Looks like Harry and Meghan have done it again — they’ve chewed up yet another American adviser.
Josh Kettler, the Santa Barbara-based consultant who’d been serving as chief of staff to the Duke and Duchess, reportedly resigned in August — after just three months on the job — becoming the latest member of the ever-expanding “Sussex Survivors Club,” as some former employees have taken to calling themselves. Before Kettler, there was Toya Holness, who was their global press secretary until 2022, and Christine Weil Schirmer, the onetime Pinterest communications director who quit as Harry and Meghan’s PR head in 2021. Samantha Cohen, Markle’s top aide and private secretary, departed the same year.
Earlier, there was Keleigh Thomas Morgan, a Sunshine Sachs partner who started repping Meghan when she was still a commoner (well, a TV star on Suits), adding Harry to her client roster when they became engaged and then helping them set up their own internal comms operation when the couple moved to California.
(Sources tell Rambling Reporter that Morgan stopped repping them around 2020, because the Sussexes stopped paying Sunshine Sachs for its services, though the PR firm denies that was the case.) Other members of the Survivors Club include Catherine St-Laurent, who lasted a year as head of the Sussexes’ charity Archewell; Archewell COO Mandana Dayani; content chief Ben Browning (who got Harry and Meghan’s documentary on Netflix before bolting for FilmNation); and marketing chief Fara Taylor.
Why’d they all leave? What explains the churn? “Everyone’s terrified of Meghan,” claims a source close to the couple. “She belittles people, she doesn’t take advice. They’re both poor decision-makers, they change their minds frequently. Harry is a very, very charming person — no airs at all — but he’s very much an enabler. And she’s just terrible.”
In 2018 Markle’s treatment of two royal aides prompted Buckingham Palace to investigate the then-princess for “bullying behavior.” Though the results of the inquiry were never released, Markle denounced the effort as a “calculated smear campaign.” But some of the couple’s stateside staff-members also reserve special bile for Markle, whose reported penchant for noisy tantrums and angry 5 a.m. emails has earned her the in-house moniker ‘Duchess Difficult.’ “She’s absolutely relentless,” says one source. “She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I’ve watched her reduce grown men to tears.”
Their unsparing portrait of her is in marked contrast with the kinder, gentler image Markle has been painting of herself. In recent years the former princess has become an ardent admirer of best-selling Texas self-help author Brené Brown, who urges readers to cultivate gratitude and joy in their lives. While touring Colombia with her husband last month, Markle said her new attitude of gratitude had lead her to a “chapter of joy.” “If you’re going to be grateful for your life, you have to be grateful for all aspects of it,” she said.
And in a recent episode of her Archetypes podcast, Meghan spoke about the challenges she has faced asserting herself and overcoming her natural reticence in professional situations. “I find myself cowering and tiptoeing into a room and – the thing I find most embarrassing – when you’re saying a sentence and the intonation goes up, like it’s a question. And you’re like, ‘Oh my God, stop stop like whispering and tiptoeing around it. Just say what it is that you need. You’re allowed to set a boundary. You’re allowed to be clear, it doesn’t make you demanding. It doesn’t make you difficult, it makes you clear.’”
Harry and Meghan’s current spokesperson declined to comment.
