There's an old Hollywood saying that Doug Eldridge, founder of Achilles PR, reaches for when asked to explain why some careers catch fire and others quietly cool: "It's not about talent. It's about temperature." What he means is that the entertainment industry runs on heat, on the collective sense that attaching your name to someone's project will warm you up rather than burn you. And his assessment of where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sit on that scale in May 2026 is, to put it plainly, not warm. "The temperature," he says, "has plummeted."
The diagnosis is specific and it's damning. The initial 2020 exit generated genuine heat: curiosity, controversy, the kind of polarising attention that still drives streaming numbers. The Oprah interview added more. But somewhere between Spare and the third rebrand and the Netflix lifestyle show that didn't crack the top 1,000 and the Spotify deal that got cancelled and the Australia tour that generated palace fury and the As Ever candles that Kris Jenner had to personally endorse to get traction, the heat became something else. It became noise. And in Hollywood, noise without direction isn't interesting. It's exhausting. No one wants to attach their name to exhausting.
Eldridge isn't alone in the assessment. Hilary Fordwich and Helena Chard both contributed analyses this week that land in the same place from different angles. The public is "weary and leery." The circle of drama is a deterrent for corporate partners. The habit of changing advisors reads as instability. And the core contradiction, commercialising the very institution they claim to have fled for its commercialism, is the thing that's hardest to move past. When the grievance is the product and the product keeps changing but the grievance never does, the audience eventually stops updating.
Brand temperature: Harry and Meghan, 2020 to 2026
Cold ←──────────────→ Hot
Plummeted. Per Achilles PR.
2020 exit: peak heat. Oprah interview: still hot. Spare: polarising. Netflix/Spotify collapse: cooling fast. Australia "faux tour": palace fury. With Love, Meghan outside top 1,000. May 2026: PR experts are using the word "toxic."
The Experts Weigh In: Three Verdicts, One Conclusion
DE
Doug Eldridge
Founder, Achilles PR
"The temperature around them has plummeted. Their 'spaghetti against the wall' approach, trying documentaries, podcasts, cooking shows, lifestyle brands, leaves the public confused about who they actually are. And the rebrand treadmill: like an actual treadmill, you can work your butt off, only to step off and realize you've actually gone nowhere."
HF
Hilary Fordwich
Royal expert and commentator
The core of the "toxic" label is perceived hypocrisy: commercialising the very institution they claim to have fled. The public is growing "weary and leery" of grievance-driven content that uses the monarchy as both the wound and the product.
HC
Helena Chard
Royal commentator
"No one wants to associate with a toxic brand." The habit of frequently changing advisors and the "circle of constant drama" are major deterrents for corporate partners who need stability. In Hollywood, association risk is career risk.
The "Spaghetti" Strategy: Too Many Walls, Not Enough Sticking
Eldridge's "spaghetti against the wall" critique is the one that should be hardest for the Sussex operation to dismiss, because the evidence for it sits in their own release history. In five years, they've attempted: a flagship Netflix documentary series, a lifestyle cooking show, a Spotify podcast, a children's animated series, a polo documentary, a memoir, a lifestyle brand, a fashion app, and an international tour circuit that blurs charity work with commercial appearances. Each project launched with significant press attention. None has built on the previous one to create anything that looks like a coherent long-term identity.
That's the Swiss Army Knife problem Eldridge identifies. When a brand tries to be everything, it ends up being recognisable as nothing specific. You can name the Sussex projects, but can you name the Sussex lane? Are they conservation advocates like The Earthshot Prize operation? Are they mental health campaigners? Lifestyle influencers? Documentary subjects? Political commentators? Victims of institutional failure? The answer is: at various points, all of the above. And a brand that's all of the above is, commercially speaking, none of the above.
Spotify "Archetypes" — Cancelled
With Love, Meghan S2 — Not renewed
Harry & Meghan Netflix doc — Released 2022
As Ever brand — Struggling
Spare memoir — Harry, 2023
Polo doc — Netflix 2024
OneOff fashion app — Controversial
Australia tour — "Test run"
The Treadmill: Running Hard, Going Nowhere
The Sussex rebrand cycle, per Eldridge
Phase 1
Grievance-led exit. Maximum heat.
Phase 2
Rebrand as independent humanitarians.
Phase 3
Pivot to lifestyle and commerce.
Phase 4
Another rebrand. Back to royal adjacency.
"A rebrand works once or twice. But the Sussexes are on an endless treadmill of purported rebrands. Like an actual treadmill, you can work your butt off, only to step off and realize you've actually gone nowhere." — Doug Eldridge, Achilles PR
The treadmill metaphor is brutally effective because it captures what's actually happening without attributing it to malice or incompetence. The Sussexes aren't failing to work hard. By any measure, the volume of output from their operation since 2020 has been enormous. The problem is that work without direction doesn't compound. Each rebrand resets the counter. Each new project requires the audience to update their understanding of who Harry and Meghan are and what they're for. And audiences, particularly commercial audiences, eventually stop updating. They move on.
The expert reading of the Australia trip fits this framework precisely. It wasn't just a commercial operation dressed as charity work. It was an attempt to step off the treadmill and back onto ground that's already mapped: the royal couple, doing royal things, in a Commonwealth realm. The identity that never needed explaining because it came pre-loaded with recognition. The temperature problem is that even that ground isn't as warm as it was in 2018. The royal brand that Meghan is reportedly trying to re-access isn't the one she left. It's moved on too.
Eldridge: "Like an actual treadmill, you can work your butt off, only to step off and realize you've actually gone nowhere."
The Association Risk: Why Hollywood Is Watching From a Distance
What corporate partners and studios are reportedly weighing
Frequent advisor changes signal internal instability. Corporate partners need consistency. The Sussex operation has cycled through multiple PR and communications teams.
The "circle of constant drama" generates unpredictable press cycles. A major studio attaching to a Sussex project inherits every headline the couple generates, including the ones about palace cautions and Australia tour backlash.
Track record: Spotify cancelled. Netflix lifestyle series not renewed. The financial returns on the biggest deals in their portfolio have not met expectations. Future "megadeals," experts suggest, are now "highly unlikely."
The polarisation problem. A brand that generates equal measures of intense loyalty and intense hostility is commercially complicated. Brands want to reach audiences, not split them.
Helena Chard's line, "no one wants to associate with a toxic brand," is the entertainment industry's version of the palace caution. It doesn't need to be put in writing. Nobody sends the Sussexes a letter saying their temperature is too low. Calls just don't come back as quickly. Projects that seemed close don't close. Options that looked real quietly expire. The mechanism of Hollywood's cold shoulder is made of silence, and silence is very hard to fight back against.
What makes this particular moment significant is that the analysis is coming from PR professionals and brand experts rather than royal commentators. This isn't the palace briefing against them. This is the entertainment industry's own ecosystem describing, in professional terms, what it sees when it looks at the Sussex brand in May 2026. "Scattershot." "Treadmill." "Toxic." "Market fatigue." Those aren't the words of people who dislike Harry and Meghan personally. They're the words of people explaining why the phone calls aren't coming.
The Australia Gamble: Did It Pay Off?
The experts characterise the April 2026 Australia trip as a "huge gamble": an attempt to demonstrate residual star power in a Commonwealth realm and prove the Sussex operation can still command global attention. On pure visibility metrics, it generated enormous coverage. But coverage and temperature are different things. The palace called it "outrageous." Insiders described the commercial choreography as a betrayal of royal values. And the net result, more headlines about the accountability gap, more expert analysis about the hypocrisy at the brand's core, suggests the gamble broke even at best.
It didn't warm the brand. It confirmed the existing critique. The Sussex operation went to Australia to prove they could still do it. What they proved instead, according to the PR professionals now commenting on the fallout, is that they still don't have a clear answer to the most fundamental brand question: what exactly is it that they're for? Until that question gets a stable, convincing, commercially coherent answer, the treadmill keeps running. And the destination stays exactly where it is.