By royal biographer Emily Andrews
MORE SENIOR STAFF QUIT!
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex suffered another blow last month, when the manager of Archewell Productions, which makes all their film and TV programmes, left the company.
Bennett Levine, who was promoted to manager of Archewell in 2022, quit the company last month.
And he’s not the only one. His departure comes hot on the heels of Oscar-nominated producer Ben Browning; Archewell president Mandana Dayani; Fara Taylor (head of marketing); and Rebecca Sananes (head of audio).
Harry and Meghan have now lost five of their most senior employees at their company in just over a year. Levine is believed to be the 17th person to have left the Sussexes’ employment since they married in 2018; at least eight are thought to have departed since they moved to the US in 2020. The couple set up Archewell in 2020, the same year they announced their intention to step down as working royals. The company, which boasts a multimillion-dollar collaboration with Netflix, was launched to create ‘programming that informs, elevates, and inspires’.
When Meghan was interviewed on the red carpet in Los Angeles last November, she declared that they had ‘so many exciting things on the slate’.
Three months on, we’re still wondering what those things are. Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, was asked about Harry and Meghan’s ‘slate’ at a press event earlier this month. She said the couple were working on ‘a bunch’ of new projects including a film and two other ‘unscripted’ projects, but she, like Meghan, did not go into any detail.
Archewell’s latest departure comes amid speculation that Netflix may not renew its deal with Harry and Meghan.
The US streaming giant paid the Sussexes a rumoured £80 million in 2020 as part of a five-year deal. But that was contingent on the success of programmes devised and made by Archewell – and so far only the docuseries Harry & Meghan has had commercial success.
Their other documentary series: Live to Lead and Heart of Invictus were not popular with viewers and failed to chart on the platform’s daily Top 10 programme list.
And Spotify cut them adrift after only one podcast series of Meghan’s Archetypes.
The couple were then ridiculed as ‘grifters’ by a top executive after it was revealed Harry had struggled to come up with workable ideas (interviewing Vladimir Putin about
