Taylor Swift turned down an invitation to appear on Meghan Markle’s podcast despite receiving a ‘personal letter’ from Duchess, it has been claimed.
The pop singer was asked by Meghan herself to appear on Archetypes, but she declined through her representative, the Wall Street Journal reported.
It comes as the newspaper summed up Harry and Meghan’s dealings with Netflix as ‘big ideas, subpar execution’ after executives of the streaming giant and Spotify reportedly said they were ‘underwhelmed’ by the pair’s lack of strong ideas and productivity.
Since quitting their royal duties in 2020 and jetting off to California to live in their new $14million nine-bedroom mansion, the couple have been building a complex network of ‘entertainment’ companies to help promote ‘their truth’.
Following Spotify’s axing of Archetypes and its £18million partnership with the couple, Netflix has also said it is unlikely to renew its deal after it expires in 2025.
It has been confirmed, however, that the pair are currently creating a Great Expectations-inspired show for Netflix called Bad Manners.
Described as a prequel to the Charles Dickens classic, the show retells the story of a lonely Miss Haversham living in a patriarchal society.
Despite sending a personal letter herself, Meghan Markle’s (pictured) request for Taylor Swift to join her on her Archtypes podcast was declined
Taylor Swift (pictured at the Grammy Awards this year) reportedly turned down the invitation to join Meghan on her podcast
Spotify confirmed last week that the podcast would not get a second series
It is currently not known if the show has been commissioned by Netflix itself.
A documentary on the Invictus Games, a production agreed shortly after the couple signed the £80million deal with Netflix in 2020, is also still in the works.
The programme, Heart of Invictus, will follow competitors around the world training for the Games at The Hague which had been expected to take place in 2020 but were delayed until 2021 due to the pandemic.
It is one of the couple’s only ideas that was not rejected by the streaming giant.
The Wall Street Journal analysis said that Harry and Meghan had suggested shows that were too similar to already popular Netflix programmes such as sitcoms like Emily in Paris but ‘about a man’, and a show about LGBTQ characters similar to those in Heartstopper.
Another suggestion was a documentary discussing misinformation – which also did not make it off the drawing board.
A documentary on the Invictus Games, a production agreed shortly after the couple (pictured hugging a veteran last year) signed the £80million deal with Netflix in 2020, is still in the works
Harry and Meghan pictured on their Netflix docuseries, in which they made bombshell revelations
A team assigned to the job at Archewell inevitably had questions including whether Harry and Meghan would feature in the show and give their opinions on the topic.
The couple responded to the queries with little resolution and the idea was dropped, according to the WSJ.
Also rejected was an animated show about powerful women in history called Pearl.
When it revealed the cancellation of the kid’s programme in May 2022, Netflix representatives said it was decided that children would not be influenced by the fact the show was produced by a duchess.
Meghan’s podcast, produced by Spotify as part of their deal and about stereotypes faced by women, also hit a brick wall this month and will not be signed for a second season.
The streaming giant and the Sussexes’s audio production company Archewell Audio released a joint statement last week saying they have ‘mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together’.
Meghan and Harry reportedly signed a £15million ($20million) deal with Spotify for the project in late 2020 but insiders close to the audio giant claim the royal couple did not meet the productivity benchmark required to receive the full payout, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The talent agency that recently signed Meghan, WME, said: ‘The team behind Archetypes remain proud of the podcast they created at Spotify.
Meghan’s podcast is produced by Spotify as part of their deal talks about stereotypes faced by women
Netflix reportedly shelled out a whopping £81million for the bombshell docuseries ‘Harry & Meghan’ last December as part of a multi-year deal with the firm
‘Meghan is continuing to develop more content for the Archetypes audience on another platform.’
It was also revealed that while working on the Archetypes podcast Spotify executives became increasingly frustrated with Archewell’s snail pace approach, highlighting that it would take a long time to conceptualise an episode idea and Meghan would ask for last minute changes.
Getting guests onto the show also proved difficult – with Taylor Swift rejecting an appearance.
Despite these strains, the podcast launched in August last year and soared to the top of streaming charts in its first week.
Harry’s appearance on podcasts – which was part of the Spotify deal – did not come to anything.
He reportedly struggled to have a solid idea, with the Wall Street Journal revealing he suggested subjects on veterans, misinformation and a point of view piece on being a new resident of America.
The pair have discovered, however, that their personal experiences told in Harry’s memoir Spare and their shared six-part Netflix documentary brought book sales and Netflix popularity.
Harry’s bombshell autobiography brought in £16million and became the fastest-selling non-fiction book since records began in 1998, publishers claimed, selling more than 3.2million copies worldwide in its first week.
In the UK, it notched up more than 750,000 sales during the same period, according to publishers Transworld, the UK division of Penguin Random House.
It’s understood that Prince Harry has donated a sizeable amount of the money made from the publication to charity, with the father-of-two expected to give somewhere in the region of £1.6million to good causes.
Harry’s bombshell autobiography Spare brought in £16million and became the fastest-selling non-fiction book since records began in 1998
The couple hoped to hit Netflix’s charts with their documentary Live To Lead, but it failed to make the top ten
Netflix reportedly shelled out a whopping £81million for the bombshell docuseries ‘Harry & Meghan’ last December as part of a multi-year deal with the firm.
The series became Netflix’s second-highest ranked documentary ever – behind The Tinder Swindler.
It is understood that the project created tension at Archewell after Harry and Meghan weighed in on the final touches and were sometimes overruled.
The couple then hoped to reach the streaming charts again with their ‘Live to Lead’ series, a docuseries about global leaders and activists which aired on New Year’s Eve in 2022.
The show however failed to reach the top ten of most streamed shows in that period.
Both their flopped Spotify deal and their limited-time deal with Netflix were reportedly influenced by external factors, on top of the allegedly strained working relationships with the couple, Archewell and the streaming giants.
Following the pandemic, Netflix has struggled to retain loyal viewers who during lockdown were glued to their screens and racking up profits for the company.
Netflix’s subscriber growth began to slow as customers went back to regular life and in 2022 announced its first quarter of subscriber losses in a decade. In turn, producers and film studios are much more selective of content output.
And recently Spotify announced it would be laying off around 200 staff members – around 2 per cent of their workforce – who work within their podcast teams. It cited difficulties in making podcasts profitable, despite its popularity among listeners.
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