The Duchess of Sussex cut a stressed and lonely figure when she was spotted out in Santa Barbara last week, once again without her husband Prince Harry by her side.
The images seem to confirm what friends have been saying for months – that the 38-year-old royal’s marriage is “crumbling before his eyes”, with the normally inseparable pair not seen together for months.
It’s been a nightmare week for the pair, with Meghan unceremoniously dumped from her $32 million Spotify deal and branded a “grifter” by one of its executives. To add insult to injury, she was humiliatingly overlooked by fashion house Dior and they were both uninvited from the King’s Trooping the Colour birthday parade – a series of embarrassing setbacks that are said to have left the 41-year-old duchess “spiralling”.
Adding to speculation that all is not well between the couple, they have not been seen together since their much-mocked “car chase” night in New York on 16 May and they failed to publicly mark their fifth wedding anniversary three days later.
“They’ve been arguing about the handling of that [car chase] situation ever since,” reveals a Sussex insider. “Harry would never have approved of the statement if he’d been given the chance to see it, but all his PR has been handed over to Meghan and her team, who are proving to be incompetent.
“Having to be corrected by the New York mayor was incredibly amateurish and totally backfired on them, right when he was fighting his own credibility in the British courts over the phone-hacking scandal.
“It’s all cascading down on them at once – him staying at nearby hotels, her indifference towards his family and his court case, and him blubbing about losing his ex-girlfriend [Chelsy Davy] to the world. No one expects this marriage to last and even Harry’s starting to realise they’re at breaking point.”
Socialite and author Lady Colin Campbell recently confirmed rumours of a rift, saying, “There have been problems in the marriage, supposedly for some time. Harry’s going to have a heck of a time extricating himself [from the marriage] because he has been very overt about all of his failings and all of his drug-taking.”
If the couple were to split, Harry would be most concerned about the couple’s children, Prince Archie, four, and Princess Lilibet, two.
The doting dad would do anything to protect his kids.
“He’s got a real fight on his hands if he wants to keep the kids,” says our insider. “But he knows he has the best of the best to offer his children when it comes to growing up in a literal palace at home in England.
“He knows his family will take him back with open arms, especially if he brings Archie and Lili with him. He’ll have the support of some of his favourite people in the world, from Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and hopefully Kate too. He hopes he hasn’t burnt that bridge.”
Sussex scandals implode!
Dior drama
The Sussex PR team was forced to deny claims that Meghan was signing a multimillion-dollar deal with Dior after the rumours hit the UK press last week, sparking “mild panic” at the fashion brand. An insider says, “Dior was baffled and wanted to know where the stories were coming from. It didn’t take long for Meghan’s team to issue a denial. She’s been courting a deal with Dior for over a year and was hoping for a ‘casual arrangement’ in the hope it could grow into something bigger.”
Old images of Meghan touting perfume resurfaced last week.
Faking it!
Meghan has been accused of faking her chats on her Archetypes podcast after Spotify said it would be ending its $31 million deal with the Sussexes. Senior executive Bill Simmons blasted the couple, saying, “I wish I’d been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation. They’re fking grifters – that’s the podcast we should have launched with them. I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try to help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories. Fk them, the grifters.”
Meghan has been brutally dumped by Spotify boss Bill.
No-flix?!
Their Netflix deal could be the next to go…
It’s only a matter of time before Netflix follows suit and pulls the plug on its deal with Harry and Meghan, with reports claiming the streaming giant’s enthusiasm for the couple has waned.
“There is a less-friendly attitude from some at the top,” an insider reports. “The feeling is that the lemon has been fully squeezed.” With the company already making necessary cuts due to the global economic crisis, Harry and Meghan’s follow-up series “is high on the chopping block”, according to the source. “There’s just not the interest any more and even they admit there’s not much else for them to say.”
