It’s been five years since they decided to step away from the royal limelight but it looks like we’re never done learning new things about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Published as the cover story of Vanity Fair’s February issue, a new feature by Anna Peele has delved into the couple’s “big business ambitions” since quitting their royal engagements, speaking to dozens of sources “who have lived and worked alongside” Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
While it doesn’t include quotes from the couple themselves — the publication noted Harry and Meghan declined to be interviewed — the piece is packed with new details, including the couple’s potential future projects (think: a post-divorce book?).
We’ve looked into key takeaways from the wide-ranging piece:
1) ‘So hot for each other’
Starting with some good news, sources interviewed by Vanity Fair conceded there’s certainly no trouble in paradise when it comes to these two.
“They are so hot for each other,” one source allegedly told the publication.
“Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?”
They also took note of his protective instincts when it comes to Meghan, pointing out the public can be “so nasty to her”.
Still, while he remains vigilant about her safety, sources close to the couple allegedly told Peele that Meghan’s role in the dynamic “is caregiver and facilitator”.
“I can picture him meeting Meghan and being just a deep breath of, like, ‘I’ve been so exhausted, and you make everything so easy.’… I don’t want to be like, oh, it’s an Oedipus thing or whatever, but it kind of feels like she’s reparenting him in a way,” Peele reported a source as saying.
2) Possibility of a post-divorce book
Unfortunately, the couple’s blissful state doesn’t mean sources didn’t discuss a potential divorce. Or, in this case, whether people might be open to reading about their divorce.
”A few years ago a rumor began circulating around the book world about another prospective project for Meghan. This story, which a person with knowledge confirms the broad details of, was that Meghan’s team had a conversation with a publishing house to gauge interest in the idea for a potential book,” Peele wrote.
The concept, she clarified, was allegedly any interest in a post-Harry divorce, although there was ultimately no written or formal proposal.
“Just…if this a priori divorce ever came to be, would this publisher theoretically be interested in a book that took place in its aftermath?” she wrote.
3) Hope for family reconciliation
In perhaps one of the sadder revelations of the feature, sources suggested Prince Harry might’ve still held hope for patching things up with his family after the release of his much-discussed memoir Spare in 2023.
Reflecting on a conversation with Harry that year, a source allegedly asked the prince if he’d heard from his family since the release, to which Harry confirmed he hadn’t.
However, he added that he hoped they might.
“That’s sort of what made me so sad. His hope seemed very genuine. And I was just kind of like, ‘Oh, no’,” a source allegedly told the publication.
They believed Harry “hadn’t absorbed the gravity of what it would mean to sell millions of copies of a tell-all book about a famously insular and circumspect family in the middle of a years-long public relations crisis”.
“The power of the written word, and the power of the narrative… I don’t know if that’s something he understood while he was doing it,” the source said, per Vanity Fair.
4) Harry ‘grew up in a fishbowl’
Another area of focus was the prince’s ability — or in this case, alleged inability — to successfully transition to life outside of “the zoo in which he was raised”.
According to one source, Harry is “socially marooned beyond his nuclear family”, with Meghan allegedly stating that Harry hadn’t made many friends yet.
“I think Harry doesn’t know what he wants because he grew up in a fishbowl, and so he doesn’t know what real life really is,” the source was quoted as saying.
“I think he probably wants to be left alone and be able to go kiss babies every once in a while but not have to worry about money. I don’t think he wants to be famous the way Meghan wants to be famous.”
5) Allegations of bullying
The piece also explored new claims of bullying by Meghan, following previous reports of alleged mistreatment of royal aids and other staff.
One source claimed Meghan’s relationships with employees follows a “familiar pattern”, starting with warm and effusive interactions and a sense of camaraderie, which would eventually turn to “cold and withholding” when something went poorly.
They allegedly told Vanity Fair the experiences were “really awful” and “painful”, describing some of the behaviour as similar to “Mean Girls teenager”.
It was even alleged some staff members quit, took extended breaks, or required “long-term therapy” after working with Meghan.
(While not addressing these rumours in specific, the pair have reportedly dismissed the allegations outlined in this feature, according to The Times.)
6) Addressing those curtsy claims
In what would probably be one of the more odd stand-outs from the feature was a source refuting claims that Meghan learnt how to curtsy at the last minute.
If you recall, way back in 2022, a clip from the couple’s Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan went viral when Meghan narrated her first encounter with the Queen and her last-minute efforts to learn how to curtsy.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Tom Fitzgerald, a fashion and cultural commentator, described the duchess as “the type of woman who would check a menu out online before going to a restaurant to pick what she was going to eat”.
“So the idea that she didn’t know she was supposed to curtsy for the queen, I just didn’t find it particularly believable, because [based on] everything she ever told us about herself, I cannot imagine that she went into meeting the royal family completely cold, with no research whatsoever,” Fitzgerald said, per Vanity Fair.
Okay then…?
7) Multi-million deals
The couple announced some big deals over the years since moving to California, including alleged multi-million dollar deals with Spotify and Netflix. However, according to some sources, the development process with the couple remained “challenging”.
One source reportedly told Peele that Harry and Meghan “didn’t do what celebrities do on podcasts, which is turn on the mic and talk. They wanted a big theme that would explain the world, but they had no ideas.”
Producer Jane Marie, who previously collaborated with the couple, alleged the two had “hopefulness” and “optimism”. However they became increasingly nervous about how their content would impact them.
“I can say that they had really great ideas for shows, interesting pitches, interesting guests. But them as the deliverers or either of them as the hosts of these more kind of edgy ideas would have been like…they would have had to move again,” Marie said, per Vanity Fair.
“I think it’s a combination of self-censorship for good reason and the corporate powers that be that run podcasting that don’t know what that is [to create valuable shows]. In combination, those things make it really hard to make good stuff.”
Despite the drama, the couple seem to remain a huge source of fascination. Funny how they still manage to keep us talking, all these years later.
Lead image: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images
