Six years after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left royal life behind and headed for California with some of the most lucrative media deals in recent celebrity history, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are preparing to bring their family back to Britain.
Harry, 41, and Meghan, 45, are expected to return to the U.K. before the end of August for what has been described as an “extended period,” with Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, set to begin school in Britain in September. The family will live in a private, non-royal residence and will not resume duties as working members of the Royal Family.
The decision represents a remarkable change of direction for a couple whose departure in 2020 was built around the promise of independence — financial, professional and personal.
At the time, California appeared to offer almost everything Harry and Meghan wanted. They had worldwide recognition, enormous public curiosity and multimillion-dollar opportunities waiting for them. Their new life would eventually include a sprawling home in Montecito, high-profile media projects and ambitions to establish Archewell Productions as a serious force in entertainment.
What followed was a complicated six-year experiment in building a life beyond the monarchy: some genuine blockbuster successes, several projects that struggled to generate comparable interest, a high-profile Spotify split, an evolving Netflix relationship and Meghan’s attempt to establish herself in the lifestyle business.
Their return to Britain does not mean the Sussexes are abandoning America. They are expected to retain their Montecito home as well as their residence in Portugal. But bringing Archie and Lilibet to Britain for school gives the move a permanence that a short royal visit never could.
From royal departure to Hollywood opportunity
Harry and Meghan laid bare their grievances with the Royal Family in their explosive six-part Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, released in 2022
When Harry and Meghan arrived in California in 2020, their commercial prospects appeared extraordinary.
In September of that year, Archewell Productions entered into a major agreement with Netflix. The arrangement was widely reported to be worth around $100 million and envisioned documentaries, films, scripted programming and children’s entertainment.
A few months later, the Sussexes announced another major agreement, this time with Spotify. Reports placed its potential value at roughly $20 million.
The combination gave Harry and Meghan something they had not possessed while serving as working royals: the ability to control their own platform while pursuing financial independence.
Their profile was enormous.
The couple’s March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey became an international television event, putting their relationship with the Royal Family, their experiences inside the institution and their reasons for leaving Britain at the center of a global conversation.
That interview was not part of their Netflix or Spotify contracts, but it demonstrated the extraordinary level of interest surrounding the Sussexes during the first phase of their American life.
Netflix’s Harry & Meghan followed in December 2022.
The six-part documentary series offered viewers an intimate account of their relationship, royal life, clashes with the media and their eventual departure from Britain. Netflix later said the series received 23.4 million views and became its most-watched documentary through its first four days, eventually ranking among the platform’s most popular documentary series.
Then came Harry’s memoir, Spare, in January 2023.
The book contained deeply personal accounts of his childhood, his relationship with King Charles, tensions with Prince William and his experiences growing up within the monarchy. It became a publishing phenomenon, selling millions of copies worldwide.
Together, the Oprah interview, Harry & Meghan and Spare represented the most commercially powerful period of the Sussexes’ post-royal era.
The challenge was finding projects capable of sustaining the same level of public interest once the focus moved away from their own royal story.
The difficult second act
Woman of Vision Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex speaks onstage with Gloria Steinem and Teresa Younger during the Ms. Foundation Women of Vision Awards in May 2023
Archewell Productions continued developing programming for Netflix, but subsequent releases did not consistently reproduce the extraordinary attention surrounding Harry & Meghan.
Live to Lead, a documentary series inspired by Nelson Mandela’s legacy, arrived shortly after the Sussexes’ own series.
Heart of Invictus followed athletes preparing for the Invictus Games, the international sporting competition founded by Harry for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans.
Then came Polo, a five-part documentary series exploring the elite equestrian sport closely associated with Harry.
The projects expanded Archewell’s output beyond the Sussexes’ personal story, but none became a cultural event on the scale of Harry & Meghan.
Other announced projects encountered difficulties before reaching viewers.
Pearl, an animated children’s series being developed by Meghan through Archewell, was dropped by Netflix in 2022 during a broader round of cuts to animated programming.
An adaptation of Carley Fortune’s bestselling romance novel Meet Me at the Lake was also announced but did not appear during the Sussexes’ original Netflix arrangement.
Their Netflix relationship nevertheless did not simply disappear when the original agreement ended.
In August 2025, Netflix announced a new multi-year first-look agreement with Archewell Productions. Unlike the original exclusive arrangement, the new structure gives Netflix a first opportunity to consider Archewell’s film and television projects. At the time, Netflix also said additional productions remained in development.
That distinction matters. The Sussexes’ original Netflix era changed substantially, but their professional relationship with the streaming company continued in a different form.
Spotify proved a more definitive setback
The Sussexes’ relationship with Spotify ended much more abruptly. Harry and Meghan signed their reported multimillion-dollar audio agreement in late 2020 amid enormous expectations about what two of the world’s most recognizable public figures might produce.
Meghan eventually launched Archetypes in 2022, speaking with prominent guests about labels and stereotypes affecting women.
The series ran for 12 main episodes.
By June 2023, however, Spotify and Archewell Audio announced that they had “mutually agreed to part ways.”
The split became considerably more uncomfortable when Spotify executive Bill Simmons publicly attacked the couple afterward, calling them “grifters” and criticizing his experience attempting to develop podcast ideas involving Harry.
Meghan later returned to podcasting outside Spotify with Confessions of a Female Founder, distributed through Lemonada Media.
By then, however, the atmosphere surrounding the Sussexes’ media ambitions had changed. The frenzy that accompanied their first arrival in the United States was harder to recreate.
Meghan builds a lifestyle business
As Harry focused heavily on the Invictus Games and other projects, Meghan began developing another potential pillar of their post-royal business life.
In March 2024, she unveiled American Riviera Orchard, a lifestyle brand whose original name referenced the Santa Barbara region surrounding Montecito.
The early rollout was deliberately selective. Celebrity friends received numbered jars of strawberry jam, which subsequently appeared across social media, generating significant attention before consumers could actually purchase a wider range of products.
Almost a year later, the project changed direction.
In February 2025, Meghan announced that American Riviera Orchard would become As Ever. She explained that the original name restricted the scope of what she could offer, while As Ever allowed the business to expand into a broader lifestyle identity encompassing cooking, entertaining and gardening.
The brand later launched products including preserves, teas and flower sprinkles.
Its initial release demonstrated that Meghan retained considerable commercial pulling power. Netflix said As Ever’s first collection sold out in under an hour following its April 2025 launch.
At the same time, Meghan returned to television with With Love, Meghan, a glossy Netflix lifestyle series built around cooking, entertaining, friendship and hosting.
The program reached Netflix’s Global Top 10 and appeared in the Top 10 in 24 countries after its debut. According to Netflix, it accumulated 5.3 million views during the first half of 2025 and was the platform’s most-watched culinary series released during that period.
It ultimately ran for two seasons.
Meghan had tried other ventures before the lifestyle push.
Her children’s book The Bench, inspired partly by Harry’s relationship with Archie, became a New York Times children’s picture-book bestseller, although reviews were sharply divided.
For her 40th birthday in 2021, she also launched the 40×40 initiative, encouraging 40 friends and public figures to give 40 minutes of mentoring to women attempting to return to the workforce.
The campaign attracted celebrity participation but did not develop into the kind of long-running public initiative initially envisioned.
A difficult weekend for Cookie Queens
One of the most striking recent examples of the uneven commercial response to Sussex-linked projects came with Cookie Queens.
Executive-produced by Harry and Meghan through Archewell Productions, the 91-minute documentary follows four Girl Scouts competing in the huge American business of selling Girl Scout Cookies. The film was directed by Alysa Nahmias and opened in U.S. theaters on August 7, 2026.
Its opening numbers quickly became a talking point.
According to figures cited by The Independent, Cookie Queens took $327,797 from 446 theaters during its opening period.
During the same weekend, CatVideoFest 2026 — a 70-minute compilation of internet cat videos — earned $568,414 despite playing on only 255 screens and reached No. 10 at the box office.
The comparison was particularly awkward because it captured a recurring problem facing Harry and Meghan’s post-royal projects: intense publicity surrounding their names has not always translated into an equally large paying audience.
Royal commentator Kinsey Schofield told Fox News that the result illustrated the distinction between generating headlines and attracting customers, arguing that there had once been a period when attaching the Sussexes’ names to a project automatically created extraordinary curiosity.
Whatever conclusions are drawn from one theatrical weekend, the Sussexes have never struggled for attention. Their challenge has been converting that attention consistently across projects that are not primarily about their own relationship with the monarchy.
Fame was never the problem
Even during their more difficult periods in Hollywood, Harry and Meghan remained two of the world’s most recognizable public figures.
Every television project, business launch and public appearance continued to generate extensive international coverage.
But the American chapter has also brought repeated scrutiny.
There have been numerous departures among employees over the years, including changes within senior communications roles. Meghan’s relationships with influential figures in entertainment, fashion and media have repeatedly become subjects of speculation.
Her absence from major events such as the Met Gala has similarly fueled debate about where she now sits within America’s celebrity hierarchy.
Such speculation does not erase the Sussexes’ tangible successes.
Harry & Meghan was a major Netflix hit. Spare became an international publishing blockbuster. As Ever has demonstrated an ability to sell products quickly, while Archewell Productions remains active and continues to have a first-look relationship with Netflix.
Yet the scale of the original expectations surrounding Harry and Meghan in 2020 makes their trajectory unusually difficult to assess.
They did not disappear from Hollywood.
Nor did they create the uninterrupted entertainment empire that some observers imagined when the first giant contracts were announced.
Instead, the past six years have produced a mixture of spectacular attention, significant commercial successes, canceled ideas, disappointing projects and repeated reinvention.
Britain returns to the center of Harry’s life
Against that background, the decision to establish a family base in Britain is particularly significant.
The move follows signs of a thaw in Harry’s relationship with his father.
Sources close to the Duke recently described him as feeling positive after reconnecting with King Charles and said he wanted to spend more time in Britain with his family.
Now that intention is becoming something much more concrete.
Harry and Meghan are expected to return before the end of August, while Archie and Lilibet will begin attending school in Britain in September. The children’s move is especially significant: Archie was born in Britain in 2019, while Lilibet was born in California in 2021 and has spent most of her life in the United States.
King Charles was reportedly informed of the family’s plans on Sunday, August 16, and is said to welcome the possibility of spending more private time with Harry, Meghan and his grandchildren.
However, the move should not be confused with a restoration of Harry and Meghan’s former royal roles.
They are expected to live in a privately funded, non-royal property and will remain non-working members of the Royal Family. Reuters reports that the arrangement remains consistent with the framework established following their departure from royal duties in 2020.
There is also no indication that the Sussexes intend to abandon their American life entirely.
Their Montecito property will remain part of their world, and they also have a home in Portugal. Archewell can continue developing projects, while Meghan’s business interests give her reasons to maintain strong ties to the United States.
That makes the move less a reversal of 2020 than the beginning of a more complicated transatlantic existence.
A full-circle moment — but not a return to 2020
When Harry and Meghan left Britain six years ago, California symbolized almost everything they believed their future could become.
It offered distance from palace life, greater control over their public image, financial independence and access to one of the world’s most powerful entertainment industries.
For a time, the possibilities appeared almost limitless.
The Sussexes secured huge media agreements, moved into Montecito and commanded the kind of global curiosity that few celebrities could match. Their most personal projects drew enormous audiences precisely because millions wanted to hear what they had to say about royal life.
Maintaining that momentum proved considerably harder.
Spotify ended. The original Netflix arrangement evolved into a smaller first-look partnership. Some heavily promoted productions failed to break through, while others disappeared during development. Meghan’s lifestyle ambitions required a major rebrand before As Ever finally reached consumers.
Yet describing the entire American chapter simply as a failure would overlook some substantial achievements, from the extraordinary performance of Harry & Meghan and Spare to the continuing commercial reach demonstrated by As Ever.
The more revealing conclusion may be that Harry and Meghan’s post-royal future has turned out very differently from the simple Hollywood success story imagined in 2020.
And now Britain — the country they once believed they needed to leave in order to build that future — is becoming central to their family life again.
Archie and Lilibet will attend school there. Harry will have considerably more opportunity to see his father. The Sussexes will establish a private home without returning to the system of working royalty they left behind.
California is not disappearing from their lives, and neither are their commercial ambitions.
But six years after Harry and Meghan crossed the Atlantic seeking an independent future, their next chapter is taking them back in the other direction.
Not back to the royal life they left — but back to Britain on very different terms.
