Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had a series of discussions with the streaming platform, Quibi, in 2019 despite recently telling Oprah Winfrey in a bombshell interview that they didn’t have any plans after leaving their royal duties.
A new report cited that Harry had meetings with Quibi executives many months before he and his wife announced they were stepping back as senior working royals. Sources said that Prince Harry and Meghan received “well-developed proposals” from the then-newly-built streaming platform of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman.
Quibi, however, shut down in mid-2020 as it was losing money and couldn’t retain subscribers as a mobile content platform for 10-minute videos. A report from Page Six cited that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex turned down Quibi’s offer because they decided to go with Netflix, which had high profile deals with the Obamas and Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company.
Netflix confirmed they’ve signed on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in September 2020, while they secured their Spotify deal in December. According to sources, the deals would have been closed earlier if not for the delays brought on by the pandemic.
But during their interview with Winfrey, which aired on CBS in early March 2021, Harry and Meghan claimed that they did not plan on signing deals with Netflix or Spotify after they decided to leave the royal fold. Harry told Winfrey these were “never part of the plan” but they had heeded to the suggestions from the people looking out for them to secure deals with media companies because Prince Charles cut off Harry financially.
Harry and Meghan implied they needed to secure lucrative deals to pay for their security after Charles took those away as well. However, as Sky News Australia host James Morrow said, this latest development exposes another lie from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. It showed that the couple had plans early on to quit their royal roles and close TV deals, speaking deals or even book deals, despite what they told Winfrey. Another source said that Meghan’s people in Hollywood orchestrated everything from the U.S. while the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were still working royals.
Prince Harry and Markle officially announced their step back as senior working royals in January 2020. Their final royal engagement was in March. By the middle of that month, the couple moved to Los Angeles just as the world locked down due to the COVID-19 threat. They have not returned to London since then.