What Harry and Meghan's Emmys Snub Means for Their Hollywood Future

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have missed out on an Emmy nomination for their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan. It is the latest example of the couple's industry peers outshining the British press as their most damaging critics.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had a tough start to 2023 as their public approval rating collapsed in the days after the January release of Harry's book Spare. As the months have passed, the couple's standing with the U.S. public has substantially recovered, but the showbiz industry, where they want to ply their trade, has continued to reject them.

An Emmy win for their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan would have been the perfect way to ward off criticism that the show was just a rehash of their Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2021. It would also have left them smelling of success a couple of weeks after Rolling Stone magazine announced in a headline: "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Are in Their Flop Era."

However, the 25,000-plus members of the Television Academy—peers in the very industry Harry and Meghan very much want to succeed in—chose as candidates for best documentary or nonfiction series: 100 Foot Wave; Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur; Secrets of the Elephants; The 1619 Project; and The U.S. and the Holocaust.

It is worth noting that Harry & Meghan has been nominated for a Hollywood Critics Association TV Award, though an Emmy nod would have been significantly more prestigious.

It comes after Oprah With Meghan and Harry: A CBS PrimeTime Special was nominated in 2021 in the Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series Or Special category. However, it missed out to Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.

An Emmy nomination would also have landed the couple a red-carpet moment at the awards gala at which their success would have been plain for all to see. Instead, Harry and Meghan must find another way to replace the bad taste that lingers from the collapse of their Spotify deal. That saw Bill Simmons, an executive at the streaming platform, brand them as "grifters".

Simmons told his own Spotify podcast: "I wish I had been involved in the 'Meghan and Harry leave Spotify' negotiation. 'The F****** Grifters,' that's the podcast we should have launched with them.

"I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry, trying to help him with a podcast idea," Simmons added. "It's one of my best stories."

Then Jeremy Zimmer, chief executive of United Talent Agency, a major player in Hollywood, told news website Semafor: "Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent.

"And, you know, just because you're famous doesn't make you great at something," Zimmer added.

Harry and Meghan have given much air time—and substantial sums of money, through no less than eight media lawsuits—to criticizing both the British tabloid press and paparazzi.

And many in the U.K. media have been consistently hostile toward the Sussexes since their decision to quit the British royal family in January 2020. This was arguably also the case throughout 2019. However, the negative press coverage did not stop the Sussexes from signing multiyear deals with Netflix and Spotify, nor prevent Harry's book deal with publisher Penguin Random House, all garnering hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, it may be the reaction to Harry and Meghan's own projects within their own U.S. media industry that ultimately proves the more damaging to their reputations if they are not able to prove their credentials as content producers.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.