King Charles drove ‘desperate’ Harry and Meghan to sign contracts worth up to £128 million after leaving the Royal Family, Omid Scobie claims

Harry and Meghan rushed to sign contracts worth up to £128million because they were ‘desperate’ for money after leaving the Royal Family, it was claimed yesterday.

Author Omid Scobie suggested the King’s ‘ineptitude’ in handling the Megxit saga had effectively driven the Duke and Duchess of Sussex into signing a series of commercial deals.

He claimed the couple were ‘in a spin’ and had agreed deals that they might have balked at if their finances had not been cut off, leaving them needing ‘serious money’.

Mr Scobie told The Independent: ‘Obviously they had money. But they needed serious money for a proper roof over their heads and security.’

The pair signed contracts for books, documentaries and podcasts after quitting as senior royals and moving to the US in 2020, including an £81million five-year deal with streaming giant Netflix and an £18million contract with Spotify that was cancelled early.

The Mail revealed in 2021 that Harry’s deal with Penguin Random House was for four books after a bidding war among publishers that could see the final sum hit as much as £29million.

Harry and Meghan rushed to sign contracts worth up to £128million because they were ‘desperate’ for money after leaving the Royal Family, it has been claimed 

The deals led to a series of damaging revelations by Harry about his father and older brother Prince William, including in the Netflix series Harry & Meghan and his memoir Spare.

Mr Scobie suggested the Sussexes became ‘disruptors’ only because the King had mishandled their decision to leave Britain and quit as senior working royals.

In his book Endgame, released yesterday, he quoted an unnamed ‘family friend’ as saying that Harry and Meghan ‘simply wanted to be heard’ but that Charles had been too stubborn.

The late Queen and senior palace aides had urged him to swallow his pride and talk with his younger son, but Charles refused to do so, the author claimed. Mr Scobie said all financial support for Harry and Meghan was cut off in July 2020, including money for their official security, which had previously been funded by Charles’s private income from his Duchy of Cornwall estate.

Writing in Endgame, he said: ‘The rush to sign commercial deals after the royal institution cut them off from all funding and security in 2020 led them to sign some lucrative deals they might have thought twice about had they not been under so much financial pressure. When the couple signed a contract… with Spotify to develop podcasts, neither of the two expected executives to turn down so many of their ideas.’

He added: ‘It was the middle of a pandemic, of course you’re going to sign the deals.

‘But ultimately Spotify were looking for headline-grabbing, media-stirring content and that’s not the direction that the couple wanted to go in, so it fell apart.

Author Omid Scobie suggested the King’s ‘ineptitude’ in handling the Megxit saga had effectively driven the Duke and Duchess of Sussex into signing a series of commercial deals

Spotify and the Sussexes ‘mutually agreed’ to part ways earlier this year, after the couple produced only one podcast series and a half-hour festive special

‘I’d imagine the couple knew at the start that’s what Spotify wanted from them but the money was on the table and they were in a desperate place.’ Spotify and the Sussexes ‘mutually agreed’ to part ways earlier this year, after the couple produced only one podcast series and a half-hour festive special.

Bloomberg reported that Harry had pitched ideas to Spotify including interviewing Russian president Vladimir Putin about ‘childhood trauma’.

He had also hoped to interview former US president Donald Trump and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg about their childhoods, it was reported.

Mr Trump has been a vocal critic of the Sussexes, describing Harry as ‘whipped’ and ‘an embarrassment’ and saying he was ‘not a fan’ of Meghan. 

Writing in Endgame, Mr Scobie said Spotify had wanted ‘juicy goods’ and had paid the pair only ‘a portion’ of the £18million agreed for a series of podcasts.

Spotify executive and podcaster Bill Simmons has blasted the couple as ‘grifters’, and has spoken of his embarrassment at sharing the same platform as them.

Speaking about Harry on his own podcast in January, Mr Simmons said: ‘Nobody cares about what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the Royal Family, and you just complain about them.’