Meghan Markle has been cut from consideration for a role in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen just days after the original idea was floated, according to royal biographer Tina Brown.
“I learned this morning that the casting of Meghan Markle in season 3 of Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series ‘The Gentlemen’ has been withdrawn,” Brown, who is the former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, wrote Saturday on her “Fresh Hell” Substack, The Hollywood Reporter first detailed.
“The backlash in the UK was so intense, it became untenable to go forward. This does not bode well for Meghan’s acting comeback in the UK.”
Fox News makes clear Brown’s knowledge of the inner workings of the entertainment business and the British Royal Family is well established.
The London-born career journalist is a best-selling author of 2007’s The Diana Chronicles, and 2022’s The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil.
The Duchess of Sussex was in early talks to join the yet-to-be-announced third season of Ritchie’s British action-comedy Netflix series, as Breitbart News reported.
The news that Markle – who first came to public attention portraying lawyer Rachel Zane across seven seasons of the American legal drama Suits – was considering a return to acting came after it was revealed that she and Harry were planning to move their family back to England by the end of the month.
The couple intend to relocate from the U.S. later this month to a private, non-Royal residence outside London as first reported by the Daily Telegraph and the Sun newspapers.
The Royal pair’s children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, will accompany them. They are enrolled to start at a British school when the new academic year begins in September.
Netflix is expected to make its commissioning announcements next week.