The New York TIMES covered the story with a tad more balance and reality than the tabloids did:
"Harry and Meghan sign production deal with Netflix | News | The Times. . . .
A source said that the couple wanted to create programmes “about stories and issues that resonate with them personally . . . enabling a more compassionate and equitable world”.
A senior industry source said that Meghan would “believe she’s getting full creative control” but that the executive producer’s credits she was likely to receive were “thrown around like confetti”. “TV networks, Netflix included, don’t let the lunatics run the asylum,” the source said. “Meghan will no doubt want to cast herself as Mother Teresa but that’s not how it’s going to pan out.”
Tom Nunan, a former studio executive who lectures at UCLA’s graduate school of film and television, predicted that the couple would receive an exclusivity fee of at least $5 million. He said that Netflix would also probably cover overheads and the cost of hiring producers and employees at the couple’s company. “What you are buying is either talent or access,” he said. “The duke and duchess have unique access, not only to the upper reaches of British society but around the world.”
Alan Wolk, a founder of TV Rev, which analyses the media industry, said that social justice and documentaries were “evergreen” for Netflix, adding: “It also helps their image that they support orphans and lost puppies or whatever.”
OK, cards on the table: would you subscribe to Netflix to watch a show made by Harry and Meghan (Carol Midgley writes)? A venture that is being dubbed — and I doubt it is flatteringly meant — “woke TV”?
I will level with you, if I wasn’t a journalist I would not. And I am not even a shouty member of the anti-Sussex brigade. The couple’s statement alone, brimming as it is with meaningless management speak, is enough to put anyone off. What is “impactful content that unlocks action” when it’s at home? What can we expect from “powerful storytelling through a truthful and relatable lens”? Can a lens be relatable? The couple say that their programmes will “give hope”. Here’s what I hope: that their shows are snappier than their press releases.
However, they must be careful. No one likes to be preached to, especially if the preachers happen to be living in a $15 million mansion in Santa Barbara. It is difficult to imagine the couple won’t be seen or heard, even if it is just Meghan doing the voiceovers as she did in the Disney documentary Elephant. In his review for The Times Ed Potton said, incidentally: “Boy does she lay it on thick.”
Do viewers want their “resilience built” when they watch TV? I think they just want to be entertained."
Meghan doesn't like being told what to do. The $150 million the tabs hysterically threw out there is likely bullshit, and $5 million up front is more likely, and the content still has to be approved and bought - and then has to sell on Netflix.
And the real story here isn't so much the deal itself, whose worth remains to be seen, but the glaring truth that marrying Harry was just a stepping-stone for Meghan: this is what her endgame was all along.
Fair play to a successful con artist, and it really does make the BRF look like a pack of gullible fools.