Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—who have long and loudly denied claims that they are difficult to work for—have lost their latest chief U.S. publicist after just seven months.
Meredith Maines, who joined the Sussexes’ operation earlier this year, is stepping down in January, a spokesperson told The Royalist.
At the same time, the couple have also parted ways with their external PR firm, Method Communications, which was hired by Maines.
The spokesperson framed the departures by saying that Maines and Method had “concluded their work with Archewell,” adding that the Duke and Duchess were “grateful for their contributions and wish them well.”
However, when the couple hired Maines, there was no suggestion that she was being brought in for a specific project or on a short-term basis.
“What this episode unquestionably does do is revive the uncomfortable question the Sussexes have spent years trying to suppress: Are they, in fact, extremely difficult employers?”
Incredibly, Maines is understood to be at least the tenth publicist the couple have gone through since stepping back from royal duties five years ago—an extraordinary rate of turnover that will only intensify long-running questions about what it is really like to work for them.
Two people left their jobs earlier this year after Vanity Fair published a widely read profile of Harry and Meghan that examined the internal workings of their post-royal operations. The article quoted former staff and collaborators who described an intense, high-pressure environment, with expectations that could shift suddenly and little tolerance for perceived failure.
The magazine painted a picture of a workplace in which Meghan was described as highly controlling and deeply involved in day-to-day decisions, with suggestions that staff often felt exposed or unsupported.
While the article also acknowledged that some staffers believe the couple are driven, principled employers with high standards, the overall impression was of a working culture that many found emotionally draining and, in some cases, damaging.
Harry and Meghan were, unsurprisingly, extremely unhappy with the Vanity Fair piece and its characterization of them as bad employers. This triggered a period of internal upheaval.
(Former staff told me that Meghan could be a “demon” with “psycho moments”—comments made in response to a glossy Us Weekly article that had portrayed the couple as model bosses. That article itself was widely seen as a counter-blast to a Hollywood Reporter piece describing Meghan as a “dictator in high heels,” a claim the Sussex camp had also dismissed as a fabrication.)
It remains unclear whether Maines will be replaced or whether the couple will lean more heavily on their U.K. operation, headed by Harry’s longtime ally and spokesperson, Liam Maguire. There has been a sense for weeks that Maines’ days were numbered after a spat over, of all things, photo permissions following Harry and Meghan’s attendance at Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner’s birthday party in November, followed by the debacle that was Meghan’s response to her father’s hospitalization earlier this month.
Fairly or not, someone always has to fall on the sword. But people who have worked for the Sussexes say the deeper problem is structural. Senior PR figures do not quit after seven months unless something has gone badly wrong. It will be difficult to spin this as anything other than a sh-tshow. So did Maines jump or was she pushed? After 10 publicists in five years, people will draw their own conclusions.
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