You don’t get to jump ship from an ancient institution without making a few enemies, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle certainly severely undercut their popularity in the U.K. when they split from the Royal family.
At first, this didn’t seem to matter because they were warmly welcomed into the Hollywood sphere, as seen in their Oprah Winfrey interview and Netflix docuseries. Those both released in 2022, however, and since then Harry and Meghan’s public profile has diminished considerably. Neighbors of theirs in Montecito, California have even described them as living an essentially “hermit-like” existence with little evidence of socializing. Although given that Meghan just stepped out to a glitzy charity gala and Harry is hopping around the globe like James Bond right now, maybe take that with a grain of salt.
Perhaps Harry and Meghan are short of friends, perhaps they’re not. One thing is for certain, though — they lost their closest celebrity couple buddies some years ago, and it’s unlikely they’re going to win them back anytime soon.
Famous couple cut ties with Sussexes because they “have not been impressed with the way Harry and Meghan have behaved”
I did say that Harry and Meghan’s reckless Royal runaway act had annoyed the Brits, and I wasn’t lying. Although they were known to have once been very close, the Sussexes’ split from Harry’s family reportedly cost them the friendship of David and Victoria Beckham.
As per Daily Mail‘s Richard Eden (via Express), the former footballer and pop star turned against Harry and Meghan after they started airing their grievances with the Royal family in public, in those Oprah and Netflix interviews as well as in Harry’s memoir Spare. The Beckhams are said to have been so “horrified” by the Sussexes’ behavior on a fundamental level that they’ve since cut all contact with them.
“From everything I’ve heard, he [David] and his wife [Victoria] have not been impressed with the way Harry and Meghan have behaved,” Eden alleged. “For them, family is everything, you know, they’re really close to both sets of parents and families and this idea of going on television and attacking your family as, talking to an associate of theirs, it just horrified them [and] it really represents everything that they don’t agree with.”
There is evidence that the Beckhams have indeed turned their backs on the Sussexes. This October, David attended a London Air Ambulance charity event alongside, of all people, Prince William (the newly bearded version). This heavily suggests the Beckhams have switched allegiances to the future king instead of his younger brother.
Still, to be entirely accurate, a fuller picture of the fracturing of the two couple’s friendship suggests there were other issues at play than just the Sussexes’ royal tattletaling. Recent biography House of Beckham claimed that personality clashes between Meghan and Victoria were to blame, with Markle souring tings when she accused Beckham of leaking personal details about her to the press — the suspected actual culprit was a beautician they had both visited. Good friends: so hard to find, even harder to hold onto.