The Californian outpost of the House of Windsor, manned by Prince Harry and Meghan the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has been experiencing what outwardly appears to be something of a cooling relationship with Tinseltown.<\/b>
\nIn the vein of you can\u2019t keep baby in the corner, you can\u2019t dump Tom Cruise in a supporting role. Except if you\u2019re the royal family.
You can keep your missions, impossible and your guns, top, Scientology\u2019s answer to Willy Loman has repeatedly in recent years happily taken back seat, a B-list, second-string parts in events when asked to by the House of Windsor.
The eerily ageless A-lister happily played second fiddle to Kate the Princess of Wales at the London \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d premiere and then accepted a simple ensemble role in 2022\u2019s televised Royal Windsor Horse Show \u2013 the real star of which was Platinum Jubilee gal herself, the late Queen.
This week Cruise was back at it, taking his place in the third row in the royal box at Wimbledon for the men\u2019s finals for Kate the Princess of Wales\u2019 return, briefly, to rapturous public view.
The princess\u2019 entry prompted not only Cruise but notably Julia Roberts, Benedict Cumberbatch and the 15,000-strong crowd to give Kate a standing ovation as she arrived.
And my, those Tinseltown sorts were delighted with the princess, with Roberts grinning with unabashed delight while Cruise looked happier than that one time he managed to raise his Thetans to level alpha.
Cruise and Roberts now join Gwyneth Paltrow, Idris Elba, former British Vogue editor Edward Enniful and Kate Moss in having publicly shown their support for the royal family of late.
Hollywood, it turns out, and to borrow liberally from Somerset Maugham, just might be \u201ca sunny place for changeable people\u201d with the Wimbledon scene capping off several months that have seen starhhhs showing their support for Team Crown.
Right as this has all been happening, the Californian outpost of the House of Windsor, manned by Prince Harry and Meghan the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has been experiencing what outwardly appears to be something of a cooling relationship with Tinseltown.
\u201cThe tide has turned,\u201d an observer based in Hollywood recently told The Times of the couple. \u201cPeople in America have been welcoming but they won\u2019t like the way they\u2019ve treated the late Queen and now the King. Mostly, people I speak to say they either don\u2019t like the Sussexes, or don\u2019t care.\u201d
Meanwhile back in London, it was just this that Sussex wedding guest and \u201cAvengers\u201d star Elba turned up at St. James\u2019s Palace to co-host, with the King, a mini-summit on youth crime.
They also invited along wet-behind-the-ears Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, taking a break from cleaning out the almond snack packs littering the Number 10 desk drawers and left behind by Rishi Sunak and representatives from community organizations. Positive forces, assemble!
Beyond this, the actor\u2019s Elba Hope Foundation is working with the King\u2019s Trust (formerly the Prince\u2019s Trust set up by Charles in 1976) on various other charity initiatives. Elba has been involved with the Trust since at least 2010, having received a $2900 grant to help him train as an actor when he was 18.
However Elba also happens to have, in the past, been closely aligned with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, not only attended their wedding but DJ\u2019ed the reception to boot.
Yet there the \u201cLuther\u201d actor was this week, posing for the cameras with the King, a man who so often just happens to be busy to see his son when he\u2019s in town.
Then there is Gwyneth Paltrow who reportedly joined the Sussexes for dinner last year, along with Cameron Diaz and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who also attended Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi\u2019s vow renewal with the Duke and Duchess.
Last month the Oscar-winner took to Instagram to show her support for Kate after her Trooping the Colour comeback, posting under an official shot of the princess, \u201cSo happy to see you looking so happy and well.\u201d
The big names keep coming, too.
In May, Leonardo DiCaprio, Drew Barrymore, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Emily Ratajkowski and Kate Moss got their glad-rag on to attend a black-tie charity do for the King\u2019s Trust in New York, helping raise more than $2 million.
Co-chairing the event was Edward Enninful, the former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, who invited Meghan to guest edit the famed fashion title in 2019.
Last year, he wrote the King\u2019s entry in Time\u2019s 100 most influential people list, hailing His Majesty as \u201ccharming,\u201d \u201cfunny\u201d and a \u201c kindness that always seeks to put others at ease.\u201d (\u201cThe monarchy is not perfect,\u201d Enniful also wrote.)
There are also the celebrities and power players who have gone oddly silent.
When the Sussexes arrived in the land of the free soda refill one of their staunchest public allies was Oprah Winfrey.
She was a guest at their 2018 wedding and in December 2020 Winfrey happily touted vegan latte company Clevr, which Meghan had invested in, on social media.
Only a couple of months later, it was to Winfrey to whom the Sussexes turned to begin their palace whistleblowing.
However, the last time that the Duke and Duchess and Winfrey were connected publicly, also with DeGeneres and de Rossi, was at a charity event in October last year.
In April, if Winfrey received one of the 50 jars of strawberry jam that the duchess sent out to promote her lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard (ARO), the 70-year-old has not posted about it. Nor has, according to the sleuths at The Daily Mail, the billionaire followed the ARO Instagram account.
David and Victoria Beckham were also Sussex wedding guests however Tom Bower\u2019s \u201cHouse of Beckham\u201d this year alleged that after Meghan had \u201cordered\u201d Harry to \u201cbrutally snub\u201d the former footballer during the 2018 Invictus Games \u201cBeckham had got his revenge\u201d by flying halfway across the world to join the Prince and Princess of Wales in Boston for the Earthshot Prize, \u201covershadowing\u201d the Sussexes.
Other big name royal wedding guests like George and Amal Clooney, Carey Mulligan, Tom Hardy and Priyanka Chopra have not been seen or publicly associated with the Sussexes either.
Now, let\u2019s be clear. Just because the Clooneys haven\u2019t been seen in papping distance of the Duke and Duchess does not mean anything. For all we know, the two couples might regularly spend Taco Tuesday as a cosy foursome, Harry working that tortilla press like a Tetbury rope line.
Likewise Winfrey. She could, for all we know, have grown so close to the Sussexes she has a spare key and is currently teaching Prince Archie his A-Z of camera angles.
Elba can still think the Sussexes are swell and enjoy regularly drinky-winks with them in dark corners of LA\u2019s private members\u2019 clubs and to also want to work with Charles to help young Brits.
Also, as remarkable as it might be, two things can be true at once. You can both think Harry and Meghan were treated shabbily by Crown Inc and want to wish a mother-of-three battling cancer well.
Still, so far this year we have not seen Harry and Meghan repeat the series of A-list nights out such as in 2023 when they flew via private jet to Las Vegas with Diaz, her husband Benji Madden, \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy\u201d star Zoe Saldana, Hollywood producer David Katzenberg and Wolfe Herd, to see Katy Perry.
Or when the Duchess took in the Los Angeles leg of Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Renaissance tour sharing a row with rocket man Jeff Bezos and fiance Lauren Sanchez, Kris Jenner and Netflix supremo Ted Sarandos.
(Of course, the Sussexes have two small children, a charity to run, TV to make and Netflix to keep sweet so maybe, shocker, they just desperately need a nice stretch of quiet nights in and 9 p.m. bedtimes.)
Here comes the woe train with more not-so-great news. This week the Emmy nominations came out with the Beckhams\u2019 documentary nabbing five. The streamer\u2019s previous big-name celebrity docuseries, \u201cHarry & Meghan,\u201d by contrast got zero.
Still, every great Hollywood movie tends to follow something of a three act structure. Harry and Meghan could very well be about to springboard into their dazzling, resurgent third act, with the launch of ARO and the Duchess\u2019 Netflix entertaining series and then the February 2025 Invictus Games.
Maybe the truth is that La La Land is \u201ca sunny place for gutsy people\u201d \u2013 and people who have no intention of being left in the shade.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years\u2019 experience working with a number of Australia\u2019s leading media titles.<\/p>\n