If you know anything about how publicity works, and how the late Princess of Wales functioned, it was obvious that by this point Meghan and Harry were outmanoeuvring their palace advisors. Although the press did not yet know that their purpose was to lay the ground to expand their horizons in a quest for financial and commercial independence, they knew that something was afoot and whatever it was, it was not kosher.
As far as Meghan and Harry were concerned, they had no incentive to take any of the advice they were being given by their official advisors at Buckingham Palace, because the ‘palace crew’ had been functioning on the premise that this sort of publicity must be dampened down, while the Sussexes were intent on ratcheting it up. In the light of that, it was unsurprising that Meghan ignored their advice to keep her head down, but went behind their back and brought in the big guns to shoot down the British press. Her ploy was simple. Neutralise the uncontrollable British tabloids so that she would have absolute control over her public image. She therefore instructed Sunshine Sachs in the US to assist her in developing tactics to neutralise them.
Meghan could not have chosen a firm better placed to take on and crush the press and supplant the gentlemanly ‘palace crew’. In making the appointment, she was making it clear that she would not be limited by anything the monarchy told her. Sunshine Sachs is headed up by Chief Executive Shawn Sachs and founder Ken Sunshine, whom the New York Times accused of using ‘bare-knuckle tactics’ on behalf of clients such as Harvey Weinstein when he was first accused of groping model Ambra Battilana Gutierez, Michael Jackson at the time of his paedophile troubles, and Justin Smollett following his dismissal for faking a racist, homophobic attack. Ken Sunshine is also known to be an avid supporter of left-wing causes and to be a personal friend of the Rev Al Sharpton and Bill and Hillary Clinton. By instructing Sunshine Sachs to act on her behalf, Meghan was sailing dangerously close to the wind in that Sunshine Sachs’s political affiliations could potentially taint the apolitical stance of the British Royal Family. She, of course, had a defence against that. She was being represented at Sunshine Sachs by Keleigh Thomas Morgan, with whom she had worked when she was on Suits. Nevertheless, the mere act of making this extra-official appointment meant that Meghan and Harry had breached several rules at once. Firstly, no responsible national entity can have two representatives fulfilling the same function, and secondly, by appointing Sunshine Sachs without permission, Meghan was demonstrating that she intended to push an anti-press, pro left-wing, commercial agenda, irrespective of these positions being antithetical to the long term interests of the monarchy.
Any doubt about what this appointment meant was cleared up by Ken Sunshine’s comments. ‘We don’t play it safe. We’re not genteel. We name names and battle the media when we have to.’ He insisted that his clients had a ‘right to privacy’ and that he regards press photographers as the ‘stalkerazzi’.
Because Sunshine Sachs is known within the industry for the hardball tactics it employs in maintaining its clients’ privacy against their adversaries, that company’s appointment was a direct challenge to the press from Meghan and Harry. While such tactics on behalf of Sunshine Sachs’ Hollywood clients might work with the American press, an adversarial approach when adopted on behalf of a British royal would be unconstitutional and liable to bring the Crown into conflict with one of its lynchpins.
Nor was this the only threat the palace spotted. This was the second overtly political appointment Meghan had made that year, the first being the appointment of Sara Latham as Meghan and Harry’s head of communications. A former senior advisor on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and special advisor to the late Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport under the previous Labour government, Sara Latham was adjudged to be too party political a figure to serve in such a sensitive position.
However, Sara Latham is a respected figure, and the appointment proceeded. By this time though, the palace were so concerned that Meghan and Harry’s actions, some of which were impulsive in the extreme, would damage the monarchy, if only by bringing them negative press, that anyone who could gain the air of her boss would be a Godsend. Although Meghan’s critics and the American public might not realise it, the palace wanted her and Harry to enjoy the approval of the press, the British press in particular. The difficulty, so far, had been to convince the royal couple that they should modify their conduct and be more sensitive to the concerns of all segments of the public as well as the media. To ensure that the couple would not be able to run riot and damage the monarchy by overt politicising or any of the other infractions which they seemed hell bent on pursuing, a term of Ms Latham’s appointment was that she was to report directly to the Queen’s Communication’s Secretary. ‘That [term of employment] had Christopher Geidt’s fingerprints all over it,’ a prince told me, meaning that the recently ennobled Lord had set things up in such a way that the Queen and her senior advisors would be able to exert some control over Meghan and Harry, which really meant Meghan, for while he was an active and willing participant, she was the main tactician and architect.
Within months, the palace would learn how completely ineffectual their attempts at control were. Meghan simply went behind Sara Latham’s back and brought Sunshine Sachs in to assist her and Harry in blowing the most popular newspapers in Britain out of the water.
Hard on the heels of Sara Latham’s appointment came an application by Meghan and Harry on the 21st June 2019 to trademark over 100 items under their brand, Sussex Royal. They were casting a very wide net.
