Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are making a dramatic u-turn on their upcoming projects in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death, multiple sources told Page Six.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been working on a docuseries as part of their multi-million dollar Netflix deal for more than a year. Netflix chiefs — who have not even officially announced the Sussex project yet — had hoped to air the docuseries in December after the fifth season of “The Crown”on Nov. 9. Now, we’re told the couple want to make more edits to the hotly anticipated show, which would potentially push back its release till later in 2023.
Harry’s memoir, originally scheduled for release from Penguin Random House in November, has already been pushed back until sometime next year.
Many royal experts have said that Harry’s father, King Charles, will hold off giving the title of prince and princess to the Sussex children, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, until the couple’s various media projects are out.
While the Sussexes were part of the usual editing process on both the show and the book well before the monarch’s death, sources said the couple is keen to take out or downplay much of what they have said about King Charles, Queen Consort Camilla, Prince William and his wife Kate, the new Princess of Wales.
One Hollywood industry source told us: “A lot of conversations are happening. I hear that Harry and Meghan want the series to be held until next year, they want to stall.”
“I wonder if the show could even be dead in the water at this point, do Harry and Meghan just want to shelve this thing?”
One highly-placed Netflix insider revealed: “Netflix has been keen to have the show ready to stream for December. There’s a lot of pressure on (Netflix CEO) Ted Sarandos who has the relationship with Harry and Meghan, to get this show finished.”
The Sussexes are treading a fine line with the royal family. Although they were front and center at the funeral for the Queen, who died aged 96, on Sept. 8, relations with the family are still fraught.
As non-working royals, they have slipped down on the royal website — although Harry is still number five in the line of succession followed by his children. And we previously reported that Harry only discovered his grandmother had died from reading online reports after he landed in Scotland from the US.
By the time he reached the monarch’s Scottish estate, Balmoral, his brother William and father Charles had already decamped to Charles’ private residence for dinner. Harry was then banned from wearing his military uniform at the funeral, having left his senior royal role when he moved to the US in March 2020.
Reps for Netflix and the Sussexes were unavailable for comment.
