Harry and Meghan Wanted Privacy So Badly They Left the Royal Family. Then They Signed a Netflix Deal, Wrote a Memoir, and Keep Showing Up Front Row at America’s Biggest Sporting Events

On Sunday night, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sat courtside at the NBA All-Star Game in Inglewood, California, nestled between Queen Latifah and the glow of a hundred cameras. Meghan leaned into Harry’s arm. Harry smiled for the crowd. It was a perfectly curated public moment — from a couple that once told the world they were done with exactly this.

It’s been six years since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex walked away from the British royal family. Their reason, at the time, felt deeply personal. But the life they’ve built since tells a very different story.

Remember When They Said They Wanted Out?

In January 2020, Harry and Meghan announced they were stepping back from royal duties. When they later sat down with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, the interview wasn’t just revealing — it was devastating. Meghan, her voice barely steady, told Winfrey she had experienced suicidal thoughts and that when she sought help from the institution, she was turned away. Harry, visibly shaken beside her, said his “biggest concern was history repeating itself” — a reference to his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash while being chased by paparazzi in 1997.

These were not people angling for a better deal. They sounded like people trying to survive.

They moved to Montecito, California. For a brief moment, the quiet life seemed like it might actually be the plan.

Then Came the Deals, the Book, and the Cameras

That moment didn’t last long. By September 2020, they had signed a multi-year deal with Netflix reportedly worth over $100 million. Their first major project was Harry & Meghan, a six-part docuseries that put the very royal life they said they wanted to escape back under a microscope — this time on their terms. It became one of Netflix’s most-watched documentary premieres.

Then Harry released Spare in January 2023, a memoir so revealing it made the Oprah interview look like small talk. He wrote about private arguments with his brother William, intimate details about his relationship with Meghan, and personal moments that few expected from a man who said he just wanted to be left alone. It sold over three million copies in its first week and has since moved more than six million worldwide.

Meghan launched her own Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, a lifestyle series where she welcomed celebrity friends into a rented farmhouse near their home. Netflix canceled it this past January after two seasons and viewership numbers that ranked it 1,224th on the platform.

The Instagram Comeback Nobody Expected

After years off social media, Meghan rejoined Instagram in early 2025 to build her lifestyle brand, As Ever. She now posts regularly — and on Valentine’s Day, she shared the clearest photograph ever published of their four-year-old daughter Lilibet’s face. The image showed Harry cradling Lilibet as she clutched a bunch of red balloons. It was a striking move for a couple that had spent years deliberately hiding their children’s faces, always citing their safety.

What made the timing notable was that just three days earlier, Harry had appeared visibly emotional at a gathering in Los Angeles with parents whose children died after being exposed to harmful content on social media. The trial names Meta — the company that owns Instagram — as a defendant. Harry told the grieving families, “None of you should be here,” and called the fight a “David versus Goliath situation.”

Three days later, their daughter’s face was on Instagram.

Front Row, Again

Sunday’s All-Star Game wasn’t the first time the couple made headlines for where they were sitting. In October, Harry and Meghan attended Game 4 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium and ended up in the front row — seated ahead of Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson and baseball icon Sandy Koufax. Fans booed them when their faces hit the jumbotron, and the backlash online was swift.

Most people, after being booed in front of 56,000 strangers, might think twice about the front row. Four months later, there they were again. Courtside. Biggest sporting event of the weekend. Cameras on them all night long.

So What’s Really Going On Here?

To be fair, Harry’s complaints about media intrusion aren’t performance. His lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail went to trial in January 2026, and the allegations — phone hacking, illegal surveillance, private investigators — are serious. “They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery,” he told the court, his voice cracking. There’s nothing manufactured about that.

But there’s a real difference between wanting protection from illegal tabloid tactics and wanting a life out of the public eye. Harry and Meghan seem to have always wanted the first one. The second? That’s harder to argue at this point.

Six years after walking away from royal life in the name of privacy, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have a Netflix deal, a bestselling memoir, a lifestyle brand, an active Instagram account, and courtside seats at America’s biggest sporting events. On Sunday, the cameras found them right where they always seem to be now — front and center, in the best seats in the house.

Whatever this is, it isn’t quiet. And it definitely isn’t private.