Meghan and Harry

by Lady Colin Cambell

  They found out easily enough, because Meghan had flown to the United States in 2019 and met with the three leading members of her business team from when she was a jobbing actress. They were Nick Collins, Andrew Meyer and Rick Genow.

  Nick Collins is Co-Head of Talent at the Gersh Agency, Inc., a talent and literary agency ranked sixth of the top agencies in the country. It is the only agency which has never diversified from its core purpose, the representation of acting and literary talent, although in the last decade it has taken active steps to plump up its divisions, which include Talent, Alternative, Books, Branding, Film Finance, Literary, Personal Appearance, Production, and Theatre. Its primary client base is what The Hollywood Reporter calls ‘a roster of steadily working actors whose faces might be more recognizable than their names.’ It has 2,000 clients, 175 employees with 75 agents and 16 partners, with offices in LA and New York. Founded in 1949 in the golden age of Hollywood by Phil Gersh, his sons Bob and David are the Co-Presidents and the Senior Managing Partner is Leslie Siebert. It also has a reputation for an aggressive left-wing political profile, and became involved in controversy when it fired one of its best known actors, James Woods, by email on the 4th July, 2018. He accused it of political bias, stating that they had stopped representing him because he is a Republican. Their signature clients are Kristen Stewart, Kyle Chandler, Adam Driver, J.K. Simmons, Taylor Schilling, and Patricia Arquette, who has such an impeccable liberal profile that she apologised publicly for having been born white and privileged, and took part in the Women’s March against President Trump.

  Nick Collins started out as an assistant to Bob Gersh in 2005, since when his rise within the company has been stellar. He became an agent in 2007, a partner in 2015, and was appointed Co-Head of Talent in February 2018. His clients include Courtney B. Vance and Eric McCormack of Will and Grace. He is regarded as sharp, bright, reliable, and possessing great taste - something which matters greatly to the stylish and tasteful Meghan, though she makes an exception for her husbands, both of whom have been stylistic messes.

  According to The Hollywood Reporter, Andrew Meyer is listed, along with his partner Steves Rodriguez, as one of the top twenty five business managers in Hollywood. Meyer handles the talent while Rodriguez deals with music and production. The former’s clients include Ellen Pompeo and Kathryn Hahn. They have a reputation for being good managers. Like Gersh, they are capable and reliable but their clients are not generally of the first rank.

  Harvard graduate Rick Genow is listed as one of Hollywood’s top hundred lawyers. He is a partner in Stone, Genow, Smelkinson, Binder & Christopher, a boutique firm specialising in the representation of actors, writers, directors and producers in the film and television industries. He also works with emerging filmmaking talent as well as established veterans, packaging, producing and setting up projects, and representing the sale of distribution rights for finished films. The firm boasts that it has a ‘knack for finding exceptional projects that [are] creatively satisfying, commercially appealing and cost effective.’ They ‘also assist financiers seeking material.’

  Tellingly, Meghan never disbanded her trio of commercial representatives when she married Harry. Then the palace discovered that pregnant Meghan had instructed them to drum up commercial opportunities for her to exploit. And not small time things either. Each project should be worth millions of dollars.

  Insofar as Buckingham Palace was concerned, royals cannot be both fish and fowl. You cannot be a British royal and an American businesswoman at the same time. The word trickling back to England was deeply ominous as far as they were concerned, for it appeared as if Meghan intended to breach one of the cardinal rules under which royalty functions, namely that it cannot involve itself in commercial activity for personal gain. Not only were they being told that Meghan had articulated an interest in maximising her earning potential, but she and Harry were also rumoured to have cut deals which, if true, were decidedly beyond the ken for royalty. A princess told me in 2019, ‘There are rumours - hopefully untrue - that Meghan has been entering into deals with all sorts of people on behalf of herself and Harry.’ Meghan was rumoured to have even asked designers to give her credits for dresses which she had worn and which the Duchy of Cornwall had paid for. She was also alleged to be making deals with suppliers - people like jewellers - for promoting their wares. ‘It is to be hoped that these stories are untrue,’ the princess said. ‘But the mere fact that they exist is disturbing.’

  Perturbing as those rumours were to the Royal Family and the people running it, they were less shocking to Americans than to the British. Partly, this is because Americans admire an entrepreneurial approach even if it has covert elements, and partly because it is a well-known fact that Jackie Onassis used to run through her dress allowance of $30,000 per month from Aristotle Onassis as a means of ‘exploiting’ - again that word with such differing connotations depending on which side of the Atlantic it was being used - it to feather her nest. Sometimes she wouldn’t even bother to wear an item before sending it to the resale shop. She would then pocket the money, and repeat the whole process month after month. When her husband found out, he accused her of being a ‘cheap hustler’ and ‘little better than a thief’. This was no rumour either. Ari himself told his first wife Tina’s sister-in-law Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill, who was a close friend of mine and at whose 72nd Street townhouse in New York I used to see both Onassises, as well as Jackie alone at Sarah’s Jamaican home, ‘Content’.

  If Meghan was doing a variation of a Jackie, the British needed to appreciate that she would not have been viewing her conduct as anything but entrepreneurial and resourceful. ‘Double recovery’ and ‘double dealing’ might be the height of dubious behaviour in Britain, but in the circles whence Meghan originated, they were commendable resourcefulness. Nevertheless, commercialism, whether overt or covert, was anathema to the powers-that-be at Buckingham Palace. But it was nowhere near as bad as politicism. And they had been told that Meghan had let it be known that she had political ambitions. Nor were her ambitions modest. Characteristically, her ultimate goal was to be President of the United States of America. She had even told people that she saw no reason why she couldn’t ‘do a Reagan’.

  Aside from the constitutional conflicts inherent in a member of the British Royal Family seeking political office in a foreign country, even the country of her birth, there was the question of Meghan’s suitability for the American presidency. To the courtiers, with their British attitude towards political office which is at variance with the American, she was not qualified for any political office, much less one of the magnitude of President of the United States of America. She hadn’t even passed her State Department examinations, yet here she was voicing ambitions to be the Commander-in-Chief. Self-belief does not have the magical quality in Britain that it does in the United States, so to them this was something to be suspicious of, rather than to celebrate. The fact that Meghan had voiced the belief that her career as an actress put her on a par with the late 40th President of America, because Ronald Reagan had been, like her, a moderately successful actor before moving on to greater things, struck them as incomprehensible.

  To the courtiers, whose colleagues had had dealings with the late President and had a great deal of respect for his wiliness as well as his sophisticated overview, Meghan seemed not to realise that the limited success as actors which she and Reagan had shared was the full extent of what they had in common. She was confusing the role playing she did when she appeared in soup kitchens and gave speeches to the UN about having changed the face of advertising at the age of eleven, with actual political experience. Meghan had never held down a political role of any type, much less one of any significance. Reagan, on the other hand, had had an extensive political background even while he was a jobbing actor. He was first elected to the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the powerful actor’s union, in 1941. In 1946, he was elected their third vice-president. In 1947 he was elected president an
d would subsequently be re-elected six times, the last being in 1959. He successfully steered SAG through the McCarthy Era and the dark days of the Hollywood Black List, implemented the controversial Taft-Hartley Act, oversaw various labour-management disputes at a time of tremendous political and economic upheaval, during which Hollywood’s studio system collapsed under the weight of television, before sitting twice as Governor of California from 1967-1975.

  Meghan also looked to President Trump, for whom she had nothing but contempt, as a comparable. ‘If Trump can be president, there’s no reason why I can’t be,’ she said. Harry would echo a variation of this sentiment when he spoke to the Russian pranksters who pretended to be Greta Thunberg and her father Svante on New Year’s Eve 2019 and in January 2020 and stated that if Trump could be president, pretty much anyone could be as well.

  As regards Trump, Meghan was on firmer ground. Prior to holding office as president, he had possessed no more political experience than she did. He had been a well-known businessman and television personality, but there the parallels between the two of them began to diverge. While she had engaged in commercial activity as well as becoming a television personality, the degree of his renown had not been comparable with hers. Whatever his track record commercially, Donald Trump has had vast experience of deal-making. He had become a household name long before he became a television personality. Meghan had never been a household name prior to her marriage to Harry. She had never owned hotels or casinos or a successful club like Mar-a-Lago, nor had her name ever appeared on airlines, hotels, and iconic New York buildings. While she regarded herself as a businesswoman because she had agents who had successfully obtained minor endorsements for her, she was out of Trump’s league both as a businesswoman and a television personality. He had fronted one of the United States’ most popular television network shows, while she had been an ensemble player on a minor albeit reasonably successful cable TV show. But she was now a member of the British Royal Family, and her profile would continue to grow exponentially. Being a superb strategist, if Meghan played her cards right, her springboard could be every bit as appealing to a different category of supporter and she could be equally electable.

  There was, however, an important difference between The Donald’s acquisition of the presidency and Meghan’s ambition to achieve it. Over the years, I have met members of the Trump family socially. Three of my oldest friends know them very well. Some like him, some don’t. On one thing they are all agreed. Donald Trump fell into the presidential contest to boost his profile commercially. Being someone who likes winning, he then set out to win. But no one was more surprised than he when he was actually elected president. Accidental success is patently different from focused ambition, and though Meghan disparages him, there is no doubt that he has thrown himself into the presidential role with gusto. To his admirers, he has made a success of it. To his critics, everyone else is responsible for the successes of his administration.

  As a character, Trump superficially has more in common with Diana, Princess of Wales than he appears to have with her daughter-in-law. Somehow, Diana always managed to grow into the role, whatever her latest role was. To his supporters, Trump has done the same. This is not an attribute which Meghan’s critics regard her as having displayed during her brief tenure as a working royal. They would have us believe that even her supporters cannot claim that she successfully lived up to the role she then abandoned after less than two years.

  But they could actually have misinterpreted her actions and ambitions. Meghan’s apparent lack of tenacity allied to her unwillingness to adjust to her royal role and fulfill its requirements, filled her supporters within the Royal Family, the Establishment, and the Commonwealth with perplexity. Behind the scenes, people really struggled to understand how someone who had been made so welcome could be making her life and theirs so difficult when with slight adjustments, she could so easily succeed. I was told early on that her ‘inordinate self-belief’ would be her downfall unless she was careful. She was too confident, too inflexible, too convinced that her way was both the best and the only way, and that all other ways were beneath her contempt. Her attitude was that she had better things to do with her time than consider, much less negotiate with, points of view that did not accord with hers. She came across as disrespectful, narrow- minded, and self-satisfied, with more than one person who dealt with her ending up thinking that she was too arrogant, smug and sanctimonious to ever fit into a solid institution like the monarchy. Or indeed to succeed as a politician anywhere. What they seem not to have understood, was that Meghan might well have had a more sophisticated game plan than they were giving her credit for. Why adjust to something if it’s only ever going to be a small part of your future goal?

  If that was the case, and her real end-game was the Presidency of the United States of America, just how does Meghan propose to achieve her goal? Politicians even more than constitutional monarchists need to be pliable enough to forge alliances. They have to duck and dive, bend and weave far more than royals, because the electorate is their judge. And that electorate is even more nuanced than any royal institution. It consists of a plethora of special interest groups, some clashing with others, few of whom want to be lectured to by politicians as if they are nine year olds in Sunday School, much less by a former actress and a royal prince who preach one thing but practise another. The end result was that many of the courtiers who came across Meghan while she was adjusting to her royal role, ended up thinking that she was ‘naive’, ‘politically inept’, a ‘loose and dangerous cannon’ who was ‘delusional about what she had going for her’ and would ‘muck things up’ if she didn’t alter her attitude. But they could have been wrong, and she right. They had misjudged Diana, and there is every likelihood that they misjudged Meghan. Both women were, so to speak, playing poker while the courtiers thought the game was canasta.

  Yet many of the very people who were now perplexed by Meghan’s failure to adjust to her royal role had initially been optimistic about her inclusion in the Royal Family. ‘We misjudged her,’ one courtier told me. ‘We thought she was more open-minded than she is. She’s bright, but she’s not as clever as she thinks she is. She’s so up her own bum-bum that she miscalculates at every turn. She has a real gift for making enemies of people who want to be her friends.’ An attitude like that is not a winning formula unless, of course, victory lies in failing to adjust, in which case it is the best tactic to employ.

  By the time Meghan’s pregnancy had been announced, it was obvious in court circles that she was not growing into her role, but was expecting it to change for her. In short, she was not acquitting herself as successfully as her supporters, this author included, had hoped she would. There is always a transitional phase between hope and despair. In the early days, everyone hoped that Meghan would learn and adjust. They still did not understand that she might actually have no need to adjust. They still thought that she was ‘in for the long haul’ as a fully paid up member of the Royal Family. To many of the courtiers, who believe that their jobs serve a valuable purpose in national life, it was inconceivable that any newcomer to the Royal Family would treat such an august position as just another career move, of no more importance than a secretarial job or a role in a cable television show. This attitude was so beyond their contemplation that even when the evidence began mounting up that this is precisely how Meghan approached her royal role, they simply could not absorb the fact. They therefore continued to function in a state of suspended disbelief, and thrashed around for explanations as to why the duchess was not adjusting.

  One canny courtier, however, summarised Meghan’s underlying problem to me once the palace discovered that Meghan had gone to the States to consult with her agents and representatives there. If being a royal duchess was just a career move, as now seemed possible, that would explain why she could not and/or would not make the necessary adjustments to fulfill her royal role satisfactorily. ‘A priest who’s an atheist is always going to be problematic t
o the Church. The Duchess of Sussex doesn’t have the subtlety, sophistication or self-restraint to be another Talleyrand: she’s more like Princess Diana.’ This courtier did not consider her to be a formidable adversary. He thought that she was ‘too naive and unsubtle an operator to be truly effective. She’s so obvious that she’ll tie herself in knots rather than follow the clear lines of the turncoat Bishop of Autun. He was as self-interested as she is, but he had self-restraint and a solid enough self-regard to put success above applause. I don’t see Meghan Markle doing that. Nor did Princess Diana. ’

  In my not-so-humble opinion, this analysis misread the skill and subtlety of both Meghan and Diana. Just because they had the gift of being able to project their feelings with the commensurate reward of gaining followers did not mean that they lacked self-restraint. On the contrary. It seemed to me that they both had a winning combination of self-restraint allied to self-projection, and by discounting one of those two elements, their detractors were underestimating them. Since their critics acknowledged that both women were wily, it seemed to me paradoxical that they would be judged only on their superficial actions, rather than on their underlying motives and ultimate achievements. Their goals, after all, were neither straightforward nor obvious, and since their journeys took place with much subterfuge and double-bluffing on their part, why fail to acknowledge their skill in playing canny hands successfully? Could it be that they were more skilful than was thought?

  If Meghan and Harry’s agenda was to elevate themselves using their royal status for their own material and political gain, there was no way Meghan could sustain the way of life of a British royal. The patrician world is tough. It is one which Diana rebelled against and had contrived to leave behind prior to her death. She was in the process of doing what was then known as ‘a Jackie’ when she had her accident. Both Diana and Jackie Kennedy had left the heavy hitting Establishment circles whence they originated, to drift off into the more salubrious climes of the ocean-going yachts and private planes of the super-rich. Both were happy to leave behind the ostensible but limited and self-sacrificing glamour of a great position for the freedom, comfort and true glamour of a richer and easier way of life. Both of them had had enough of the sacrifices that go along with grand positions, of the self-restraint, self-abnegation and discipline which are fundamental. They were happy to swap the delights of real wealth for the countless dull and worthy occasions that so heavily outweigh the occasional glamorous red carpet events that so mislead the public into believing that royalty and world leaders lead enviable lives when, in fact, dull duty is more often the case. Diana, Princess of Wales used to complain about how excruciatingly tiresome she found ‘yet another lunch with yet another boring mayor,’ and, while Jackie tried to explain away her flight into Onassis’s world as providing her children with the safety only great wealth can guarantee, the truth was simpler: She loved the freedom, comfort and self-indulgence of great wealth. So too did Diana. She happily jettisoned over a hundred patronages following her separation, freeing up her time for long girly lunches, gym and tennis sessions, sybaritic holidays on West Indian beaches and sojourns on private yachts in the Aegean whether owned by Panagiotis Lemos or Mohamed Al-Fayed was beside the point, not to mention the pleasures of the Harrods private plane.