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

Even though Kris Jenner and Chrissy Teigen proudly announced in April that they were recipients of jars of Meghan Markle’s American Riviera Orchard strawberry jam, the former butler for Prince Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana, has proclaimed that other A-list celebrities have mostly lost interest in Meghan and Harry.

In an interview with Closer magazine, Paul Burrell said that Harry and Meghan’s friends circle in the United States “is getting smaller and smaller,” The Sun reported.

“I think the A-list stars are dropping like flies,” said Burrell, who worked for Diana until her death in 1997. He said that Oprah Winfrey “no longer seems to be involved” with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — not like when the media mogul attended their 2018 royal wedding, then interviewed them in 2021, giving the renegade couple a major platform to explain their move to the United States and air their grievances about royal life and the royal family.

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

Of course, journalists and authors like Tina Brown have questioned whether these guests ever were genuine friends of the couple, with Brown writing in her 2022 book, “The Palace Papers,” that the “celebrity guests were a portrait not of Meghan’s intimate circle but of the friends she most wanted to recruit” into her inner circle.

Burrell acknowledged that when Harry and Meghan were first married, “A-listers were riding on the moment.” He told Closer, “Harry and Meghan were the most popular couple in the country at one time …  but there’s since been a decline.”

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

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

David Beckham appears to have chosen against the “side show,” especially as he was photographed last week in London, attending an awards ceremony for The King’s Foundation. This is the nonprofit that Harry’s father, Charles III, established in 1990 when he was the Prince of Wales. Beckham has become an ambassador for the foundation, and royal experts at the Daily Mail assume that the retired soccer star, who “loves the royal family,” would like one day to be knighted.

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.

“Inevitably, the honeymoon period where everything in the States is new and exciting is coming to an end and Harry is looking back at the past through rose-tinted spectacles,” Quinn also said.

Harrold agreed, telling the Post: “I’ve always said that Harry will probably return to the U.K. — his family are here, his friends are here, this is where he grew up.”

“It’s very big moving to another country and not having any connection to your old home,” Harrold continued.