. “This does not bode well for Meghan’s acting comeback in the U.K. More to come.”
Brown and other royal observers also would say it does not bode well for Meghan and Harry’s return for the U.K. if she doesn’t have some kind of job lined up in the U.K.
On Friday, Brown reported that having work in the U.K. would make it easier for Meghan to join Harry in moving back to his home country. The job, Brown reported on her Substack, “allows Harry, at last, to get Meghan’s buy-in for his growing desire to get the hell out of paradise and go home to the world he understands.”
For Meghan, the U.K. is not a welcoming place. The Duchess of Sussex and aspiring lifestyle guru has become widely unpopular among the British public since she and Harry exiled themselves to the United States in 2020 and publicly complained that the royal family and the British media were racist and treated her terribly and that she and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, were not safe visiting.
“The level of general hostility towards her is off the charts these days,” added British journalist Tom Sykes, who writes the influential The Royalist Substack. On Saturday morning, Sykes also shared Brown’s report and said he had reached out to Meghan and Harry’s office for a comment about the reported collapse of the Ritchie talks.
Later Saturday, Sykes questioned whether the report about Meghan getting a role on ‘”The Gentlemen” was leaked to the media to distract from other rumors swirling around the couple, including that the marriage is in trouble or that they otherwise will be living apart, with Harry and the children settling in the U.K. while Meghan goes back and forth to the United States.
Over the past two days, Sykes also had raised questions about whether Meghan and Harry were truly moving back to the U.K. or if pushing a narrative of their return was some kind of publicity stunt.
Sykes, who also writes for the Daily Beast, noted that the language that Sussex sources have slipped to major media outlets about their return has been “flexible.” They’ve used the term “extended period,” which suggests that they don’t intend to make England their primary and permanent home base, even though their sources also have said that they’ve enrolled Archie, 7, and Lilibt, 5, in British schools.
The “implied assumption” is that their U.K. sojourn is not meant to last forever, Sykes said. He added: “I find it incredibly hard to imagine that Meghan is going to be any happier living in the U.K. this time round than she was last time” — when she at least had the cachet of being a working member of the royal family.
More than that, it’s arguable that “extended period” could also mean that the couple only plan to stay in the U.K. for as long as it takes Meghan to film her role in “The Gentlemen,” Sykes also wrote — before Brown reported Saturday that the role had been withdrawn.
If the role has in fact been withdrawn or was never seriously offered in the first place, Sykes said it could bolster the idea that Harry and the children will move to the United Kingdom, while Meghan will “come and go,” depending on her work opportunities or the state of their relatonship. Sykes said he was told by a friend of Harry’s that, for Meghan, it would be “mainly, go.”
Meanwhile, British entertainment writer Rob Shuter reported on his Naughty But Nice Substack Thursday that Meghan had only agreed to move back to the U.K. for six months. He, People magazine and other outlets also said the couple would keep their mansion in Montecito and vacation home in Portugal.
Shuter furthermore reported on Friday that Meghan had only agreed to go along with Harry’s desire to return to his home country for a period of time — so he could reconcile with his father and put their children in British schools — because she felt it was necessary to make her husband happy and save their marriage.
Harry has become “miserable in California and increasingly unhappy with the life they built in Montecito,” Shuter reported. He said sources told him that the “marriage is in serious trouble — and moving back to the U.K. is their last attempt to save it.”
“They are not in a good place,” a source told Shuter. “Harry is deeply unhappy, and Meghan knows she cannot keep asking him to live a life that is making him miserable.”
“Meghan is not doing this because she wants to,” Shuter’s source further said. “She is doing it because she believes she has to. She does not want to lose Harry, and she knows something has to change.”
Other royal journalists question whether a return to the U.K. would solve the couple’s reported problems, which include their estrangement from Harry’s father, King Charles III, and his brother, Prince Wiliam. The king has made it clear that Harry and Meghan won’t be returning to royal duties and they won’t be given a royal residence to live in.
It’s also been reported that they are hurting financially. Their multimillion-dollar media deals with Netflix and Spotify have dried up and Harry is potentially facing millions of dollars in legal fees after losing his privacy case against the Daily Mail. Sykes also said Meghan’s “The Gentlemen” news also could have been a distraction from the High Court judge in the Daily Mail case issuing an excoriating ruling Friday. The duke chastised the duke, his six co-claimants and their legal team for pursuing a case that he said lacked evidence and was “so unfounded” they should pay indemnity costs.
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“I just can’t see this working,” royal biographer Andrew Lownie about Meghan and Harry’s U.K. return in an interview with the Daily Telegraph’s Daily T podcast. Lownie said he couldn’t see Los Angeles native Meghan being happy “enjoying a Cotswolds winter with the rain coming down.” He was referring to speculation the couple were moving into a home in the Cotswolds, the picturesque rural area west of London that’s become popular with British and American celebrities, including their Montecito pal Ellen DeGeneres.
“I wonder if this (return to the U.K.) is the something that breaks the camel’s back in terms of their relationship,” Lownie continued. “But it’s difficult, you know, if you’ve got children in schools here, to take them out of school after six months.”
In general, Lownie agreed with what others are saying — that moving back to the U.K. for “an extended” period is “quite a dramatic thing to do. That’s why I say there must be more to this story than just seeking new educational pastures for their children and fresh business opportunities for them.”
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