Why Meghan and Harry are no longer Hollywood’s power couple

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been making headlines ever since they stepped down from their royal duties and moved to Hollywood.

However, despite their best efforts, the couple has failed to establish themselves as Hollywood's power couple.

In fact, they have been slowly but surely frozen out of the industry, one red carpet event at a time.

Being a Hollywood power couple is not just about name recognition or living in the right zip code.

It takes charisma, dedication, and charm.

Take George and Amal Clooney, for example, a high-powered heartthrob and his equally high-powered human rights lawyer wife.

Or Beyonce and Jay-Z, hip-hop royalty and dedicated philanthropists.

These couples have earned respect and admiration in Hollywood, something that Meghan and Harry have failed to do.

In recent months, there have been whispers of Spotify growing more frustrated with Meghan after the $25 million deal that went public in December 2020 only yielded one 33-minute Christmas episode.

However, Meghan recently launched her new podcast Archetypes, where she investigates, dissects, and subverts the labels that try to hold women back.

Her first special guest was Serena Williams, but listeners were offered little more than the Meghan Show, with the Duchess managing to talk for 11 minutes straight before her guest got a word in edgeways.

Meghan's recent 6,500-word interview in New York Magazine covered her views on the monarchy, the British press, and racism.

In the article, Meghan claimed she is still viewed as a real-life princess and told assorted lies about the British press.

Those were quickly debunked when Meghan claimed that in the UK Archie would be subjected to a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures on the school run.

Royal reporters quickly called her claim complete tosh, adding that her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, has happily been doing the school run for years without any problem.

The interview didn't seem to get the reception they presumably hoped for, with even staunch Sussex fans put off by it.

When the Duke and Duchess failed this year to snag an invite to the Oscars or the Beckham wedding, it was clear that they are slowly being frozen out of Hollywood, one red-carpet event at a time.

One LA source told me that the main reason for them being excluded is that organizers know that all media attention would be on them and take away from the event or people there to celebrate.

This is quite the irony, given Harry and Meghan's self-professed obsession with privacy.

It's also a far cry from the open-arms welcome that they presumably expected would await them in Los Angeles after turning their backs on royal duties in 2020.

The Sussexes flop can't be traced back to a single event; it's the sum of a series of mistakes fueled by a failure to understand royalty and celebrity.

When the actress moved to a palace, she brought with her a showbiz appetite for drama.

Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace briefly hosted something akin to a Real Housewives spin-off, the starlet and her team dreamed up personality clashes and confected plotlines and fed them to the London newspapers.

But the day-to-day job of a modern royal is gloriously glamour-free.

It's about opening schools and chatting to nurses.

There is a relentless focus on celebrating, and spending time with, the little people.

It takes a certain type of person, willing to smile, wave and do little else, to marry into the firm.

Now the Sussexes are discovering that the reverse is true, too, you cannot simply take a prince to Hollywood and expect him to become a star.

Their fame stems from both royalty and celebrity, but they're not the same thing.

The death of the Queen, whose life was defined by dutiful public service, was an acute reminder of those differences.

A strange combination meant that Her Majesty was somehow the most famous and recognized woman in the world, yet we knew so very little about her, about her thoughts and opinions.

In fact, in 70 years on the throne you could count on one hand the times that she expressed her point of view.

And that is what true duty is.

The Queen's death is about far more than the story of the feuding Windsors and Sussexes, of course, but it will change the dynamics of this important relationship, and make a royal comeback harder for Harry and Meghan.

Meghan and Harry's recent decision to return to the UK poses awkward questions for the couple.

Why return now, when they didn't come to the funeral of Prince Philip, or to support William at the unveiling of the Princess Diana statue at Kensington Palace?

And why step foot in a place that made you feel so unwelcome that, according to Meghan, it made her feel suicidal?

Perhaps the answer is that they have exhausted their options in Hollywood.

They have failed to establish themselves as Hollywood's power couple and are slowly being frozen out of the industry.

Meghan and Harry will need to re-evaluate their approach if they want to regain the respect and admiration they once had.

It takes more than just name recognition to be a Hollywood power couple; it takes charisma, dedication, and charm.