Meghan Markle reportedly loses Netflix acting gig

Meghan Markle’s hot new opportunity to appear in a Guy Ritchie Netflix drama that’s filmed in the United Kingdom has reportedly been withdrawn, due to all the backlash and chaos surrounding the sudden, shocking news that she and Prince Harry plan to leave California and move back to the UK by the end of the month.

Tina Brown, royal author and famed former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, reported Saturday morning that the offer to the American former TV actor to appear in Season 3 of Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” “has been withdrawn” due to the backlash over the casting. Deadline and other US outlets had reported Friday that the “Suits” star was in “early talks” to appear in the crime drama.

“The backlash in the UK was so intense, it became untenable to go forward,” Brown reported on her Fresh Hell Substack. “This does not bode well for Meghan’s acting comeback in the UK. More to come.”

Brown and other royal observers also would say it doesn’t bode well for Meghan and Harry’s return for the UK if she doesn’t have some kind of job lined up in the UK.

On Friday, Brown reported that having work in the UK would make it easier for Meghan to join Harry in moving back to his home country. The job, Brown reported on her Substack, “allows Harry, at last, to get Meghan’s buy-in for his growing desire to get the hell out of paradise and go home to the world he understands.”

For Meghan, the UK is not a welcoming place. The Duchess of Sussex and aspiring lifestyle guru has become widely unpopular among the British public since she and Harry exiled themselves to the United States in 2020 and publicly complained that the royal family and the British media were racist and treated her terribly and that she and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, were not safe visiting.

“The level of general hostility towards her is off the charts these days,” added British journalist Tom Sykes, who writes the influential The Royalist Substack. On Saturday, Sykes also shared Brown’s report and said he had reached out to Meghan and Harry’s office for a comment about the reported collapse of the Ritchie talks. He said he had not heard back.

Over the past two days, Sykes also has raised questions about whether Meghan and Harry were truly moving back to the UK or if this was some kind of publicity stunt.

Sykes, who also writes for the Daily Beast, noted that the language that Sussex sources have slipped to major media outlets about their return has been “flexible.” They’ve used the term “extended period,” which suggests that they don’t intend to make England their new home base after all, even though their sources also have said that they’ve enrolled Archie, 7, and Lilibt, 5, in British schools. The “implied assumption” is that their UK sojourn is not meant to be forever, Sykes said. He added: “I find it incredibly hard to imagine that Meghan is going to be any happier living in the UK this time round than she was last time” — when she at least had the cachet of being a working member of the royal family.

More than that, it’s arguable that “extended period” could also mean that the couple only plan to stay in the UK for as long as it takes Meghan to film her role in “The Gentlemen,” Sykes also wrote — before Brown reported Saturday that the role has been withdrawn. If the role has been withdrawn, Sykes said on Saturday that it could bolster the idea that Harry and the children will move to the United Kingdom, while Meghan will “come and go,” depending on her work opportunities. Sykes was told by a friend of Harry’s that, for Meghan, it would be “mainly, go.”

Meanwhile, British entertainment writer Rob Shuter reported on his Naughty But Nice Substack Thursday that Meghan had only agreed to move back to the UK for six months. He, People magazine and other outlets also said the couple would keep their mansion in Montecito and vacation home in Portugal.

Tribune News Service