Last December, the Hollywood Reporter decided to bizarrely go Full Deranger. First, THR included the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the magazine’s “winners and losers of the year” listicle. The Sussexes were named as two of the losers of the year, with the blurb including this: “After a whiny Netflix documentary, a whiny biography (Spare — even the title is a pouty gripe) and an inert podcast, the Harry and Meghan brand swelled into a sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped — and South Park was the pin.” Again, this was for 2023 – their successful Netflix docuseries aired in 2022, as did Meghan’s Archetypes. Then, just a few weeks later, THR did another larger feature for the “Hollywood Yearbook,” where THR handed out superlatives to various celebrities. Harry and Meghan’s superlative was “Least Private Privacy Advocates.” It’s clear that THR feels comfortable following the lead of the British media, but even this latest THR piece shocked me. It really reads like a Daily Mail item circa 2019. The headline: “Why Hollywood Keeps Quitting on Harry and Meghan.”

Looks like Harry and Meghan have done it again — they’ve chewed up yet another American adviser.

Josh Kettler, the Santa Barbara-based consultant who’d been serving as chief of staff to the Duke and Duchess, reportedly resigned in August — after just three months on the job — becoming the latest member of the ever-expanding “Sussex Survivors Club,” as some former employees have taken to calling themselves. Before Kettler, there was Toya Holness, who was their global press secretary until 2022, and Christine Weil Schirmer, the onetime Pinterest communications director who quit as Harry and Meghan’s PR head in 2021. Samantha Cohen, Markle’s top aide and private secretary, departed the same year.

Earlier, there was Keleigh Thomas Morgan, a Sunshine Sachs partner who started repping Meghan when she was still a commoner (well, a TV star on Suits), adding Harry to her client roster when they became engaged and then helping them set up their own internal comms operation when the couple moved to California.

(Sources tell Rambling Reporter that Morgan stopped repping them around 2020, because the Sussexes stopped paying Sunshine Sachs for its services, though the PR firm denies that was the case.) Other members of the Survivors Club include Catherine St-Laurent, who lasted a year as head of the Sussexes’ charity Archewell; Archewell COO Mandana Dayani; content chief Ben Browning (who got Harry and Meghan’s documentary on Netflix before bolting for FilmNation); and marketing chief Fara Taylor.

Why’d they all leave? What explains the churn? “Everyone’s terrified of Meghan,” claims a source close to the couple. “She belittles people, she doesn’t take advice. They’re both poor decision-makers, they change their minds frequently. Harry is a very, very charming person — no airs at all — but he’s very much an enabler. And she’s just terrible.”

In 2018 Markle’s treatment of two royal aides prompted Buckingham Palace to investigate the then-princess for “bullying behavior.” Though the results of the inquiry were never released, Markle denounced the effort as a “calculated smear campaign.” But some of the couple’s stateside staff-members also reserve special bile for Markle, whose reported penchant for noisy tantrums and angry 5 a.m. emails has earned her the in-house moniker ‘Duchess Difficult.’ “She’s absolutely relentless,” says one source. “She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I’ve watched her reduce grown men to tears.”

[From THR]

LMAO: “She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I’ve watched her reduce grown men to tears.” First of all, I literally cannot imagine Meghan doing that whatsoever, it’s simply not her personality or vibe. Second of all, I would actually pay money to watch Meghan reduce a grown man to tears. What did she say to the guy? “Kindly take your finger out of my face?” SOB! SHE IS SO MEAN! Anyway, the appearance of the “Duchess Difficult” moniker and the regurgitation of 2018-era smears should tell you all you need to know about the sourcing for this piece.

I’d also like to point out that Jason Kettler’s exit seemed to leak out to the British papers very, very quickly, and now the trade papers are picking it up one month later, with a very anti-Sussex slant? It sounds like sour grapes from Jason Kettler, who probably got let go from his position as Harry’s chief of staff for good reason, then proceeded to make an ass out of himself by burning his former employer to anyone who would listen. All I know is that sh-t reeks of unprofessionalism and it’s not coming from Harry and Meghan.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.