Meghan Markle and Prince Harry shocked the world by announcing they were stepping back as senior royals in early 2020. They have since relocated to the United States, where they live with their two children, son Archie and daughter Lilibet. Although they retained their HRH titles, they would no longer receive financial support from the palace or undertake any royal duties as representatives of the monarch. Their sharp criticism of the royal family’s culture in the now infamous Oprah Winfrey interview of 2021 was met with some opprobrium around the world, but the couple also found a lot of support.
Since relocating to Montecito in Santa Barbara, California, the Sussexes have been busy setting up their own brand, Archewell. Meghan began hosting a podcast called “Archetypes” that “dives into the labels that try to hold women back,” while Harry has been working on his memoir, entitled “Spare,” described as being “full of insight, revelation, self-examination and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”
The couple also embarked on a journey to document their lives since their departure from the grand halls of Buckingham Palace in the Netflix series “Harry & Meghan.” The show chronicles the pair’s progression from the “secret, early days of their unexpected romance” to marriage in May 2018, as well as their experiences under intense public scrutiny. It also delves into their relationships with members of the royal family and the impact and strains the institution has put on their life together. The show also depicted the challenges the duo grappled with, including Meghan’s struggle to adjust to royal protocols and the media circus surrounding them, as well as Harry’s efforts to protect his new family and the strain it has put on his relationships. However, not everyone is a fan of the show.
Meghan Markle, Prince Harry (2018), (Ben Birchall-WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Netflix released the first three episodes of “Harry & Meghan” on Dec. 8, 2022, to mixed reviews. Viewers hoping for new drama were left disappointed and many criticized the show for being boring. The series has so far only managed to score an IMDb rating of 3.2 out of 10. It received only a 12% critics approval rating on the film aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
“Harry and Meghan does so little to advance what we already know that it feels more like a summary than a true documentary. It seems to have very little reason to exist at all, outside of the fact that Harry and Meghan partially financed their new lives away from the royal purse strings through a deal with Netflix, and so they are contractually obligated to produce this series,” Vox writer Constance Grady wrote in her review of the show.
The show has also not gone down well with radio and television personality Howard Stern. On Dec. 12, 2022, alongside co-host Robin Quivers on “The Howard Stern Show,” the shock jock held nothing back in expressing his distaste for the former senior royals.
“It’s been painful. I don’t — I wouldn’t stay with it, but my wife wants to watch it, so, you know, we have shows we watch, but they come off like such whiny b*****s. I gotta tell you man, I just don’t get it,” Stern said.
However, he and Quivers empathized with Harry’s position within his family, as Stern said, “I get Prince Harry being p****d off at the monarchy for his mother.” Quivers responded: “You gotta deal with the father who really screwed over your mother and knew what he was doing the whole time he did it. … There was nothing real about that relationship from beginning to end.”
Howard Stern (2019), (Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images)
Stern said while he did “feel bad for Prince Harry losing his mother and all that. So you got my empathy there,” he didn’t appreciate when “those two start whining about ‘Wah wah wah, and they don’t like me’ — and (Meghan) wants to be beloved in this country, but man, oh man.”
“It’s just very weird to watch two people who keep screaming, ‘We wanted our privacy, we wanted the press to leave us alone,’ And then what is their special that they put out on Netflix? Showing you, them and their kids and their life. It’s like ‘The Kardashians’ — except boring,” Stern added.
Quivers also touched on how bizarre it was that Harry and Meghan had filmed themselves on their phones even before landing the Netflix deal, while Stern lamented the fact that the couple was rehashing the story they had told multiple times before.
“It’s just weird. It seems so hypocritical,” Stern said. “Where do you go with this? Is this your career? Talking about how humiliated you were being part of, I don’t know, living in a castle — it’s hard to relate to,” Stern added before jumping into how strange it was for the couple to complain about such a lavish lifestyle.
“It’s like, it looks pretty terrific to me. If it was me, I never had to worry about money and never had to worry about work,” Stern said. He added: “First of all, that estate — when you see those palaces and you see the grounds … It doesn’t seem like prison to me. You know, and then you got butlers and cars and food.”
In the end, Stern predicted an unhappily ever after for the pair, as he told Quivers: “You know, I think he’s eventually not gonna dig her. I’m telling you.”
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle (2018), (Andrew Milligan-WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Have you started watching “Harry & Meghan”? What are your thoughts on the couple and their choice to document their lives in this way? Let us know, and be sure to pass this along to friends and family, too.
