[0:00]They simply got caught in yet another disaster of their own making. Again, this is all BS.
[0:09]Breaking today, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle lose one of their only remaining propagandists in the mainstream media with Us Weekly. launching a damning investigation into their American failure just as they're accused of being posturing parents over their exploitation of Archie and Lily. So the perfect person to get into all of this with today, Paula Frolic. She's joining us stateside, of course, from News Nation and The Substack, The Inside Scoop. But first I just want to take you through this Us Weekly investigation, and it is very significant because you will remember that under its previous editor, Dan Wakeford, who had been the editor of People Magazine before that, Us had been going to on a total pro Prince Harry and Meghan Markle path. Well, they're under new management and now starting to tell the truth with this damning cover line, which reads, following a string of new setbacks and bad press, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry face an uphill battle. Insiders and experts tell us what went wrong and how they can bounce back. So, I guess there's still an attempt to say, well, maybe it's not over for good, but the information contained in what they describe as a brand crisis is damning. Although of course, if you have been watching out, spoken over the past few months, nothing new. So Us Weekly right now it seems Harry and Megan are back to square one. With a few projects in the works in addition to the wedding date, they're working on an adaptation of the romance novel Meet Me at the Lake and a scripted series about polo, but no clear path forward. The main issue is they haven't made the right decisions creatively, says a source. In Hollywood, you only get so many chances to make mistakes. Maybe that's true, but come on. They've had more chances than virtually any other high-profile person who had no experience yet, got these deals worth tens of millions. They then quote David E. Johnson of Strategic Vision PR, who says there were consistent reports of creative differences, high expectations, and challenges in execution when it came to Harry and Meghan's Netflix deal. Former media exec Travis Pomposello adds, there was a gap between what was expected and what was delivered. Harry and Meghan still bring attention, but the bigger question is whether that attention leads to lasting shows, not just launch-day buzz. Well, again, we know the answer to that. But then we get to Team Harry and Meghan, who have contributed to this piece with us, and they're trying to look on the bright side, as ever, you might say. According to the source, the couple have wanted more creative freedom, and now they can partner with various streamers and networks depending on who buys their projects. Oh, okay, so this is a good thing. Netflix dumping them is a good thing, right? A second source close to the Sussexes underscores that the first look deal with the streamer is still very active. with various projects in development, and with Love, Meghan, set to return as a seasonal special. The source adds that Netflix still has an office space on the lot for Archewell employees. The first source says it's business as usual for the Sussexes. They look at hit pieces like the Variety article as something that comes with the territory. They're used to it. However, a third source who has worked with the Sussexes tells Us that Meghan is disappointed that her show didn't truly take off. She poured so much heart and soul into it and really believed in it, says the source, adding that Netflix had predicted much higher viewership numbers. The second source maintains that With Love, Meghan was on par with other lifestyle shows on Netflix.
[4:30]So this third source close to Meghan. I actually think this is a much better path for them to go down. Just admit that things haven't worked. Show a bit of humility, or to use her famous word authenticity. And then maybe some people will actually feel sorry for you. Then we get to the juice, which is something that I have reported for some time. The real money on the table for Meghan relates to the publication of her autobiography, but she doesn't want to do it. Now, I have reported, and I stand by this reporting, that the reason she doesn't want to do it is because she is holding out for the divorce, and we know she had already pitched a post-divorce manuscript, or not manuscript, sorry, pitch, a sort of top-line pitch to various publishers. That reporting, by the way, was backed up by Vanity Fair. And so, Meghan doesn't want to do the autobiography now because of course she'd have to be nice about Harry, which wouldn't work out if the marriage doesn't work out, which of course at this point is very much on the fence. So this is what Us Weekly has to say about the autobiography. Meghan has received multiple offers to write her memoir, but it's not something she wants to pursue. The first source says, noting that there's a demand for content about their private life and the royals, but those are the types of projects they don't want to do. Harry and Meghan's luxe lifestyle. They own a $14 million Montecito mansion with a spa and 16 bathrooms. isn't exactly cheap. A memoir is the one area where Meghan has a lot of financial clout. It would be hugely lucrative for her, adds the source, noting it may be worth even more than Harry's. Of that, I have no doubt. Harry's ties to the royal family continue to be a consideration. Meghan and Harry are cautious about everything they do and say in order to uphold the standards of the monarchy, says the source. In November, the couple asked Kris Jenner and her daughter Kim Kardashian to remove photos of them from social media after attending Kris's 70th birthday party, which coincided with Remembrance Day in the U.K.
[7:27]They do the best they can not to upset the royals, says the source. Everyone who goes into business with them knows there are confines, but it hurts the creativity of the project. They are adamant about having creative control and final edit, and what they can't say limits things. Adds Johnson, Their repeated public criticisms of the royal family have undercut an association that once gave them value. They need to lean away from it. So, I guess there's still an attempt to say, well, maybe it's not over for good, but the information contained in what they describe as a brand crisis is damning.
[8:24]Okay, so it's commercial. Yeah, we get that. The first source, and this is the one closely connected to Harry and Meghan, points out that their perceived work failures feel more glaring because they're such high-profile figures. Producers don't have success with every single project. Harry and Meghan's misfires are just magnified. The third source says that brands still want to work with the couple. They get many inquiries but have been very selective. However, that hasn't stopped them from feeling a bit unfairly portrayed, adds the third source.
[9:05]They are also genuinely concerned about how it impacts their brand and future dealings. According to the first source, Meghan has no intention of distancing herself from as ever. She's expanding it and will be doing more collaborations with existing brands. In November, as ever did a pop-up event at Soho House in West Hollywood, and announced on March 17 that it was partnering with luxury flower company High Camp Supply on a collection of artfully arranged blooms. The second source says the brand will be introducing even more drops in 2026. These types of collabs have been very well received. The Fell Asleep Here bookmark sold out in just 10 minutes, and her Valentine's Day collaboration with Chocolatier Companies sold out in under an hour. I mean, the fact that these are the things that they're pointing to as successes, like some tiny embarrassing little pop-up in a Soho Home Store in Melrose is really telling. But it's true that she isn't giving up because overnight we have seen Meghan continue her was never branding push. But as Harry's Meghan's Spare put it, what is the point of this photo if she's gonna have it completely blurred? Is she that bored? Now, the third source comes back to say Meghan is super focused on her family, her foundation work, and bigger-picture projects that feel purposeful, not just Hollywood roles. When she launched as ever in March 2025, Meghan also unveiled a ShopMy Instagram page, which allowed her to earn commissions through affiliate links featuring her outfits. But by September, she'd shut it down. She had thought she wanted to do the blog/influencer route but realized that wasn't for her. The third source says of Meghan, who previously ran her lifestyle blog The Tig from 2014 to 2017. It felt too transactional, too much about promoting products instead of creating meaningful content or impact. She wants her work to reflect who she is and what she cares about, not just selling stuff. But again, I find that weird, because everything that she is doing with as ever is about selling these products without any glimpse into her real lifestyle, or her personal life, or her so-called authenticity. My sense is that the Shop My Instagram didn't work, because she simply wasn't making enough money from it. She wasn't shifting enough product to make it a viable proposition. But to Paula Frolic, there is a hell of a lot to pick up on there. I mean, firstly, if we just zoom out for a second, Paula, they've lost another major American media outlet, and that's got to hurt, because under the Dan Wakeford regime, Us Weekly was slavishly loyal to the Sussexes. Well, I have a different take on it, Dan. The the issue is the headline will draw you in. The headline's a little bit of a prick. The rest of the piece is all three sources are either on Harry and Meghan's payroll or good friends, because everything in that piece is demonstrably wrong. You know, even when you were talking about the Kardashian party, they wanted they asked the post to be taken down. Yeah, they asked the post to be taken down because the public reaction was so strong. It had nothing to do with the Royal Family. It had everything to do with everyone being furious at them. Then of course, there was the lie on top of it, which is why their former publicist, Meredith Manes, left, and it was, you know, of course. They didn't tick the box saying that their photos could be put out there. There was no box to tick. There was nothing out there. They simply got caught in yet another disaster of their own making. Then you also have the brand issues and the fashion. Why she doesn't want to be a blogger? Again, this is all BS. The problem is she tried to go headlong into fashion last year. Showing up at Balenciaga uninvited and then asking for other brands like Dior, Gucci, whatnot, if they wanted to be associated with her, and they all said no. Now, the other thing, I mean, I can go through this line by line, but what's really going on here, Dan, is that Us Weekly is in a fight with People Magazine. People Magazine is Harry and Meghan's go-to, right? And they want to be Harry and Meghan's go-to. They want more first-person stories. They think that will help their flagging circulation. And they also know that people don't like Harry and Meghan. Look at their popularity in the States, it's absolutely down the toilet. And so they're going to drag people in with a headline that's a little prickly. So people who don't like Harry and Meghan will buy the magazine and then when they read it, they'll say, oh, but this is really by design and try to get sympathy for them. It's absolute twaddle. Um, it's just, I mean, we litera I'm happy to go through this line by line and just say how badly this was done. It's a rehash. And it's also Harry and Meghan's PR team coming out fighting. So after the Variety piece came out and it was a complete reputational kill shot. After that, you'll notice there was a Vanity Fair online piece that was very loving, and it was, yes, they might be having some problems, but with love Megan is not dead. And you're going, excuse me. Yes, it is dead. And seasonal. Okay. Again, I agree with you, I'll believe it when I see it. And if it does come out, I'm sure it'll be something short and certainly not with the $200,000 per shot price tag that they had before. So this Us Weekly is really a bait and switch for everyone's money. And it's also a way for them to try to compete with people and show Harry and Meghan that they too can play ball with them. But first, a lot of people watching or listening to this will know exactly what I mean, trying to quit vaping or smoking isn't just about nicotine, it's about the routine. The hand-to-mouth motion, that oral fixation, that little pause you've trained into your day. I've seen this up close recently, actually, because my fiance has been working to quit vaping, and the hardest part hasn't been willpower. It's those automatic moments where your hands reach for something without you even thinking. That's why Fume is so smart. It's a flavored air device designed to help people quit vaping and smoking by breaking that hand-to-mouth pattern. No nicotine, no batteries, no vapor. Just a weighted, twisty, fidget-friendly tool you use when the urge hits. You can interrupt that old loop and reach for something better. And it's not even always a big urge. Sometimes it's just a fidget moment on a call, stress, heading out the door. Fume gives you that pause without going back to nicotine. Flavors are lighter, like flavored water compared to a soda. Crisp mint is the strongest, especially if you're coming off heavier use, and raspberry is tangy and a bit sweeter. Fume has already helped over 700,000 people take steps towards better habits. When you grab a journey pack, you'll also get a free gift just for using my code, which is Outspoken. So remember that, Outspoken. Head to tryfume.com. That's try T R Y F U M.com and remember to use the code Outspoken to claim your free gift today. But now, back to the show. And what about the book, Paula? Because you have, uh, some great publishing sources, and you have recently revealed that Prince Harry's publisher is fed up with him. But it is undeniable, surely, Paula, that they do all want the the Meghan book, right? Of course, they want it. But I think she doesn't want to write it because she doesn't want to know what is going to happen. We'll sorry, she doesn't know yet whether the marriage is long-term or not. So it's like the little thing in her back pocket. And of course, Vanity Fair did did back up my reporting about the fact that they were tilting around this post divorce pitch. Mhm, agreed. However, I will tell you one thing, Penguin Random House is not going to publish that book. They don't care. They gave Harry so much money. They will never earn back. It doesn't matter that Harry's spare sold six million. He was very difficult to work with. He and his ghost writer fought quite a bit. And then during the publication of the paperback, a year later, usually what happens is there's an update, something fresh for people to go out and buy it. He refused to do that. So they will never make their $20 to $40 million deal back with Harry or Meghan. The other issue is, apparently Harry and Meghan think that they should be having royalties. So they're having people from their team calling Penguin Random House on the regular, asking for more money. And Penguin Penguin Random House is kind of like, there is no more money. In fact, we overpaid, we'll never. There's no more money unless you write the new books that you promised you were going to write. Like he's got two more books that are meant to be coming. And you're totally right. He didn't update the spare paperback, which they hoped for. He did no media around it whatsoever. No, I totally think they have washed their hands of him, absolutely, but I do think Meghan will get that mega money deal. What she knows though, is it's for one book. She's got one chance at this. It is one and done. And so the problem is if she goes all in on this book and is all pro-Harry, then the marriage does fall apart. She knows she can't come back and literally rewrite history as much as she might want to try to. Knowing her. 100%. However, I do think people are loath to work with her right now, because she is so controlling and very micromanaging, and she will not get the $20 million. It might be worth more, it might sell more, and I think people will say, here's the advance, and then this is how you're going to make your royalties. Now, I agree with you, the book will not come out right now. Even if they don't get a divorce, I think she will write her memoirs, probably in about 10 years, when they're extremely desperate for cash. However, it will not be, I believe with Penguin Random House. I think they have suffered such a loss, and it would be very hard for her to do with a company that is publicly owned. If I were her, I would self-publish, not unlike Andrew Loney did in the US. Yeah, totally. And why on earth does she need a publisher? I mean, there is that argument. Look, I've got to talk to you about the posturing parent thing. So, so first, I mean, I'm sure most people have seen it by now, but this was of course the Instagram that we received over Easter. Specifically time to try and push Catherine and William and their three children off the newspaper front pages in the UK, although she didn't succeed with that. But now the Times of London, where you are a regular contributor, Paula has written a fascinating piece, quite a scathing piece, actually, asking whether this video is photographic evidence that Meghan is a posturing parent. And I say absolutely, absolutely. And I I loved the argument that the writer made. So she said it used to be, this is Helen Rumbelow. She said it used to be until the 21st century that bodies carried shame. If there was anything you were going to cover up, it would be a body. A face, unless you were a wanted criminal, was what made us most recognizably and nobly human. Cut to the Instagram account of the Duchess of Sussex, who has posted two videos of her children in the past week. The first of her son skiing, shot from behind, the second of her children in Easter activities, faces carefully obscured from behind or the side. In any other context, defacement would be seen as an act of hostility. In olden times, a furious divorcee might go through the family photo album cutting out the face of her ex, or an angry teenager might go crazy with the marker pen, scribbling out an enemy's photo. In 2026, the emoji on child's face, or the lesser variant, child always shot from behind, trend is many things, and all of them are strange. Parents don't have to choose between their children having an online or an offline childhood. They can instead broadcast endless nape shots of their child's necks or slap a garish cartoon sticker on their face, done in the name of hypocrisy, or love. Sierra Tisgart, a journalist, said in a TikTok rant that had nearly 400,000 views that the two crimes of the emoji mask are that it's ugly and that it's smug. It's visually heinous. Tisgart argues, I don't want to see a heart emoji with legs, and it's performative in the worst ways. You're posturing parenting, while you're also saying, I'm above you, because I vaguely care about privacy. Shame is now concentrated in the face on the internet. A body has undeniable anonymity in the way a face does not. So are the emoji stickers a great compromise? Are they the new fig leaves that Victorians would wire on top of classical statues? Meghan clearly thinks so. Prince Harry has been forceful about the damage of his overexposed childhood, and the couple were for years reluctant to share photos of Archie and Lilibet. Yet living among the Hollywood stars has drawn them to the emoji mask compromise, as seen on their trip to Disneyland with giant heart emojis on their children aged six and four. The faceless child, which sounds like a Victorian Gothic novel, is in other words, a parenting strategy that is security theater. The appearance of privacy instead of privacy, the display of a virtue that has displaced the virtue itself.
[23:28]And I think Paula, it is undeniable, they are posturing parents, and Meghan does this as a SAP to Prince Harry, but it is meaningless. We are on a mission to 700,000 subscribers. So I need you to do something for me right now. It is free, it is easy, it is simple. Just hit that subscribe button on YouTube. That's because over 50% of you watching this video haven't done that yet, and it is the best way to support outspoken. We're totally independent, by the way, no Big Tech backing, no billionaires pulling the strings. And if you turn on the bell, you'll get alerted to all our new videos. I agree with you, but I also think it's posturing parenting because they have four nannies. Yes. And you know, so how much are they actually parenting? But beyond that, and not much. And let's be real clear, if I had children, I would like four nannies too. However, I think they're doing it for, I think she's doing it for many reasons. I think it's because her next gig is going to be mommy blogging in some format. She now thinks that the only the real treasure that she has is as a mother. That's where she thinks she's really excelled today, that is, because of course yesterday it was jam. But she's using these as a kind of a a whisper, like a, ooh, look what I'm doing next. And she also knows that the only thing that people care about right now, at least in the states, are what they look like. However, what the article did get a little wrong is that up until Easter, she has been showing more and more of their faces. In fact, a couple weeks ago, there was one with Lily almost three-quarter face, which I like to joke, every time the press gets bad, she shows more and more of their faces. And now Easter, I think she definitely did this because William and Catherine had their photos out, but for me, it was also a little sad. Most Easter egg hunts are with other people and with friends and with a community. And these children always kind of seem to be alone, don't they? Yeah, I found it really melancholy, actually, I did. And creepy and weird, and actually quite dark. The opposite, I think, of what she thinks she's portrayed, especially this one, especially this one where Lily looked sad to me. Yes, with a sad rabbit. Yeah, yeah. Paula, I've also got to ask you about the other social media moment of the week, which is someone who finally was not looking sad. Prince Harry on the slopes alongside Justin Trudeau. But I didn't think it was Justin Trudeau putting the smile on his dial, Paula. It was Eileen Goo who you probably know much more about, because she's this American new superstar. But what I have been told, Paula, is that she is on the dating app Raya, right? Which is this this the dating app that you go on if you are a celebrity, looking to find another celebrity or someone high profile. Lots of stars have used it in the past and I just thought, wow, I haven't seen Harry looking that happy in years. Same. He also looks free, doesn't he? He's just like, yes, I'm back. Yay! And you know, Eileen Go is a little controversial in the States. She is American but she, she is American but she also was, um, performing for the Chinese in the Olympics. They gave her tens of millions of dollars to do so. So she wasn't team USA. Posing out to a Chinese linked, um, person. But it's it's very interesting. Paula, a traitor to your own country. Her and Harry would match perfectly. I think so. It's also kind of like Andrew, Prince Andrew with his, uh, Chinese friend connection, isn't it? However, I I thought it was most interesting because Megan wasn't there. She apparently let him out of the house for this trip so that, you know, he could probably. She definitely wasn't there. Yes, no. That's why she was so and she wanted us to think she was, because that's what was so weird. When she posted this video of Arch, it's like, Megan, we know that's not you. But she never actually said, oh, my husband's on the trip. She wanted us to believe she was there. So I I I found the whole thing very, very odd. Okay, Paula. Also really odd, and you've got all the juice on this, uh, from your Inside Scoop Substack, is what's going on with this Australian trip. Huge security breaches. Now massive concerns about whether it's even going to be able to go ahead or actually, is this just the excuse that Megan is going to use for the lack of ticket sales? So what we're going to do is head over to my Substack to continue the conversation in the rest of the Royal Uncanceled aftershow. You can sign up to watch at www.outspoken.live. Paid monthly and annual subscribers get first access to the Royal Uncanceled aftershow twice the length of what you've just seen on YouTube. You have no advertising there. Uh, you can watch live or on demand, whichever you prefer, and the key thing is is that all of my subscribers allow me to do all of my independent journalism. So thank you, thank you, thank you in advance. You can, of course, subscribe for free too. I would love you to be part of it. www.outspoken.live is the address. Dan Wooton Outspoken is your no spin, no bias, no censorship outlet for independent news. We have no Big Tech backing or billionaires pulling my strings, but that does mean I need your support. So please hit subscribe on YouTube. Turn on the notification bell. And subscribe to Dan Wooton Outspoken on Spotify or Apple Podcast. It's totally free, but allows me to continue my promise to always keep fighting for you. Watch more.
