How The Bench became the benchmark for Meghan’s erratic career: 5 years on from publishing her children’s book, she’s stalled as an author – while other ventures have had mixed success

Five years after Meghan Markle‘s children’s book hit shelves, The Bench has become the benchmark for her ‘inconsistent and erratic’ career.

Meghan Markle may be best known for her role on Suits, but the former actress has tried her hand at many different businesses since quitting the royal family – from publishing and film production to podcasting.

Soon after they moved to Montecito in California, Prince Harry, 41, and Meghan, 44, found themselves inundated with lucrative offers from Netflix and Spotify. 

In June 2021, Meghan released her first children’s book, The Bench, with Random House Children’s Books, and shortly afterwards, news broke that publishing behemoth Penguin Random House had given her and Harry $40 million (£29 million) to write four books. 

Much of the money was spent on acquiring the rights to Prince Harry’s memoir, which was published in 2023, and became a huge hit – despite including several damaging accusations about the Royal Family.

But since the release of Spare, things have been suspiciously quiet on the book front – especially after Prince Harry’s autobiography raked in millions in sales around the world.

While Meghan was rumoured to be working on a ‘wellness’ book with her husband, before it was claimed she would follow in the Duke’s footsteps and pen her own tell-all, the deal seems to have hit a wall with no new releases expected.

It perhaps indicates that Penguin Random House, like Netflix and Spotify, is ‘done’ with the Sussexes five years after the firm printed Meghan’s children’s book as part of an earlier deal with the Duchess.

Today, The Bench has become the benchmark for Meghan’s struggling career after royal expert Kinsey Schofield told the Daily Mail that the Duchess’s brand is ‘inconsistent and erratic’ amid reports the Sussexes’ $40 million four-book deal is on the rocks.

From Meghan’s embattled lifestyle company American Riviera Orchard, which became As Ever, to her podcast about inspiring female founders, many of her ventures have either hit a dead end or failed to take off after Netflix and Spotify cut business ties with the Sussexes.

Penguin Random House 

After Netflix, Harry and Meghan closed a $40 million four-book deal with Penguin Random House after a bidding war for the Duke’s ghostwritten autobiography in 2021. 

It came after Meghan released a children’s book, titled The Bench, which landed her an advance of up to £500,000 in 2019, Forbes reported. 

Unlike Harry’s memoir Spare, The Bench – which explores the ‘special bond between father and son’ as ‘seen through a mother’s eyes’ – was not a commercial success. 

The £12.99 book was published on June 8, 2021, but failed to make the UK Official Top 50 chart after selling just 3,212 copies in its first week. 

This was followed by the release of Prince Harry’s controversial memoir in January 2023, but there has since been no word on the remaining two books.   

For a while, there were rumours that Harry and Meghan might jointly author a wellness guide, but that has failed to materialise so far. 

Neither has Meghan’s memoir been released after widespread speculation that the Duchess could follow in her husband’s footsteps.

Talks of another prospective project for Meghan in the form of a book began circulating a few years ago, Vanity Fair claimed in an explosive article last year, which was intended to be written ‘post-divorce’.

The potential manuscript was not meant to detail Meghan’s past experience with her former husband of three years, producer Trevor Engelson, but that of her second spouse, Prince Harry.

It was not based on current events in Meghan’s life, but set to take place in the event of a separation between the Duke and Duchess.

However, Meghan’s friends shut down the claims, with one knowledgeable source saying: ‘If that’s true to any degree, she would have been approached and not vice versa.’

Spotify deal  

Spotify and the Sussexes’s audio production company Archewell Audio released a joint statement in 2023 saying they had ‘mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together’. 

But Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation, blasted the Duke and Duchess as ‘f****** grifters’ just hours after their reported £15million deal was axed last summer. 

‘The f***ing grifters. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them,’ he said in an episode of his own podcast. ‘I’ve 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.’

Simmons, a sportswriter, founded sports and pop culture website and podcast network The Ringer, and sold it to Spotify in 2020 for $200 million. He then joined Spotify, and has long been critical of the couple.

Last January, he blasted Prince Harry, saying it was ’embarrassing’ to be affiliated with the same company.

‘Shoot this guy to the sun,’ he said, according to sports website The Big Lead. ‘I’m so tired of this guy. What does he bring to the table? He just whines about s*** and keeps giving interviews. Who gives a s***? Who cares about your life?

‘You weren’t even the favourite son. You live in f****** Montecito and you just sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.’

The couple produced less than 13 hours of content during the three-year partnership: 12 episodes of Meghan’s Archetypes show, and a 30-minute Christmas special featuring both the Duke and Duchess.

But Archetypes, Meghan’s original Spotify show, had around one million listens per episode and debuted as Spotify’s No. 1 podcast in 47 countries around the world when it launched in August 2022.

The series explored the labels that try to hold women back and included guests such as Mariah Carey, Jameela Jamil and Pamela Adlon.

It won a People’s Choice Award for The Pop Podcast of 2022 and the Duchess won best entertainment podcast host at the Gracie Awards.

Lemonada  

After parting ways with Spotify, Meghan secured a new deal with a much smaller podcast company called Lemonada Media, a female-founded company that ‘wants to make life suck less’. 

The Duchess, who produced only one series of her podcast Archetypes for Spotify before parting ways with the company, had signed with Lemonada to develop and host a new series called Confessions of a Female Founder. 

Shortly after the deal was signed, a source told The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden that the launch had been ‘pushed back to 2025’. 

Sources suggested Lemonada did not want the podcast’s launch to be overshadowed by the former actress’s television series, which she began filming at a rented house in Montecito in 2024. 

Lemonada was also reportedly concerned that there would be ‘scheduling conflicts’ between the launch of its podcasts and that of Meghan’s since-rebranded lifestyle company American Riviera Orchard.

A spokesman for Meghan declined to comment at the time, but sources said she had a list of ‘very high-profile guests’ scheduled to participate in her new podcasts. 

However, the Daily Mail revealed at the time that the Suits star had tried and failed to get  A-listers such as Beyonce and Taylor Swift on Confessions of a Female Founder, which was said to already be in crisis talks after only three episodes.

‘No one’s picking up the phone,’ one source close to the production has claimed, adding: ‘The show is not landing.’ 

‘There’s no Taylor Swift. No Beyoncé. Not even a Hailey Bieber. And when you’re pitching female empowerment, that’s a problem. It speaks volumes for her pulling power. She’s not happy about her lack of appeal,’ they added.

Confessions of a Female Founder, which promised listeners it was packed with ‘advice that turns small ideas into billion-dollar businesses’, was finally released on a weekly schedule beginning last April. 

The Duchess’s debut episode saw her welcome Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, with the second instalment featuring Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code.

However, a source close to the production of the show alleged Meghan as well as her team had ‘dialled all the big names’ to join her for ‘honest conversations with women who’ve built from the ground up, faced challenges and kept going.’

However, these phone calls were reportedly quietly ignored, according to Radar.

The final guest list included Beyonce’s mother, Tina Knowles, IT Cosmetics founder Jamie Kern Lima, and celebrity hair colourist Kadi Lee. 

By the time the third episode was released, the show had dropped out of Spotify’s top 100 list, both in the US and UK. 

A show called Sleep Cove, helping listeners with guided sleep, meditation, as well as sleep hypnosis proved to be more popular among British listeners, placing 79th on Spotify’s UK chart.

The latest episode of the female empowerment podcast also failed to crack Apple’s Top 200 chart.

Representatives for the Duchess did not return the Daily Mail’s request for comment, but Meghan later confirmed that Confessions of a Female Founder would not be returning for season two. 

 ‘At a certain point, the only thing I want spread thin is my jam,’ Meghan told Skims founder Emma Grede, on her podcast Aspire, as she joked about juggling multiple ventures. 

American Riviera Orchard

Before As Ever, Meghan hoped to relaunch her career as a lifestyle and wellness entrepreneur – that began with the now-defunct blog The Tig – with American Riviera Orchard. 

Two years ago, Meghan announced a new chapter by unveiling American Riviera Orchard’s Instagram page.

She teased the range of products, including jam and dog biscuits, by sending PR gifts to a select group of 50 high-profile tastemakers – from polo player Nacho Figueras and Kris Jenner. 

Months later, her fans were left hanging as the brand – inspired by Harry and Meghan’s sunsoaked life in California – ran into regulatory troubles. 

She first applied for the trademark for her jams and homemade goods in the summer of 2024 – but the bid was rejected in August due to issues with the filing.

Meghan was then given three months to address errors and challenges to the application. In November 2024, she asked for a further three months to complete this. 

By February 2025, she had shelved American Riviera Orchard entirely as Meghan announced the brand would be called As Ever instead.  

Meghan first lodged documents with the US Patent and Trademark Office at the beginning of 2024 but suffered an embarrassing blow when the forms were not filled in correctly.

Her bid to secure a trademark for American Riviera Orchard was also contested by rival lifestyle brand Harry & David, who own the ‘Royal Riviera’ trademark and alleged it’s too similar to the proposed name of Meghan’s lifestyle company.

The duchess was also told that she cannot have exclusive rights to American Riviera because it is a commonly used place name to describe the California coast, where she and Harry live.

Netflix 

Shortly after they quit the Royal Family, Prince Harry and Meghan signed a five-year contract with Netflix to produce content for the streamer in a deal estimated to be worth $100million (£75 million). 

To date, their most successful production has been the couple’s eponymously titled six-part documentary in which they revisited their love story, early years of marriage, life within the royal family, and, ultimately, their decision to relocate to the United States. 

The show received lacklustre reviews from viewers and critics, frustrated with the Sussexes’s relentless ‘woe is me’ attitude, and it only scored a 5.1 out of 10 on IMDB.

However, it did pull in the ratings; Harry and Meghan went on to become Netflix’s second-most-watched documentary ever, but it was all downhill from there. 

Their second Netflix production, ‘Live to Lead’, about global leaders fighting for social justice, died without so much as a whimper after it was released three weeks after Harry and Meghan. 

It currently has a 15 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Then Netflix dropped Meghan’s planned animated series Pearl as part of a wave of cutbacks prompted by the streaming service’s drop in subscribers.

Pearl was in the development stage when Netflix axed the show about a young girl inspired by Meghan – whose name means ‘pearl’ in Welsh – take on various social injustices, while highlighting the work of feminist icons.

When announcing the programme, Meghan revealed she would take on the roles of ‘creator and executive producer’ – marking the first time the former actress and Suits star would work in the position of EP.

The Duchess said Pearl would ‘weave together fantasy and history’ while focusing ‘on the adventures of a 12-year-old girl’ as she attempts to ‘overcome life’s daily challenges’.

While few details had been released about the series, many believed the show was based – at least in part – on Meghan’s own childhood, citing how she named the show and its title character Pearl, the original meaning of her name.

But the doomed animation never progressed from the concept stage, and all references to it were later quietly wiped from her Archewell website. 

A prior description of the series under the Archewell Productions subsection was nowhere to be found after it was cancelled. 

‘Like many girls her age, our heroine Pearl is on a journey of self-discovery as she tries to overcome life’s daily challenges,’ a now-removed quote from Meghan read.

It continued: ‘I’m thrilled that Archewell Productions, partnered with the powerhouse platform of Netflix and these incredible producers, will together bring you this new animated series, which celebrates extraordinary women throughout history.’

‘Heart of Invictus’ came out the following summer and followed a group of competitors in the Invictus Games, a global sporting event for wounded service members founded by Prince Harry. 

It was another flop that failed to crack Netflix’s top 10 list – much like their critically savaged documentary about the sport of polo, which listed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as executive producers. 

Meghan’s lifestyle show was the final nail in the coffin of the Sussexes’ deal with Netflix. 

Shortly after the first season of With Love, Meghan, released alongside the launch of her brand As Ever, failed to crack a spot in Netflix’s top 300 most popular shows in the first half of the year, the Sussexes’ contract was downgraded. 

Last August, they signed a ‘multi-year, first look deal for film and television projects’, meaning Netflix can say yes or no to new projects before anyone else. 

Following the release of the second season of Meghan’s cookery show, which featured celebrity guests like Mindy Kaling and Chrissy Teigen, Netflix ended its business partnership with As Ever in March. 

One of the projects that is still under development at Netflix is the film adaptation of Carley Fortune’s romance novel, Meet Me At The Lake. 

Netflix purchased the rights to the novel for $2.9million (around £2.2million) but nothing has yet materialised.

Three years on, the project is said to remain categorised as a development and is lacking in both cast and a director.

Page Six reported insiders are claiming the project is in limbo, with one Hollywood source saying: ‘Three years in development for a movie like this at Netflix isn’t good.’ 

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