Original subtitles

IMOGEN STUBBS: Harry and Meghan... CROWD CHEERS

..once the ultimate power couple...

CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICK

..and darlings of the monarchy.

It really energised the royal family.

All of a sudden, the royal family looked a bit more glamorous,

looked a bit more progressive, looked a bit more modern.

I have the two best guys in the world, so I'm really happy.

But since leaving the royal family, the Sussex brand has suffered -

despite books, interviews and TV shows

hoping to set the record straight.

It felt like a good time to own my story

and be able to tell it for myself.

I think the public are tired of the victim narrative,

the bitterness, because that's all they hear.

And that's what Meghan and Harry's brand has become.

With some big-money deals falling flat...

Eventually, Spotify got rid of their contract.

I think that was about $20 million.

I think one executive referred to them as

"a couple of grifters."

..has the couple made a strategic change?

One that shows off what they do best as individuals?

It looks surprising now to see them doing things separately,

and it does look quite deliberate.

Taking back control and taking back the power.

You just get the sense that Meghan is back in her familiar territory

and she's enjoying it.

What we've seen is vintage Prince Harry.

It was absolute Prince Harry textbook of old.

HARRY: 'Keep being you.'

You've got this, and we've got you.

MAN SPEAKS:

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Thanks.

But is it enough to rescue the Sussex brand?

Currently, Harry and Meghan are trading on being Harry and Meghan -

glamour, attraction, royal family heritage.

We don't really know if they're gonna be able

to shed the baggage that they have.

As a couple, Harry and Meghan

are one of the most recognisable brands in the world.

Hello, how are you?

And back when they met in 2016, it was a fairy tale romance.

It was so romantic.

Glamorous, exciting.

You had a royal prince who'd been a soldier

marrying an actress from Hollywood.

And this really captured the imagination.

While she wasn't exactly a household name,

Meghan brought a new type of glamour to the royal family,

thanks to her starring role in the compelling TV drama Suits.

I'm Rachel Zane. I'll be giving you your orientation.

Wow. You're pretty... Good. You've hit on me.

We can get it out of the way that I am not interested.

But that was just one string to her bow.

She ran her own glossy, aspirational lifestyle blog, The Tig,

and was an advocate for women's rights,

having even spoken at the UN.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

ANNOUNCER: 'Please welcome Meghan Markle.'

I am tremendously honoured to be UN Women's Advocate

for political participation and leadership.

She was very, very aware of building a brand.

I think Meghan understood that if you're gonna become a big star,

you have to become a bit of a role model.

Here was a young woman who could stand on her own two feet,

who could demand respect and who could be heard.

I think the public took to her immediately.

They thought she had a lot to offer.

BELLS RING

Oyez, oyez!

Buckingham Palace proudly announce the engagement

of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

God save the Queen.

INTERVIEWER: Can we start with the proposal?

When did it happen? How did it happen?

It's a standard, typical night for us.

Just a cosy night. It was... What were we doing?

Just roasting chicken and...

Roasting a chicken. Trying to roast a chicken.

It was so sweet and... and natural and very romantic.

This quiet, low-key proposal sent a message to the public

that despite the privilege, fame and fortune,

perhaps they weren't so different from us after all.

It generated huge amounts of positivity,

particularly in terms of Meghan's background,

being American and mixed race.

It was remarkable.

And, I think, initially, it was a big outpouring of love for that.

All of a sudden, the royal family looked a bit more glamorous,

looked a bit more progressive, looked a bit more modern.

It really energised the royal family,

but also the royal family fans as well,

and brought in a whole new demographic of people.

I remember in Brixton, in South London,

the crowd went wild...

..and there were people...

There were girls who were just kind of screaming for her.

The Meghan effect had pushed Prince Harry's approval rating

even higher than the Queen's.

Hoping to spread that magic even further,

the pair appeared alongside William and Catherine

for a Royal Foundation event.

The royal family and the courtiers around the family

knew how valuable that was to sell the royal family,

particularly to a younger generation and a younger market.

Women don't need to find a voice. They have a voice.

They need to feel empowered to use it.

And people need to be encouraged to listen.

If that foursome had worked,

they'd have made headlines around the world.

They were very strong as a brand.

Worldwide interest made Harry and Meghan's wedding

one of the most important in modern British history.

The nation came to a standstill to watch her join the royal family.

It was a coming together of the historic royal family

with modern, multicultural Britain.

And probably the high point for the Harry and Meghan brand.

It was a marriage between the United States and the UK.

It was a marriage between the royal family and Hollywood.

Nobody could have written that pitch better.

Their union was watched by 1.9 billion people,

an estimated quarter of the world's population.

But despite its success,

their honeymoon period was short-lived.

Within weeks, the couple were being battered

with a seemingly endless flow of negative headlines.

Meghan made Kate cry,

Meghan was demanding over the choice of tiara for her wedding.

She was labelled "Duchess Difficult",

"Hurricane Meghan".

All of this was a drip-drip effect,

and her profile, certainly among the wider public,

started to go downhill.

Amidst all of this came some good news.

Meghan was pregnant with her first child.

But when Archie was born in May 2019,

the couple showed they were still determined to do things their way

by choosing to not immediately inform the press.

There's this kind of whole aura of secrecy.

It was all part of them trying to control the media narrative.

And I have the two best guys in the world,

so I'm really happy.

And it backfired on them very badly because, actually,

they were very generous with their time and their access.

It was how the story was managed.

Taking the American approach of a brief maternity leave,

the family set off for a royal tour of South Africa.

And at first glance, things were on the up.

The South Africa tour was brilliant. I was on it.

The tour was exciting.

Picture-wise, it worked. It was brilliant.

We will always seek to challenge injustice

and to speak out for those who may feel unheard.

The tour took them to deprived neighbourhoods,

where she met with survivors of abuse.

But then a bombshell...

as Meghan gave a heartfelt TV interview

about her own troubles behind the scenes.

Not many people have asked if I'm OK.

But it's, uh...

..it's a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.

REPORTER: And the answer is...

Would it be fair to say? ..not really OK?

As in, it's really been a struggle. Yes.

Her decision to speak so openly divided opinion.

Meghan's approach to interviews goes alongside the PR playbook

that you see a lot of celebrities going down.

This sense that they wanna get their side of the story across.

Unfortunately, it backfired for a lot of people.

I think a lot of the British public felt that perhaps

she should have maintained a stiff upper lip

when travelling around quite impoverished townships

in South Africa.

It certainly didn't look good.

For some, this was when the couple's brand

started to shift from romance to recrimination.

But the biggest twist in their story came just three months later.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced

that they are carving out what they call

"a new role for themselves".

The details were released on Instagram,

along with a newly designed website,

sussexroyal.com.

The pair said they wanted to become financially independent

while still supporting the Queen.

Harry and Meghan pulled the trigger,

dropped that announcement and created, well, chaos.

We were all agog. How was it going to work?

They wanted the royal titles.

They still wanted to have the royal patronages.

How can Harry and Meghan make their own money

but still be working royals?

The two things just don't go together.

The PR fallout for the couple was a disaster.

Sources inside Buckingham Palace

claimed to have been blindsided by the news.

Because there's so much love for Queen Elizabeth II,

I think that's what the public really struggled with.

It was a sense of, "How dare you say no to this,

"this amazing life that you've been given.

"You guys are coming across as ungrateful."

People took real offence to that.

The royal family gathered for a crisis meeting

and, ultimately, the Queen put her foot down.

She made it pretty clear to them

he couldn't be half in and half out of the royal family

and monetise, you know, other projects.

Their beautifully produced website,

with their manifesto and their intentions -

everything had to be scrapped, everything had to be rethought.

It was a humiliating climb-down, but in the space of two months,

they were off, leaving their royal life behind forever.

I think people were stunned that Harry and Meghan

were taking this very dramatic step.

I mean, it wasn't an abdication,

but it felt like an abdication.

This was Prince Harry, this was the spare,

choosing to stand down.

And not just to stand down, but to leave Britain.

It was huge.

IMOGEN STUBBS: In recent months,

we've seen Harry and Meghan pursuing separate projects

with a number of solo public appearances.

Thank you, everyone.

I'm delighted to be here again this evening

to present this award to our youngest winner.

But back in 2020, things were very different.

In spring that year,

the couple had started a new life across the Atlantic

in Montecito, California.

After breaking ties with the royal family,

they prepared to present their newly independent brand Sussex

to an eager American audience.

Americans love the idea of British royalty.

And I say love the idea of it, probably don't really understand it,

but love the idea of British royalty.

So I think Americans were probably a little bit excited at the prospect

of having a bona fide member of the British royal family

living in Hollywood.

Having settled in America,

one question that was asked of Harry and Meghan

was how they would fund their lavish lifestyle.

They need to continue earning at a very high level

to maintain the lifestyle that they now are used to.

There was very much an intention

to continue carrying on the work they were doing

whilst carving out private, individual roles

where they could be financially independent.

And, of course, that was the sticking point.

That was where the puzzle just didn't fit.

They can't just look like they're money-grabbing.

I think that's the problem.

They've got this very, very difficult line to tread

where they obviously want to make money and establish their brand,

but they don't wanna do it in a way that looks crass.

Harry and Meghan's drive to create a financially independent brand

was boosted when they struck big deals with two streaming giants.

Agreeing to produce podcasts for Spotify

and signing with Netflix

in a partnership reportedly worth $100 million.

Signing up with Netflix where they could produce content

that's in line with their philanthropy.

They really had the potential to sort of do whatever they want,

create this content around the things that they believe in.

I think people thought they were gonna use Netflix

and Spotify as a really great sort of springboard

to highlight causes which they found really interesting.

These are the deals that people dream about.

The problem is the content. What was the content going to be?

Why were we buying into them?

And also, why would the general public want to watch them?

But despite their philanthropic efforts,

in March 2021,

there was one key reason people wanted to watch Harry and Meghan,

and that was to hear more about their dramatic exit from royal life.

A subject revisited in this gripping interview

with the queen of US TV, Oprah Winfrey,

the trailer for which dropped like a bombshell.

Were you silent or were you silenced?

I just wanna make it clear to everybody

there is no subject that's off limits.

I remember speaking to people around them at the time

who just said, "Brace for this

"because this is going to be massive."

In the week before the interview aired,

Harry and Meghan dominated column inches.

Reports surfaced Meghan had been accused of bullying by palace aides,

allegedly leaving one in tears during the couple's 2018 royal tour.

Team Sussex is very clear today,

calling the allegation "a misleading smear".

One source told me there's no actual detail to the allegation -

that the PAs concerned didn't even know

that somebody else had put the complaint forward

and when they found out, they asked for it to be withdrawn.

They're obviously keen to refute these allegations

or to fight back some way.

It can be problematic if your business is based

on an individual's personal brand

because it does mean

that if something negative happens to your public profile,

if there are bad stories in the press,

then it can really damage the business.

You started to see the war of words

bubble out into the public.

Clearly, some courtiers,

some people around Buckingham Palace were getting concerned

at what was going to come out in that interview

and thought they wanted to get their story out there

before Meghan and Harry had a chance to do so.

When the interview eventually aired,

50 million people across the world

were gripped by revelation after revelation...

..as Meghan made damning claims

about her life inside the royal family.

In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time...

..so we have in tandem the conversation of

he won't be given security.

He's not going to be given a title.

And also concerns and conversations

about how dark his skin might be when he's born.

What?!

These were all kind of, you know, a lift behind the veil

that we'd never really heard from anyone before.

This interview was always going to be blockbuster -

attracting global attention.

But the question now is just how deeply,

how fundamentally, this could change the royal family,

people's view of it, and in turn, British society.

In response to the allegations,

the Queen released an unprecedented statement...

..saying that while the issues raised were concerning,

she concluded some "recollections may vary".

It was a brutal interview,

and it didn't really take any prisoners,

and it wasn't really thought through.

And there were possibly ways back then, but they chose not to do that.

They chose to go DEFCON 1.

I think the Oprah interview

was a way to distance Harry and Meghan from the past.

I think it was a marker.

They needed to say to people that, "We are starting again",

that, "We are not the royals who we were before."

That, "We're gonna be outspoken, that we're going to tell our story."

In terms of what that did for their brand,

you had Harry and Meghan showing up, giving their side of the story,

and that kind of showed a sense of strength.

It was their opportunity to set the record straight.

And why shouldn't they have that?

Their interview with Oprah made clear the Sussexes' intentions

to firmly separate themselves and their brand

from the royal family.

So when they announced the birth of their second child,

their choice of name raised some eyebrows.

To have chosen Lilibet as the name for their young daughter,

which was, of course, the family nickname of the Queen,

it didn't seem to fit with the narrative that they were pursuing,

that they had left the royal family behind them.

They still associated themselves with the royal family.

They use that royal idea, and it's all about messaging,

and I don't think they've got the messaging just right yet.

More than a year after their tell-all interview,

Harry and Meghan made their first joint trip back to the UK

for Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

But onlookers noted a potentially frosty reception for brand Sussex.

MIXTURE OF CHEERS AND BOOS

Their brand has gone from being

the most popular members of the royal family in 2018,

to four years later, there were boos.

I heard them, there were people booing.

And that kind of encapsulated, really, where they were,

both in the standing of the royal family

and indeed the UK population.

Then, with the Sussexes' public image at crisis point,

the family faced its ultimate loss.

The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.

The end of an era, the start of a new one,

we'll just have to see where we go from here, won't we?

Yeah.

Harry and Meghan did have to put the Sussex brand to one side,

and they did have to focus more

on a family grieving the loss of a much-loved mother,

grandmother, great-grandmother.

In a show of unity,

the former Fab Four were reunited,

greeting mourners outside Windsor Castle.

APPLAUSE

It was really nice to see Prince Harry, Prince William

along with Kate and Meghan at Windsor Castle,

greeting the crowds.

And it's clear that all four of them wanted to show up

for the Queen on that occasion.

And I certainly think it gave them a little boost

to their popularity and gave a boost to brand Sussex.

But I actually think in that moment, that's not what it was about.

In this moment, it was about showing up for Queen Elizabeth II.

WILLIAM: Bye, everyone, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.

But with tensions seemingly thawing,

Harry and Meghan prepared to make yet more revelations.

CHEERING

Oprah was the preface for what they were going to do next,

which was, you know, essentially to lift the lid

on why they had to leave

and painted a narrative of themselves as victims.

But the world was about to learn

Harry's crusade of truth was not over.

There's a book to come in the new year. There's more.

There was still plenty left in his arsenal of ammunition.

Placing the spotlight on Harry's fractured relationship

with his brother.

Intimate details of private conversations

that were had at Prince Philip's funeral.

It was a sensational autobiography, quite unlike anything before.

I was shell-shocked.

IMOGEN STUBBS: In recent months,

Harry and Meghan have made public appearances separately.

Is this a sign of a change of strategy for the Sussex brand?

A family rift saw them break their royal ties

and start a new life in sunny California,

where they did a sensational tell-all interview

with Oprah Winfrey.

Were you silent or were you silenced?

But there was another revelation to come.

In December 2022,

an explosive trailer for a brand-new Netflix series drops.

It's really hard to look back on it now and go,

"What on Earth happened?"

'Do you hear that? That is the sound

'of hearts breaking all around the world.'

'She's becoming a royal rock star.'

And then...

PRINCE HARRY: Everything changed.

The Netflix deal was one of the biggest deals Netflix has ever had.

It was reported to be worth an impressive $100 million.

They paid this money because they wanted great access.

They wanted great intel.

They also wanted great storytelling.

Netflix will want to have something

that creates clickbait headlines and controversy all around the world.

And make sure that millions of people watch the shows.

HARRY: There's also planting of stories.

It was also a PR spin, too, you know?

Nobody interviewed on that show

was particularly negative about anything.

The fly-on-the-wall series helped to build their brand,

offering exclusive access into their new life in California.

Hey, Grandma!

Mentioning Beyonce Knowles

or mentioning various different celebrities, you know, in that,

it gave people these nuggets of Hollywood, which everybody loves.

So to have the two of them talking about their lives,

what was good and what was bad in their lives,

from royal family through to stardom, etc,

was, you know, a massive coup for them.

But back home, insiders reported that royal feathers were ruffled.

The royal family here in the UK

were deeply shocked by the Netflix documentary.

They had no prior warning of what was in it.

They didn't get advance copies of it.

They saw it pretty much at the same time as the rest of us.

HARRY: No-one sees what's happening behind closed doors.

It was quite explosive within Netflix.

They gave a lot of details

about how difficult it is being in the royal family,

the fact that Harry asked his family to stand up to the media

and they had said no. The fact they'd felt so lonely.

They covered a lot of their life.

There was a lot of really nice stuff, actually,

how they first met, how Harry had seen Meghan

on the social media feed of one of his friends,

and she had some, like, goofy puppy ears.

And he was like, "Oh, that's cool, I need to meet that woman."

Their first date had some really nice things.

Wow.

H just got a text. H just got a text from his brother.

But the six-part series was also used as a vehicle

to once again air their grievances with the royal family.

OK, bye. Thank you.

They just repeated that narrative

that they were the victims, that they were put upon.

Everything negative had happened to them.

I think that was the first time that we began to see

that there wasn't some strong people

at the heart of them, directing them,

being that critical friend,

which anybody in power sort of needs.

It was self-made.

It's the equivalent

of writing your autobiography through, you know,

a chosen ghost and having total editorial control.

Despite some criticism, the Sussex-Netflix partnership

was deemed a success for the brand.

It doesn't really get any bigger than Netflix.

You know, Harry and Meghan are the king and queen of content.

The series debuted

with over 80 million hours watched in its first week.

Commercially, it's been a huge success,

but it's been a massive price for Harry to pay

in terms of his relationship with his family.

For the royal family,

another bombshell was just around the corner.

I think, as Harry put it for himself, they were always destined

to kind of leave and live the life that they're now living.

And that's probably the conclusion we all have to come to.

But there's a book to come in the new year.

There's more.

The news that Harry had written an autobiography,

albeit had it ghost-written, was very shocking.

And I think there were a lot of people thinking,

"Oh, well, it'll probably be a bit vanilla.

"It'll probably be a bit bland."

Well, more fool anybody that was assuming that

because there was still plenty left in his arsenal of ammunition.

Fair enough.

Harry wants to tell his story in his own words,

and I thought I could...

I absolutely understand that,

he's had his whole life

of having people like me tell his story for him.

I thought, "Brilliant, he should absolutely be allowed to do that."

It was excruciating, and it was really honest.

It's just page-turner after page-turner.

There were so many revelations in that book, you know,

from what really happened over that row over bridesmaids' dresses

or tights involving Princess Charlotte,

to William and Harry coming to blows,

to intimate details of private conversations

that were had at Prince Philip's funeral.

It was a sensational autobiography,

quite unlike anything that had been written by a royal before.

HARRY: It all happened so fast, so very fast.

He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace,

and he knocked me to the floor.

I landed on the dog's bowl,

which cracked under my back,

the pieces cutting into me.

I lay there for a moment, dazed,

then got to my feet and told him to get out.

I mean, I was staggered by what he'd put in.

I was shell-shocked.

It made them the most talked-about couple in the world.

The interest was extraordinary. You couldn't go out and get a coffee

or go and get a glass of wine in your pub without someone saying,

"Oh, my God, have you read this Spare book?

"I can't believe this, you know?"

And these are people that aren't always interested

in the royal family.

I mean, it had that real shock value to it.

1.4 million copies of Spare were sold on the first day,

making it the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time.

Harry's Spare was worth around about 30 million.

That was his advance.

Was it good for them? Not good for their brand.

Was it good for their pockets? Really good for their pockets.

And I equate Harry and Meghan to people

who come out of the Big Brother house in America or the UK.

When you... In its heyday,

you would basically be able to make millions in a week.

And it felt like that's what they were doing.

They were doing these deals and snapping them up.

But in snapping up the deals, had they given away too much?

Harry just does what he feels.

He shoots from the hip. There is no real strategic thinking.

There is no kind of thinking of the bigger picture.

He just does what he thinks and how he feels,

and that makes him a brilliant person to be around

and really funny and engaging.

But it also means that, I think,

he can do things that he might really regret.

And I do think he might really regret

writing Spare in the way that he did it.

Because it wasn't just what he'd written in Spare,

it was the publicity tour that he did around it.

Very good to see you. Tom, nice to see you.

Harry did a revealing tell-all interview

with Tom Bradby for ITV.

I think I do have to start with a simple question, which is "Why?"

Why have you written it?

38 years.

38 years of having my story told by so many different people,

erm, with intentional spin and distortion,

felt like a good time to own my story.

I think, for me, it was Spare.

It was absolutely the nail in the coffin

of Harry's relations with his family.

HARRY: "Meg's difficult," he said.

"Oh, really?"

"She's rude, she's abrasive. She's alienated half the staff."

Not the first time he'd parroted the press narrative.

You've just put enormous amounts

of private conversations in the public domain.

Wouldn't your brother say to you,

"Harry, how could you do this to me after everything we went through?"

When you are paid a lot of money,

they expect a kitchen sink to be thrown in.

They wanna sell books.

And it did sell, but the amount of bitterness

and ingrained sort of hurt

was very damaging to the royal family.

The oversharing clearly defines where Harry was going,

and that wasn't good.

No-one has to empty out

every last painful moment of his life

and not expect to hurt other people as well.

I think Spare really did cause a lot of damage,

not only to the royal family,

but really to Prince Harry's brand in itself.

Just five months later,

Harry and Meghan's highly lucrative Spotify deal runs into difficulties.

Whilst Harry and Meghan benefited

from the increased demand

for Netflix and Spotify and other platforms

as a result of lockdown and the pandemic,

they, of course, fell victim to the diminishing demand.

And therefore, Netflix and Spotify started to cut back contracts

that they had signed with people like Harry and Meghan.

They were also called grifters.

The implication was that they hadn't sung enough for their supper.

When the organisations paid you a lot of money

to be part of their game and they call you a grifter,

that was significant.

People looked at them in a totally different way.

You want to keep the people happy

who've paid you a lot of money by delivering for them.

The brand is always caught in a state of crisis.

I prefer to say it is now in a profound state of flux.

We have two enormous celebrities who can generate headlines by, you know,

dropping a teaspoon in a restaurant.

So while you've got that power,

you've got to think about how you use that power.

Did this criticism lead Harry and Meghan to re-evaluate their brand?

Of course, their big brand, really, is drama, isn't it?

It's controversy. It's drama. You think of the Sussexes,

you think of drama about the tiara

or drama about the naming of Lili, or drama of the moving

or the "freedom flight", as Harry called it.

You know, getting out of Canada to get to LA,

just as the kind of curtain came down because of COVID.

Can they ever get away from that?

I think there is a sense now that they have milked this narrative dry.

I think they want to step away from that victimhood mentality.

For Harry and Meghan,

is it now the case that the very institution they left

could now be what they need to revitalise their brand?

There is talk of a drive to rehabilitate his image

over here in Britain. Yes, it is time for a rebrand.

It is time to see them do something different, to leave the past behind.

At the Coronation of King Charles III,

Harry cut a lonely figure

when he travelled to London without Meghan.

It is good that Harry came to the Coronation

cos I think it'd have been terrible for him,

for his brand, for the family, if Harry hadn't come - so "tick".

Well done, Harry, for coming.

But, I mean, boy, was he made to pay for what he'd done.

I think the cameras were instructed just not to linger on him at all.

He literally made a flying appearance.

He came to Westminster Abbey.

He didn't talk to any members of his family apart from Jack and Eugenie,

who he was sitting near and is still on very good terms with.

Immediately after the ceremony,

Harry headed to Heathrow to fly back to LA.

But was this a sign of things to come for the Sussex brand?

A solo trip for Harry back in a royal setting.

Finding yourself in a downward spiral,

who do you reach out to,

you know, for that lifeline, and how do you recalibrate it?

Buckingham Palace has just announced that the King has cancer.

REPORTER: How are you feeling?

'I think health is a great leveller.'

And at times like this, when you have a crisis in the family,

you put all those things to one side and you show up for each other.

IMOGEN STUBBS: Three years after leaving the UK for LA,

by 2023, rifts between the Sussexes and the royal family

may not have been healed, but some things were changing.

Harry was making solo flying visits back to his home country,

and in February 2024,

there was a more personal reason to do so.

We have some major breaking news for you tonight.

We're going to stay on air until 6.30

because Buckingham Palace has just announced that the King has cancer.

When Harry was told by his father

that he'd been diagnosed with cancer,

Harry's instant reaction was, "I must fly over to be with you."

The King did change his plans, actually,

so that he could stay at Clarence House

to have that meeting with Harry.

I think the fact that he'd stayed back,

he wanted to see his son,

was an important step in thawing relations.

It's great that he managed to make the time to come and see him.

It's a shame that he doesn't feel he can stay longer,

but I think health is a great leveller.

And at times like this,

when you have a crisis in the family,

you put all those things to one side

and you show up for each other, and that's what he did.

And as this year has gone on,

seeing Harry out on his own has been a more common occurrence.

Harry has been working on his charitable projects.

So he was at Climate Week at the United Nations in New York.

He'd come over to the UK for Invictus.

CHEERING

Much was made of the fact that he didn't have a family reunion,

when, really, the focus should have been on the tenth anniversary

of the Invictus Games and Harry very much being solo.

This was his project. It's his passion.

Prince Harry was in London in September for the WellChild Awards,

and this is something he has supported

and been part of that charity for years.

Keep being you. You've got this and we've got you.

HARRY CHUCKLES

And then he was in South Africa

looking at his charitable organisations there,

including Sentebale.

And I think that's all about Prince Harry, you know,

really being passionate about what he's passionate about,

with or without the Duchess of Sussex.

He did that before he met Meghan.

He's still doing it now, and I think that's brilliant.

REPORTER: How are you, Meghan?

Meghan, too, returned to her roots, the Hollywood red carpet.

We did see Meghan back on the red carpet

in a fabulous red dress,

supporting the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles,

so she has been doing her philanthropic work as well.

She's looking at me like, "What are you doing?"

Have fun tonight.

And even when they are together -

on their joint trips to Nigeria in May,

and Colombia in August this year -

they're still focusing on their own projects.

CHEERING

The trips to Nigeria and Colombia were not royal tours.

They were tours for Harry and Meghan in a private capacity

to go over and promote their causes,

Invictus Games, their charities,

their patronages, and also, really crucially,

an opportunity for them to be on the world stage.

It looked, to all intents and purposes,

like a royal tour, even though it wasn't,

and that is the pulling power of their brand.

You know, that is the star appeal of Harry and Meghan.

WHISTLE TOOTS

APPLAUSE

While we're used to seeing Harry and Meghan together,

this marks a new period in their professional lives.

But what does it signal for their brand?

Harry and Meghan have been such a unit for so long

that it looks surprising now to see them doing things separately,

and it does look quite deliberate.

The reason for Harry and Meghan

to do their solo things at the moment

is about establishing the different elements of the brand.

You know, Meghan does want to appeal to a certain demographic.

Harry can go and do his thing and show his dedication

to philanthropic causes.

Meghan's got that star power. She can command a lot of things.

And I think, on her own, she's just as powerful as when she is with him.

I think the same thing for him.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Meghan. Meghan. Meghan. Meghan.

That's for you, you see?

But can the Sussexes maintain their relevance,

and are they trading on their royal and Hollywood prestige?

Currently, Harry and Meghan are trading on being Harry and Meghan -

glamour, attraction, royal family heritage.

I think what Harry and Meghan have realised

is that their importance and influence

does depend, at the moment, and up until now,

on their role within the royal family.

And if they're not in the royal family,

what have they got to say about the royal family?

What information have they got left to divulge?

Well, of course, very little because most members

of the royal family are no longer speaking to them.

They're definitely still trying to trade on their clout

and their royal names.

I think it's fascinating that, you know, they want the HRH titles

for their children, but they're no longer working royals.

So how do Harry and Meghan move their brand forward,

and are they able to cut ties with the firm?

Where this journey has run

is because of the strength of the royal family.

It possibly is an experiment.

Possibly, it is a reboot.

Um, all those things suggest

that they have very different sort of visions

of what the Sussex brand should mean.

I think their brand is confused because, yes,

you have the lifestyle element that they're looking for,

but there's so much baggage

with their conflicts with the royal family,

we don't really know if they're gonna be able

to shed the baggage that they have

and to move forward with the lifestyle-influencer side of things.

But it's definitely their biggest single challenge

when it comes to their public relations.

And with Harry contracted to write three more books

and a lucrative Netflix deal to fulfil,

there's a lot more to come from brand Sussex.

When you consider the next projects

that are going to come out on Netflix,

it's going to be a series that Harry has produced on polo.

Meghan is doing a sort of cookery show with,

I'm sure, celebrity guests and friends.

They have to be coming up with original content.

That deal with Netflix will only continue

while they're coming up with content.

With a renewed focus on charity and his philanthropic ventures,

we may see Harry return to more familiar territory.

But the things that Harry has done recently,

they could have come from any page of his royal diary pre-2020.

It was absolute Prince Harry textbook of old.

It was royal rota central. It was brilliant.

When we see Harry on his own, we often see Harry at his best,

doing the projects he's passionate about,

doing the work that he absolutely loves

and reminding us all of the old Prince Harry,

who I think many people really miss.

CHEERING

We may see Meghan, too, return to her roots.

Along with media deals,

she'll launch her new lifestyle brand,

American Riviera Orchard,

which she teased in this glitzy Instagram video.

It shows the duchess at home, cooking in a rustic kitchen.

We know that that's very important to her,

and that's going to be all about her.

It feels like she's going back to her roots when she had The Tig,

and, hopefully, it will be a really positive thing for her.

Some people want to be part of her life.

The future seems promising for the former royals

turned lifestyle influencers and philanthropists.

So what are the next steps for brand Sussex

and the people behind it?

"What next?" is a big question for Harry and Meghan,

and I suppose it's the one that we're all sitting here watching

because, with this couple,

you never quite know what you're going to get.

I think with Meghan, it's about lifestyle,

it's about homeliness, it's about being a good mother.

It's about being altruistic, which she certainly is,

and it's about being a caring person within a community.

Harry wanting to go back to the old Harry,

trying to be the quieter Harry.

"This is what I'm about" Harry, the philanthropy,

the charities, the children.

As long as they keep their eyes on the path

and the prize of showing up, doing good,

continuing in their philanthropic work,

I think that they'll be great.