DAN WOOTTON: Royal courtiers thought the Sussexes were ‘entitled, lazy and afraid of hard work’

Spotify executive Bill Simmons’ damning verdict of Harry and Meghan as ‘f***ing grifters’ as the streaming giant pulled the plug on the couple’s astronomically disastrous $20 million podcast deal has come as no surprise to anyone working within the British Royal Family.

While the uniquely American term, meaning someone who engages in small-scale swindling, was never used by courtiers during the three painful years the Sussexes were officially part of the monarchy, similar words were, as the pair found ways to blame everyone but themselves for their perceived lack of success.

‘Entitled’, ‘rude’, ‘lazy’, ‘delusional’ and ‘afraid of hard work’ were some that popped up between members of the ‘Sussex Survivors Club’ regularly, as H&M looked for spurious reasons to get out of public service commitments that they didn’t think benefited them.

It culminated in the now famous moment in Fiji, on a rare royal tour where work was actually required on daily walkabouts, where Meghan suggested she should be compensated financially for such hardship.

Meghan suggested she should be compensated financially for such hardship on a trip to Fiji with Prince Harry

‘I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this,’ she whinged, according to the well-sourced royal author Valentine Low.

Meghan long had a reputation as a diva, even as a C-list actress in the moderately successful US drama Suits.

A director who worked with her on a movie once told me seriously ‘she was the worst actress I’ve ever had the displeasure of having to manage’, outlining how she made a host of ludicrous and unreasonable budget-busting travel and personal requests.

Of course, Spotify was more than happy to pay for this sort of behaviour when they signed Meghan and her hapless husband Harry to such a record deal in 2020.

Unproven as broadcasters, the couple’s name was enough to help burnish the company’s fledgling podcast business, of which over a billion dollars was being invested.

And Spotify bent over backwards to make Harry and Meghan happy, capitulating when the couple started to moan about their biggest podcasting success Joe Rogan by launching a Covid-19 misinformation policy.

Which makes the complete collapse of the Sussex deal, after just 12 pitiful episodes of Meghan’s awfully woke celebrity moanfest Archetypes and a boring Christmas special, even more extraordinary.

But, as any royal courtier could have warned them, whatever Spotify did it was never going to be enough.

It comes after top Spotify podcast executive Bill Simmons (pictured) called Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ‘f***ing grifters’

Meghan long had a reputation as a diva, even as a C-list actress in the moderately successful US drama Suits, writes Dan Wootton. Pictured: Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, surrounded by a female Police Protection officer and heavy Fijian security officers as she visits Suva Market, Fiji, in 2018

Because making podcasts actually requires hard graft ­– a concept Harry and Meghan are allergic too.

Not down the mines level manual labour, but a regular commitment to researching, planning, recording and overseeing post production on episodes of a number of shows in order to build up a loyal following.

Rogan, for example, works personally on multiple episodes a week of well over an hour a go.

But it emerged last year that Meghan wasn’t even prepared to interview some of her guests.

New Yorker Allison Yarrow, who appeared on the episode To B Or Not To B, about the word bitch, admitted she was interviewed by one of Meghan’s many producers, Farrah Safarfi, rather than the Duchess herself.

The fact the failure of the deal erupted so publicly suggests it was a total nightmare behind-the-scenes.

Hollywood folk generally stab each other in the back, then release press releases praising the other party for being creatively brilliant and talented; they don’t go on the record to attack famed departing colleagues as the equivalent of swindlers.

It emerged last year that Meghan wasn’t even prepared to interview some of her guests. Pictured: Meghan and Harry disembark from their plane on their arrival in Suva in 2018

Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast Archetypes will not be renewed for a second season 

That claim came from Bill Simmons, one of the world’s most famous podcasters himself who also doubles as head of podcast innovation and monetisation at Spotify.

In other words, the bloke tasked with making Harry and Meghan’s deal work commercially.

Speaking on his own Spotify podcast, he said: ‘I wish I had been involved in the Meghan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation. The f***ing grifters. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them.’

The craziest thing to me is that Harry couldn’t even find it in himself to make one sole podcast episode or series, in exchange for his part of the millions being pumped into his bank account.

And, remember, the bar was set very low in terms of what Spotify was prepared to commission.

Could the bloke, who is apparently so sincere in his desire to change the world, not have come up with a single idea of content to inspire or entertain the masses?

After all, with his little black book overflowing, most interesting folk would, at the very least, be open to his call to appear.

But Harry’s default setting these days is as Mr Cantankerous, as we saw loud and clear when he came under cross examination in his Mirror phone hacking case earlier this month and was unable to produce a scrap of evidence for his costly claims, even though he arrogantly said he’d feel a sense of injustice if the verdict goes against him.

Archetypes launched in August last year, exploring the ‘labels that try to hold women back’. The Duke and Duchess reportedly signed the deal for $20million but will not receive the full payout as it did not reach the productivity benchmark 

Meghan signed off her 12th episode in the Archetypes podcast series with a defiant piece of poetry about survival

Furious Simmons backed that up by adding: ‘I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories. F**k them. The grifters.’

This is all catastrophic for Harry and Meghan’s woke dream of living an A-list Californian lifestyle like Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres without any of the toil that both those ladies put in five days a week to build their fortune.

Hollywood was open to the Duke of Delusion; somewhat taken with the idea of a man prepared to walk away from his birthright for a life of immense privilege in order to set up a new start for his family away from those ghastly royals and the vile British tabloid media.

But Harry failed to understand that he was not simply going to be paid tens of millions of dollars because he was a prince – that goes against the entire principle of the American dream.

He failed spectacularly.

Netflix is now considering ending its deal with the Sussexes, too.

So while there’ll always be a company stupid enough to flush millions down the loo for the initial PR of being connected to a deal with Harry and Meghan, the opportunity to make an impact as a game changing content creator working with streaming giants who could bring them an audience of billions across the globe has now been dashed.

It’s a cautionary tale of why spoiled royals will always struggle to cut it in the real world.