(NewsNation) — “The Gentlemen” saga that lasted 48 hours. Meghan Markle was in talks for Guy Ritchie’s Netflix hit, then she was in “advanced discussions.” Then reporters declared the casting withdrawn. Then other outlets reported she was still in the running.
For broadcaster Mark Dolan, host of “The Mark Dolan Show” on YouTube, the whiplash is the whole story.
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“This is pure Sussex propaganda,” Dolan said. “This comes from the ruthless and relentless Sussex public relations machine, which never sleeps. And the irony is that for all of the PR professionals that they employ, they’re doing a horrible job.”
Meghan’s role that was, then wasn’t
The timeline is messy. On Aug. 21, reports surfaced Meghan had been “offered a role in an upcoming project based in the U.K.“
Deadline reported she was in early, “hypothetical” talks to join a third season of “The Gentlemen” — a season that had not been formally renewed at the time, with no role yet identified. The Hollywood Reporter went further, saying she was in advanced discussions and a part was being written for her; The Sun’s sources described a “temptress” who seduces an aristocrat.
A day later, former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown wrote on her Substack that the casting had been withdrawn amid backlash so intense it became untenable, adding it did not bode well for Meghan’s British comeback.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 05: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attends the 2024 Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) Gala at L.A. Live Event Deck Top Floor Of The West Lot on October 05, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 21: Actress Meghan Markle attends the premiere of USA Network’s “Suits” season 5 held at Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown Hotel on January 21, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/WireImage)
Guy Ritchie’s subsequent statement confirming the show’s third season did not mention her. Season 2 premieres Sept. 3.
Dolan, who says he knows Ritchie, has doubts about the fit regardless.
“Guy Ritchie is a very talented director, very successful,” Dolan said. “But I will say that he doesn’t write very good parts for women. The female parts in his shows are very two-dimensional, because he’s macho, and he likes the action and he wants pistols and guns and all the rest of it. And the only parts in ‘The Gentlemen’ are drug dealers. So if Meghan’s going to be in ‘The Gentlemen,’ is she going to be a drug dealer? What is the drug she’s selling? Flower sprinkles?
“It’s interesting that what should have been a bit of good PR — ‘Oh, there’s talk about Meghan starring in a Netflix show’ — ends up in denials and people saying nothing to see here.”
A pattern of ‘wars of words‘
Dolan sees the episode as the latest in a long line of public spats.
“It’s so familiar. We had the war of words over whether Harry was offered accommodation at Buckingham Palace. Just a few weeks ago, we had the war of words with the Kardashians over the alleged opt-out in the invitation for photographs, which the Kardashians denied. We had the war of words with Martha Stewart over whether Meghan was bragging about her reunion with King Charles,” he said. “Well, let your viewers decide. Who do you believe? Martha Stewart, an icon of American culture, or Meghan Markle, drifter-in-chief? I think we know the answer to that one.”
– (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Telemundo)- (Photo by Jonathan Brady-Pool/Getty Images)
Dolan continues, saying the Sussex PR team is “horrible.”
“I would rather be Vladimir Putin’s publicist than the Sussexes’ right now,” Dolan quipped.
The many versions of Harry and Meghan
Dolan ran through what he sees as six years of abandoned identities since the couple arrived in California.
“Meghan presented herself as a global influencer. The messaging was clear then: I’ve given up acting. I don’t do any of that trivial stuff anymore. I’m going to make the world a better place. And we got excruciating speeches from Harry and Meghan about international affairs, about democracy, about free speech, about online safety,” he said. “But that lasted five minutes, because she wasn’t taken seriously in Washington and was quickly dropped by the Obamas.”
Meghan cycled through “careers,” from humiliating herself next to Gordon Ramsey to turning into a bad Martha Stewart variant with her infamous Netflix show and doomed business partnership.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry pose for pictures after visiting the observatory in One World Trade in New York, Sept. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, were in New York City to accept the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award on Dec. 6, 2022. (Ted Shaffrey, Associated Press file)
“That whole business is now a basket case, not a pillowcase, with Ted Sarandos having not just diluted the broadcast deal with Netflix but completely severed ties with Meghan for that business partnership as well,” Dolan says.
The couple’s overall Netflix deal was downgraded to a first-look arrangement last year.
“So what the couple do is they say one thing, and then, they do another,” Dolan said. “And the greatest U-turn of all, a screeching U-turn that would have even Lewis Hamilton blushing, is the U.K. return.”
The spin problem
The contradiction Dolan keeps returning to is the one at the heart of Megxit itself.
“They spun their Megxit project and their move to the U.S. as being, you know, England’s horrible, full of racists; we escaped the country. Now they’ve got to somehow spin it that a country they don’t like, they’re going to return to,” he said. “Harry, in his book ‘Spare,’ said it was so awful being Prince Harry in the gilded cage, in the spotlight from birth. What does he call his children? Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
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“I don’t know who is advising Harry and Meghan when it comes to public relations, but no one is buying this U.K. return as a good news story for them. It’s an act of desperation. But we’ve been here before, because everything Sussex-related always ends in human misery, suffering and bad headlines. The pair are irredeemably toxic.”
Sources tell me the leaks could be because of Meghan’s need for attention to land an acting gig and Harry being on the hook for tens of millions in the Daily Mail case. Dolan agrees.
What does Meghan do all day?
The question Dolan cannot answer is what the duchess actually does in Britain — a country where, in his telling, she has “no social connections, no family, no job, no network to speak of.”
“There’s no business to be made in the U.K. No one’s buying the flower sprinkles or the overpriced rosé or the spread in England,” he said. “And also the movie roles — the entertainment industry is tiny in the U.K. by comparison to the U.S. So if she wants to get back to the acting, she’ll have to spend large chunks of the year in America.”
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The couple are reportedly keeping their Montecito home and a property in Portugal, and Canada and Australia have been floated as alternatives, though their popularity doesn’t fare much better Down Under. The duo being called “griefters” — a play on grifters — attached itself to the couple online during their visit to Bondi Beach, months after a devastating attack.
‘Be afraid. Be very afraid,’ Dolan warns
Which leaves, Dolan warns, only one thing for Meghan to do in England: take notes.
“We know that there was so much in the original manuscript of ‘Spare’ that was edited out to protect the royal family. All of that, times a hundred, would be in Meghan’s book,” he says.
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His warning to the Windsors: “You have allowed the fox back in the hen house, and feathers will fly.”
There has been no confirmation Meghan plans to write a memoir.
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