There is something rather fascinating about being told, repeatedly, that two people no longer matter while simultaneously being told what they did yesterday, where they went, what they wore, what their children are doing, where Meghan takes Pilates classes, what their former agent thinks of them and, apparently, who might have been standing outside their children’s school.
The latest example is considerably more serious than the usual Sussex chatter.
In case you have not heard, ITV News is reporting that police are investigating after two men were reportedly seen “scouting out” the British school attended by Prince Harry and Meghan’s children.
It comes only weeks after Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet were moved from their first British school shortly after the beginning of term. ITV previously reported that the Sussex security team had become concerned about the family’s predictable commute, including the possibility of their vehicles becoming separated from their security detail and trapped in stationary traffic.
This isn’t really celebrity gossip anymore.
When children and schools enter the story, there is a legitimate question about where public interest ends and something rather more uncomfortable begins.
But there is another question worth asking.
Why can’t people stop watching Harry and Meghan? And why can’t the press quit them?
Because perhaps some of what we call hostility is actually fascination. And some of that fascination may even be a peculiar form of admiration.
Not approval.
Not necessarily affection.
Admiration born from a tremendous amount of attention.
And attention is one of the most valuable currencies a public figure can possess.
Everyone Has Something to Say About Meghan Markle
Consider what happened this week with one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.
Ari Emanuel, the legendary talent agent who helped build the business that became the modern WME and Endeavor empire, was asked by The Sunday Times where he thought Meghan’s career was going.
His response was memorable:
“Here’s the great thing: I don’t have to think about that any more.”
Emanuel formerly represented the Duchess personally. WME has continued to be associated with Meghan and Archewell.
The comment immediately became a story.
Of course it did.
Because even not thinking about Meghan Markle has become something worth saying publicly about Meghan Markle.
Do you see the paradox?
Journalists who regularly tell us how irrelevant Meghan Markle is can create hours of commentary from a remark about how someone else no longer has to think about Meghan Markle. Insane, right?
Hollywood has three enormous talent-agency names that routinely appear in conversations about entertainment power: WME, CAA and UTA.
These are businesses whose currency is attention, access and the ability to turn public interest into commercial opportunity.
And Meghan has attracted commentary from that rarefied world for years.
In 2023, Jeremy Zimmer, then the CEO of UTA, publicly questioned Meghan’s abilities following the end of the Sussexes’ Spotify deal. Zimmer said Meghan had not proved to be a great audio talent and questioned her talent more broadly.
At the time, Zimmer was running one of Hollywood’s most important talent agencies.
Meghan, meanwhile, had signed with another one: WME.
Zimmer himself is no longer running UTA. David Kramer succeeded him as CEO in June 2025. The official announcement described the succession as long planned, although subsequent industry reporting said there had been pressure for Zimmer to make way at that particular moment.
That said, there is no suggestion that Meghan had anything whatsoever to do with Zimmer’s departure, nor is that the point.
The point is the level at which the Meghan conversation has been taking place.
One of Hollywood’s most powerful agency chiefs publicly assessed her talent. She was represented by another Hollywood powerhouse. Three years later, Ari Emanuel is asked where he thinks her career is heading. And some journalists gleefully report that his answer proves that Meghan is irrelevant.
Everybody, apparently, has an opinion about Meghan Markle.
You don’t have to agree with any of them. That’s almost beside the point.
Look at the level at which the conversation is taking place.
We are not talking about an obscure former television actress desperately trying to persuade Hollywood to notice her.
Some of Hollywood’s most powerful dealmakers have been asked to discuss her.
Years after Suits.
Years after the royal wedding.
Years after Harry and Meghan left frontline royal life.
Meghan remains discussable.
That has value.
That is attention that has grown into something resembling admiration—almost against the will of some of her detractors.
The Sussex Attention Economy
Harry has the same strange relationship with the British press.
He can complain about it.
They can complain about him.
And yet neither side appears capable of looking away.
When Harry recently spoke in Canada, even the simple revelation that his children were “happy in school” became news.
Think about that.
Two children are happy at school.
For most families, this is a WhatsApp message to Grandma.
For the Sussexes, it is a headline.
That is fame at an extraordinary level.
And perhaps this is where the Sussex story becomes more interesting than the old argument about whether Britain “likes” Harry and Meghan.
Like is almost irrelevant.
Fascination is much more powerful.
People can admire beauty while criticizing the woman possessing it. They can admire audacity while insisting that they disapprove of it. They can admire someone’s ability to reinvent herself while complaining endlessly about the reinvention.
They can even admire the sheer nerve required to walk away from one of the world’s most famous institutions and attempt to build something independently.
Admiration doesn’t always arrive wearing a smile.
Sometimes it arrives disguised as obsession.
Or even “hate.”
The People Who Supposedly Don’t Matter
There is an amusing experiment one could conduct if Harry and Meghan truly do not matter:
Stop covering them.
No photographers.
No royal correspondents.
No former executives being asked what they think Meghan should do next.
No analysis of Harry’s latest appearance.
No articles about Meghan’s clothes.
No chatter about her presence at Soho Farmhouse as if it were breaking news.
No speculation about their friends, houses, businesses or dinner reservations.
No breathless examination of whether the Duchess might return to acting.
Just silence.
It won’t happen, of course. Because there is no one to put in Harry and Meghan’s place. Not even William and Kate. Whatever one thinks of Harry and Meghan the Sussexes still generate something publishers desperately need:
Attention.
You see, the media isn’t a charitable institution. Newspapers, television networks, magazines, websites, YouTube channels and individual commentators do not devote endless space to people whom audiences genuinely find uninteresting.
Attention follows interest. Interest follows people who provoke a reaction. And all of that attention can become very big business for the bottom lines of major media groups—and for the individuals who have built careers commenting on the Sussexes.
That is the Sussex attention economy.
But Their Children Are Different
Today’s school story nevertheless exposes the darker side of that attention.
Harry and Meghan chose public lives.
Archie and Lilibet did not.
There is an enormous difference between discussing Meghan’s Hollywood representation and creating an environment in which the movements of two young children become valuable information.
Whatever one’s feelings about their parents, children deserve an ordinary boundary around their lives.
And perhaps that is the uncomfortable final irony.
Harry and Meghan have spent years arguing that intense attention can become a security problem.
Their claims and decisions surrounding security have frequently been debated, challenged and scrutinized in the press.
And yet the continuing appetite for every microscopic development in Sussex life demonstrates something Harry has never really needed to prove:
People are watching.
Perhaps that is the strangest compliment of all.
For a couple we are endlessly assured have become irrelevant, Harry and Meghan remain remarkably difficult to ignore.
And perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth about attention:
Admiration can be masked by apparent disdain.
