The ‘tide has turned’ against Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Hollywood: opinion

In the vein of you can’t keep baby in the corner, you can’t dump Tom Cruise in a supporting role. Except if you’re the royal family.

You can keep your missions, impossible and your guns, top, Scientology’s answer to Willy Loman has repeatedly in recent years happily taken back seat, a B-list, second-string parts in events when asked to by the House of Windsor.

The eerily ageless A-lister happily played second fiddle to Kate the Princess of Wales at the London “Top Gun: Maverick” premiere and then accepted a simple ensemble role in 2022’s televised Royal Windsor Horse Show – the real star of which was Platinum Jubilee gal herself, the late Queen.

This week Cruise was back at it, taking his place in the third row in the royal box at Wimbledon for the men’s finals for Kate the Princess of Wales’ return, briefly, to rapturous public view.

The princess’ entry prompted not only Cruise but notably Julia Roberts, Benedict Cumberbatch and the 15,000-strong crowd to give Kate a standing ovation as she arrived.

And my, those Tinseltown sorts were delighted with the princess, with Roberts grinning with unabashed delight while Cruise looked happier than that one time he managed to raise his Thetans to level alpha.

Cruise and Roberts now join Gwyneth Paltrow, Idris Elba, former British Vogue editor Edward Enniful and Kate Moss in having publicly shown their support for the royal family of late.

Hollywood, it turns out, and to borrow liberally from Somerset Maugham, just might be “a sunny place for changeable people” with the Wimbledon scene capping off several months that have seen starhhhs showing their support for Team Crown.

Right as this has all been happening, the Californian outpost of the House of Windsor, manned by Prince Harry and Meghan the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has been experiencing what outwardly appears to be something of a cooling relationship with Tinseltown.

“The tide has turned,” an observer based in Hollywood recently told The Times of the couple. “People in America have been welcoming but they won’t like the way they’ve treated the late Queen and now the King. Mostly, people I speak to say they either don’t like the Sussexes, or don’t care.”

Meanwhile back in London, it was just this that Sussex wedding guest and “Avengers” star Elba turned up at St. James’s Palace to co-host, with the King, a mini-summit on youth crime.

They also invited along wet-behind-the-ears Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, taking a break from cleaning out the almond snack packs littering the Number 10 desk drawers and left behind by Rishi Sunak and representatives from community organizations. Positive forces, assemble!

Beyond this, the actor’s Elba Hope Foundation is working with the King’s Trust (formerly the Prince’s Trust set up by Charles in 1976) on various other charity initiatives. Elba has been involved with the Trust since at least 2010, having received a $2900 grant to help him train as an actor when he was 18.

However Elba also happens to have, in the past, been closely aligned with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, not only attended their wedding but DJ’ed the reception to boot.

Yet there the “Luther” actor was this week, posing for the cameras with the King, a man who so often just happens to be busy to see his son when he’s in town.

Then there is Gwyneth Paltrow who reportedly joined the Sussexes for dinner last year, along with Cameron Diaz and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who also attended Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s vow renewal with the Duke and Duchess.

Last month the Oscar-winner took to Instagram to show her support for Kate after her Trooping the Colour comeback, posting under an official shot of the princess, “So happy to see you looking so happy and well.”

The big names keep coming, too.

In May, Leonardo DiCaprio, Drew Barrymore, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Emily Ratajkowski and Kate Moss got their glad-rag on to attend a black-tie charity do for the King’s Trust in New York, helping raise more than $2 million.

Co-chairing the event was Edward Enninful, the former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, who invited Meghan to guest edit the famed fashion title in 2019.

Last year, he wrote the King’s entry in Time’s 100 most influential people list, hailing His Majesty as “charming,” “funny” and a “ kindness that always seeks to put others at ease.” (“The monarchy is not perfect,” Enniful also wrote.)

There are also the celebrities and power players who have gone oddly silent.

When the Sussexes arrived in the land of the free soda refill one of their staunchest public allies was Oprah Winfrey.

She was a guest at their 2018 wedding and in December 2020 Winfrey happily touted vegan latte company Clevr, which Meghan had invested in, on social media.

Only a couple of months later, it was to Winfrey to whom the Sussexes turned to begin their palace whistleblowing.

However, the last time that the Duke and Duchess and Winfrey were connected publicly, also with DeGeneres and de Rossi, was at a charity event in October last year.

In April, if Winfrey received one of the 50 jars of strawberry jam that the duchess sent out to promote her lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard (ARO), the 70-year-old has not posted about it. Nor has, according to the sleuths at The Daily Mail, the billionaire followed the ARO Instagram account.

David and Victoria Beckham were also Sussex wedding guests however Tom Bower’s “House of Beckham” this year alleged that after Meghan had “ordered” Harry to “brutally snub” the former footballer during the 2018 Invictus Games “Beckham had got his revenge” by flying halfway across the world to join the Prince and Princess of Wales in Boston for the Earthshot Prize, “overshadowing” the Sussexes.

Other big name royal wedding guests like George and Amal Clooney, Carey Mulligan, Tom Hardy and Priyanka Chopra have not been seen or publicly associated with the Sussexes either.

Now, let’s be clear. Just because the Clooneys haven’t been seen in papping distance of the Duke and Duchess does not mean anything. For all we know, the two couples might regularly spend Taco Tuesday as a cosy foursome, Harry working that tortilla press like a Tetbury rope line.

Likewise Winfrey. She could, for all we know, have grown so close to the Sussexes she has a spare key and is currently teaching Prince Archie his A-Z of camera angles.

Elba can still think the Sussexes are swell and enjoy regularly drinky-winks with them in dark corners of LA’s private members’ clubs and to also want to work with Charles to help young Brits.

Also, as remarkable as it might be, two things can be true at once. You can both think Harry and Meghan were treated shabbily by Crown Inc and want to wish a mother-of-three battling cancer well.

Still, so far this year we have not seen Harry and Meghan repeat the series of A-list nights out such as in 2023 when they flew via private jet to Las Vegas with Diaz, her husband Benji Madden, “Guardians of the Galaxy” star Zoe Saldana, Hollywood producer David Katzenberg and Wolfe Herd, to see Katy Perry.

Or when the Duchess took in the Los Angeles leg of Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour sharing a row with rocket man Jeff Bezos and fiance Lauren Sanchez, Kris Jenner and Netflix supremo Ted Sarandos.

(Of course, the Sussexes have two small children, a charity to run, TV to make and Netflix to keep sweet so maybe, shocker, they just desperately need a nice stretch of quiet nights in and 9 p.m. bedtimes.)

Here comes the woe train with more not-so-great news. This week the Emmy nominations came out with the Beckhams’ documentary nabbing five. The streamer’s previous big-name celebrity docuseries, “Harry & Meghan,” by contrast got zero.

Still, every great Hollywood movie tends to follow something of a three act structure. Harry and Meghan could very well be about to springboard into their dazzling, resurgent third act, with the launch of ARO and the Duchess’ Netflix entertaining series and then the February 2025 Invictus Games.

Maybe the truth is that La La Land is “a sunny place for gutsy people” – and people who have no intention of being left in the shade.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.