Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have become royal ‘side show’ as A-listers lose interest, report says

Royal experts believe that Harry and Meghan have lost their social influence in the celebrity world, although Chrissy Teigen, Kris Jenner and the couple's fierce defenders would disagree.

While Kris Jenner and Chrissy Teigen proudly announced in April that they had received a jar of Meghan Markle's American Riviera Orchard strawberry jam, the former butler of Prince Harry's late mother Princess Diana announced that other A-list celebrities had mostly lost interest. On Meghan and Harry.

In an interview with Closer magazine, Paul Burrell said that Harry and Meghan's circle of friends in the US is "getting smaller and smaller," The Sun reported.

"I think A-list stars are dropping like flies," said Burrell, who worked until Diana's death in 1997. When the media mogul attended their 2018 royal wedding, then interviewed them in 2021, giving the apostate couple a major platform to explain their move to the US and voice their grievances about royal life and the royal family.

But The Sun also reported that Harry and Meghan are no longer friends with some of their famous wedding guests, notably George and Amal Clooney and David and Victoria Beckham.

Of course, journalists and writers such as Tina Brown have questioned whether these guests were ever actual friends of the couple, with Brown writing in her 2022 book "The Palace Papers" that "the celebrity guests were not portraits of Meghan's inner circle but of the friends she most cherished." wanted to recruit” to his inner circle.

Burrell admitted that when Harry and Meghan first got married, "A-listers were riding the momentum." He told Closer, "Harry and Meghan were the most popular couple in the country at one point ... but it's gone downhill since then."

Americans were also initially excited when the Sussexes moved to California. They now live in Montecito, which along with Santa Barbara is known as the "American Riviera" and which inspired the name of Megan's new lifestyle brand.

But Americans also "love the royal family," Burrell told Closer. They understand that Meghan and Harry are a "side show" and "not the main event," he said.

David Beckham seems to have opted against "side shows", especially when he was pictured attending an awards ceremony for The King's Foundation last week in London. It's the non-profit that Harry's father, Charles III, founded in 1990 when he was Prince of Wales. Beckham has become an ambassador for the foundation and the Daily Mail's royal experts have speculated that the retired soccer star, who "loves the royal family", wants to be knighted one day.

It’s still highly debatable, though, whether the Sussexes have lost their social cachet — even following professional setbacks involving Spotify and reports that they’ve “burned bridges” in Hollywood as they’ve made multiple attempts to launch themselves as entertainment innovators, humanitarians and global thought leaders.

Sussex supporters note the glowing international media coverage Harry and Meghan received for their “triumphant” visit to Nigeria, which was described as a “quasi-royal tour” by some royal commentators.

Fans also could say it was a major coup for famous women like Teigen and Jenner to use their social media platforms to promote Meghan’s strawberry jam. On the other hand, these two influencers and entrepreneurs also come with baggage — Teigen for a past cyber-bullying scandal and Jenner because she’s the mastermind behind her family’s reality TV empire.

Meanwhile, as Harry and Meghan have shed some of those wedding-guest friends, they’ve still become close with rich and powerful neighbors in Montecito, a group dubbed the “Montecito Mafia,” The Sun reported. It’s not likely, though, that Winfrey, a neighbor, would ever include herself in any kind of mafia, The Cut reported.

There also have been conflicting reports about whether two other notable Montecito residents, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, still socialize with the Sussexes. Closer reported that Perry and Bloom “snubbed” an invitation to the fifth birthday party for Harry and Meghan’s son Archie, but royal commentator Tom Quinn recently told The Mirror that the couple happily attended the recent third birthday for Lilibet.

Burrell’s argument that the Sussexes have lost their social influence comes amid reports that Harry hopes to re-establish a residence in the U.K., the New York Post reported this week. He’s eager to reconcile with his family, from whom he is estranged, a former butler for the king told The Post.

Last year, Charles asked his son and daughter-in-law to hand over the keys to Frogmore Cottage, the royal residence near Windsor Castle gifted to them by the late Queen Elizabeth, because they had stepped down as senior working members of the royal family. Since then, Harry has stayed at hotels during short trips to the U.K.

Earlier this year, Harry sensationally claimed America as his home in new paperwork in which he declared that his “new country/state” was now the “United States.”

But Harry appears to regret being estranged from his family and his old life in the U.K., multiple royal experts have said, according to The Post and The Sun.

“You’ve only got one family, and this means he’s suddenly realized that,” Grant Harrold, the former butler for the king, told the New York Post.

Harry also misses his British friends from school and the army, who refuse to visit him in the United States over their “rifts” with his wife, royal commentator Tom Quinn recently told The Mirror.

“As time goes by, Harry misses some aspects of his old life in the U.K.,” Quinn told The Mirror.

"Obviously, the honeymoon period is when everything in the kingdom is new and exciting and coming to an end and Harry is looking back on the past through rose-colored glasses," Quinn added.

Harold agreed, telling the Post: "I've always said that Harry would probably come back to the UK - his family is here, his friends are here, it's where he grew up."

"It's a big deal moving to another country and not having any connection to your old home," Harold continued.