Harry and Meghan's Hollywood Aspirations Face Hurdles, But Meghan's Love Project Still Lives On at Netflix | Vanity Fair

In 2020, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry signed a Netflix deal for an eye-popping sum—and ever since, the future of their production empire has been the topic of massive public interest. The gossip reached a boiling point last summer, due to news that the couple’s overall deal was not being renewed and speculation that Meghan’s lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan, was being canceled after its second season premiered to relatively little fanfare. Then, this month, Variety chimed in with a story about the couple’s alleged professional struggles, sporting this blunt headline: “Inside Meghan and Harry’s Falling Out With Netflix—and Why the Royal Couple Is Struggling in Hollywood.”

But while it’s true that Netflix is not as all-in on the Harry and Meghan business as it once was, insiders say that the big picture isn’t as negative as recent reports imply. For one, a spokesperson for the couple says that With Love, Meghan is not over at Netflix: The show will return for seasonal specials. And while the streamer did divest from As Ever—the lifestyle brand that Meghan launched earlier last year—the brand itself is still a going concern, making ongoing partnerships with other established businesses. In late January, As Ever launched a collaboration with chocolatier Compartés; last week it started selling a limited-edition gift set featuring As Ever tea and fresh gardenias from High Camp Supply.

“Meghan is very focused on continuing to build her brand, As Ever,” said a source close to the duchess. “In addition to the brand, Meghan and Harry continue to focus on both their production company work, including the upcoming theatrical release of Cookie Queens”—a documentary the couple premiered at Sundance this winter—“and their philanthropic work.”

As Ever seems like a success by most accounts, with its earliest drops selling out in under an hour. Though the Variety story estimates that Netflix was warehousing about $10 million of inventory last summer, a Times story from January that looks into the company’s data showed that As Ever appeared to have sold more than $36 million worth of jam alone. A source with knowledge of the company’s operations tells VF that jam is not even the company’s top-selling product, adding that As Ever’s January bookmark release sold out in 10 minutes, while a recent chocolate release sold out in less than an hour.

Still, the initial Netflix connection clearly helped open some doors for the company. Sources close to the duchess told the Mail on Sunday last year that As Ever’s initial white-label products were manufactured by Republic of Tea, a food company that also makes Bridgerton-branded product lines. In an interview with Inc. that was published soon after As Ever’s launch, Meghan said that the As Ever staff was in touch with Netflix’s Consumer Products Group daily.

Netflix’s divestment from the company was not itself a surprise—but it seems the timeline was. In April 2025, Meghan told Fortune that she and Netflix were in “harmony” over a five- to seven-year timeline. An insider tells Vanity Fair that concerns about the “difficulty of creating a sustained audience” did help hasten the split between As Ever and Netflix.

A pivot in consumer product strategy at Netflix might also help explain why As Ever’s relationship with the streamer changed as quickly as it did. In 2025, Netflix struck its first master deal with toy maker Jazwares to make a full merchandise collection for the final run of Stranger Things—rather than licensing its content to another company. Another fork in the road came last August, when Consumer Products Group vice president Josh Simon left the company and became the CEO of Funko, the pop-culture figurine company. Last fall, Netflix’s chief marketing officer, Marian Lee, told CNBC that the pivot toward merchandising came downstream of the company’s growing library of scripted hits. Lee added, “You need that foundation of IP to really build off to have that consumer product strategy.” (Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

For most of 2025, Meghan was in the midst of a publicity blitz—making her first real attempt to draw eyeballs to projects themed around her own interests and passions, rather than her royal story. She began that year by relaunching her Instagram account, launching her first collection for As Ever, and premiering both With Love, Meghan and her podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder.

The Netflix series released its most recent episode, a Christmas special, last December, and the timeline for its return is hazy. The podcast ended last June. (Its production company, Lemonada Media, didn’t respond to a request for comment.) And though Harry and Meghan’s production company, Archewell Productions, has projects in development, Meghan and Harry aren’t set to appear in any of them. VF can confirm that the couple are serving as executive producers on a newly announced scripted show inspired by Polo, their 2024 docuseries about the elite sport, created by The OC and Gossip Girl’s Josh Schwartz.

They’ve also got the documentary Cookie Queens, which follows a group of Girl Scouts and premiered this January at the Sundance Film Festival. Harry and Meghan attended the fest to promote the movie—and while the Duke and Duchess of Sussex don’t always take questions when they walk a red carpet, Meghan did stop to chat with reporters from People about the film. Later, Meghan joined its director, Alysa Nahmias, in front of the audience, where she gave a brief introduction to the film, while Harry remained seated.

Despite the Archewell imprimatur and a handful of positive reviews, the documentary didn’t find a distributor until March, when Roadside Attractions picked up the film. This will mark Harry and Meghan’s first time working with outside distribution since they signed their initial overall deal with Netflix in 2020, which gave the streamer exclusive rights to anything developed by Archewell Productions. Like other big fish reeled in by Netflix overall deals years ago—including the Obamas—Harry and Meghan are now under a first-look agreement instead, which gives Netflix right of refusal over all of their film and television projects while also allowing Archewell Productions to shop projects to other networks if Netflix opts out. When Cookie Queens opens in theaters this summer, it will be the first project executive produced by Archewell that won’t be available to stream on Netflix.

A wholesome, family-friendly production like Cookie Queens might find a bigger audience elsewhere than it would have on Netflix. But the streamer declining to license the film is also a sign that this partnership hasn’t been quite as fruitful as co-CEO Ted Sarandos might have hoped when studios around Hollywood were inviting Meghan and Harry in for meetings soon after their royal exit.

In the meantime, the former royals will be keeping lower-key schedules this year, with a bigger focus on international travel, charity, and diplomacy, including an upcoming trip to Australia. In February, Meghan and Harry went to Jordan, where they met with friend—and With Love, Meghan guest star—José Andrés to tour his World Central Kitchen projects supporting refugees from Gaza.

In an essay for London’s i Paper, veteran royal reporter Richard Palmer pointed out that the current state of affairs—private business and philanthropy combined with international appointments with government officials—is more or less what Meghan and Harry had been seeking when they first left their royal roles back in 2020. Several docuseries, one Montecito mansion, and nearly 1 million boxes of jam later, we may be right back where we started.

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