Meghan to Edward: Royal showbiz flops, but late Queen got it right

She does not undertake official royal duties, but Princess Märtha Louise of Norway’s daughter is no stranger to the glamorous world of showbusiness.

Now Leah Isadora Behn, 21, has taken on another television challenge after joining the Norwegian version of Strictly Come Dancing.

The royal made her “magical” debut on Skal vi Danse last week, scoring 24 out of 30 points from the judges for a romantic foxtrot performed with professional dancer Andreas Holst Hiim.

Encouraged by the strong start, beauty influencer Leah, who is sixth in line to the Norwegian throne, said she was ready to “show all of me” in an Instagram caption accompanying a clip of her first routine.

However, Leah Behn’s appearance on the ballroom dance competition is not her first television venture. Last year, she appeared as a “Faithful” in the fifth season of the Norwegian adaptation of the BBC hit The Traitors.

Although she was eventually “murdered” in the game, King Harald V’s granddaughter kept viewers entertained with her “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” strategy. She now appears poised to win over Skal vi Danse fans, too.

Through her television appearances, Leah Behn has joined a long line of royals, including members of the British Royal Family, who have ventured into entertainment. Only a small number, however, have achieved lasting success.

From Prince Edward’s “humiliating” appearance in It’s A Royal Knockout to Meghan Markle’s Netflix cooking show, which was not renewed, several royals have struggled on television. The late Queen Elizabeth II, by contrast, somehow managed to get the balance right.

Those who got it wrong…

Prince Edward

Even now, it stands out as one of the strangest examples of royal television ever broadcast.

It’s A Royal Knockout saw senior members of the Royal Family dress in costume and take part in absurd games with celebrities. The programme was a royal spin-off of the BBC’s long-running Saturday night game show.

Created by Prince Edward, the royal edition appeared to set a new standard for lèse-majesté. Some commentators argued that it permanently damaged the public image of the monarchy.

Filmed at Alton Towers theme park in June 1987, the programme pitted four celebrity teams against one another in a series of outlandish challenges. The participants included John Travolta, George Lazenby, Toyah Willcox, Gary Lineker and Barbara Windsor.

The team captains were Prince Edward, a seemingly reluctant Princess Anne, disgraced former prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. They guided their celebrity teams through seemingly endless obstacle courses involving tumbles, collisions and plenty of water.

Guest host and television star Su Pollard later recalled that it was “so cold it was hard to stay enthusiastic”, adding that the cast had to keep smiling while the cameras repeatedly cut to their faces.

According to royal author Ingrid Seward, the Queen Mother, who was 87 at the time, was furious about the programme. She reportedly told her grandchildren that she had spent decades protecting the monarchy’s reputation, only for them to appear determined to destroy it in a single evening.

The public-relations disaster deepened when Edward walked out of the subsequent press conference after reporters made clear that they considered the show a failure.

“Never in living memory had the monarchy contrived to make itself look so ridiculous,” historian Dominic Sandbrook wrote in Our News Outlet.

‘And when Edward stormed off in a huff at the end, angry that the Press failed to share his enthusiasm for the event, it only added to the sense of chaos and humiliation.’ 

After the press conference, Edward was dubbed ‘Prince Brat’ because of his outburst. 

When he asked reporters if they had enjoyed themselves, he received only a muted response. ‘Well, thanks for sounding so bloody enthusiastic. What have you been doing in here all night?’ he lashed out. 

He stormed out of the event after journalists laughed when Edward asked them what they thought of the programme.

Writing in 1996, the Queen’s biographer Ben Pimlott said the monarch viewed it as a ‘terrible mistake’ but was prone to indulging her children’s passions.

One source told the author the Queen ‘was against it’ but added, ‘one of her faults is that she can’t say no.’

The show was widely panned at the time, with Our News Outlet columnist Craig Brown noting: ‘Traditionally, members of the Royal Family lend dignity to events, but in this case they lent embarrassment.’

Meghan Markle 

Despite being one of the most famous women in the world – and having prior acting experience with Suits – her time in Hollywood after marrying Prince Harry did not perhaps turn out the way she would have liked. 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were lured to California by the promise of financial independence and quickly signed multi-million dollar deals with top entertainment companies – Netflix and Spotify. 

The streamer offered them a reported $100million to produce a roster of documentaries, films, children’s shows and scripted entertainment that would ‘inform’ and ‘give hope’. 

But last year, their original deal with Netflix ended after the LA-based business offered the Sussexes a more limited, ‘first look’ agreement and did not renew Meghan’s lifestyle show. 

Former Suits actress Meghan, 45, tried to establish herself as a television personality through With Love, Meghan, the glossy Netflix lifestyle series featuring the duchess cooking, entertaining and dispensing hosting tips from a rented California home.

But the show was deemed ‘out of touch’ and ‘tectonically tacky’ in scathing reviews before ultimately being cancelled by the streamer after the release of its Christmas special episode last December. 

Meghan and Harry’s $20million deal with Spotify proved even more disastrous after they could not meet the enormous production expectations of the streaming service. 

However, the deal was eventually scrapped too; the only show that saw the light of day was Meghan’s Archetypes podcast which ran for just 12 episodes in 2022.  

By June 2023, Spotify and Archewell Audio announced that they had ‘mutually agreed to part ways’.

Meghan eventually returned to podcasting with Confessions of a Female Founder, this time through Lemonada Media – but by then the dizzying excitement surrounding the Sussexes’ arrival in America seemed to have dissipated. 

In yet another flop, Cookie Queens, executive produced by Harry and Meghan through Archewell Productions, follows four Girl Scouts as they compete in the high-pressure world of cookie selling. 

Meghan personally helped promote the documentary, discussing her own childhood experiences as a Girl Scout before its theatrical release.

Yet according to reported Box Office Mojo figures, the film managed approximately $354,000 from 446 theatres on its opening weekend. 

To add insult to injury, it was beaten by CatVideoFest 2026, which pulled in £421,334 despite airing in 191 fewer screens than Cookie Queens.

In August, there was intense speculation that Meghan had landed a guest role in Guy Ritchie’s gangster drama The Gentlemen ahead of her and Prince Harry’s return to Britain. 

However, Ray Winstone, who plays crime boss Bobby Glass in the hit show, laughed off the rumours in an interview with Romesh Ranganathan, 

Asked whether Meghan would be joining the cast, Ray, 69, said: ‘What? Who? I’ve never met her.’   

Sarah Ferguson 

Before the Epstein scandal forced the disgraced former Duchess of York into hiding amid public scrutiny, she loved the limelight. 

Sarah took part in two fly-on-the-wall documentaries, including The Duchess in Hull, which was aired on ITV1 in 2008. The film followed Sarah living on a council estate and advising the family of Tonia and Mick Sargerson on changing their diet.

The following year, she went to the Wythenshawe estate in Manchester, where Channel 4’s comedy-drama Shameless was filmed, to make The Duchess on the Estate. The idea was to help transform it into a thriving local community.

She drew a degree of ridicule for ‘hoodie hunting’ in the evenings, as she put it, in an attempt to meet the locals. ‘You toffee-nosed git,’ was one of the politer greetings.

Around the same time Sarah made Duchess and Daughters, Their Secret Mission, roping in Beatrice and Eugenie to travel with her to Romania and Turkey to investigate their treatment of children in orphanages.

But the programme, which aired on ITV on November 6, 2008, caused a diplomatic row when Turkish officials accused her of launching a ‘smearing campaign’ against the country.

In 2011, she hosted Finding Sarah, a six-part documentary on Oprah Winfrey’s new cable network OWN.

The ex-duchess spoke to experts including a psychologist, a financier and a life coach about her troubles, covering her parents’ divorce, her relationships, weight problems and the cash-for-access scandal.

‘I’m doing this because I need to heal my mind, body and spirit,’ she said at the time.

She claimed that she regretted divorcing Andrew and disclosed that her mother had criticised her as a toddler telling her: ‘You’ve got the sign of the Devil.’

The 2011 TV show, for which she was reportedly paid £200,000, was accompanied by a book Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself.

However, she sold fewer than 1,000 copies of the book, according to figures released by Nielsen BookScan, which monitors sales in the publishing world.

Her debts were eventually paid after Andrew, who was stripped of his titles over his friendship with Epstein, mounted an operation to save her from bankruptcy.

The debts were repaid at an average rate of 25 pence in the pound and included a £15,000 payment to Johnny O’Sullivan – Fergie’s former assistant – made by the late Jeffrey Epstein, millionaire financier and convicted paedophile.

In a grovelling apology, she said accepting the money had been a ‘gigantic error of judgment’ and promised to repay it.

Peter Phillips  

While Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall has followed in her equestrian footsteps, her son Peter Phillips has immersed himself in various business ventures – with the occasional controversy.

Among the most famous of these was in 2020 when Peter deployed his royal status to sell Jersey-produced milk in China in a famously cringeworthy advert.

In a television commercial for Bright Dairies, shown on the country’s Dragon TV, Peter was seen being brought a glass of milk by a butler.

‘This is what I drink,’ he said against a tagline reading: ‘British royal family member, Peter Phillips.’ 

However, such overt exploitation of his royal status raised eyebrows. Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant said at the time: ‘This is enough to curdle the cream on your breakfast cereal. They’re demeaning the very essence of the monarchy.’

Jazmin Grace Grimaldi  

Jazmin, 34, is the eldest daughter of Prince Albert of Monaco, born as a result of the royal’s affair with Tamara Rotolo, a waitress turned American estate agent. 

She has had bit roles in film and TV projects over the years, but has failed so far to break into the industry in a meaningful way. 

These include an uncredited part as a casino girl in one episode of The Marvellous Mrs Maisel in 2019, although she does appear as Angie Bowie in the upcoming Idris Elba production The Chelsea Cowboy.

She also has two singles out – one called Fearless and another titled Thankful – but both appear to have been drowned out by reports of her lavish lifestyle instead. 

…And those who got it right 

Sophie Winkleman 

In his bombshell memoir Spare, Prince Harry claimed his father said Meghan Markle could continue her life on screen rather than become a working royal after their wedding.

But while the Duke and Duchess declined King Charles’s suggestion, Sophie Winkleman has proved that it’s perfectly possible to pursue a successful acting career while wedded to a member of the Royal Family.

Those less acquainted with the royals might know her better as Big Suze in Channel 4’s Peep Show, or as Zoey in Two And A Half Men – but alongside her glittering on-screen career, she has long been an asset to the Firm.

The actress, 46, has maintained her understated nature since marrying her prince charming, Lord Frederick Windsor, 47, the eldest child of the Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, in a glittering ceremony at Hampton Court Palace in 2009.

After their wedding, the couple lived and worked in California, where Cambridge-graduate Sophie landed a recurring role in the hit sitcom Two And A Half Men, alongside Ashton Kutcher for five years until 2015.

Despite lucrative work offers in the US, the actress returned to the UK after the show ended so she could stay close to her daughters, Maud, 12, and Isabella, 10. 

Now, she continues to juggle acting projects with charity work. Sophie was most recently cast as the Duchess of Rochester in ITV’s costume drama, Belgravia: The Next Chapter, based on Julian Fellowes’s book. 

Other notable roles include The Countess in Wonka, starring Timothee Chalamet and Olivia Colman, and single mother Kathleen in the BBC’s This Is Going To Hurt in 2022. 

Alongside starring in hit shows, she serves as a patron for the charity School-Home Support to amplify the voices of disadvantaged families grappling with homeschooling hurdles and has stood in the cold selling copies of The Big Issue to call for action on homelessness, to name a few.

It’s a presence so impactful yet decidedly low-key that royal biographer and historian Richard Fitzwilliams believes the mother-of-two should serve as the ‘template’ for future generations of royals. 

Speaking to Our News Outlet, Fitzwilliams said: ‘She is big on stage, screen and television so, along with being a member of the extended Royal Family, is a fascinating template for its future members.’

Queen Elizabeth II  

Daniel Craig has shared screen space with many acclaimed actors during his career, but one co-star in particular left a lasting impact. 

The former Bond star described filming a scene with the Queen for the London Olympics in 2012 as ‘an incredible thing’ while admitting the country will never again see the likes of the late monarch.

The world saw a more spirited side to Her Majesty when she made a cameo appearance in director Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the Olympic Games.

In the comedy sketch, Craig, 58, who played British spy 007 in five consecutive films, called at Buckingham Palace to summon the Queen to the event.

The Queen, who was sitting at her writing desk, made him wait before greeting him with the words: ‘Good evening, Mr. Bond.’

They walked together, along with some of her corgis, towards a helicopter and set off, flying over London to the Olympic Stadium, concluding with a stunt double of the Queen parachuting into the arena.

Seconds later, the real Queen, wearing the same peach dress as the stunt double, entered the stadium to rapturous applause. 

But the Queen’s sketch with Paddington Bear was hailed by Britons as even better than the Olympic cameo. 

Her Majesty delighted audiences of the televised BBC’s Platinum Party at the Palace at her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022 with an appearance alongside the fictional character – in which they both enjoyed a chaotic cream tea at ‘Buckingham Palace’.

The beloved late monarch and the famous bear tapped out the beat of the We Will Rock You anthem together on china teacups using silver spoons to get the celebrations under way. 

The Queen also revealed she shares Paddington’s love of marmalade sandwiches and keeps an emergency stash in her trademark Launer handbag in the sketch filmed at Windsor Castle. 

The bear from deepest darkest Peru congratulated the Queen on her reign of 70 years, saying: ‘Happy Jubilee Ma’am. And thank you. For everything.’ The modest Queen replied: ‘That’s very kind.’ 

Paddington writer Simon Farnaby, who appeared alongside Elizabeth as a footman, later revealed how she nailed her lines after being told to speak ‘like you’re talking to your grandchildren’. 

Count Nikolai of Denmark  

Denmark’s Count Nikolai captured international attention in 2018 when he walked in the Burberry show at London Fashion Week, before a front row that included Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Michelle Dockery, Naomi Watts, Zendaya and Idris Elba.

He is signed to Scoop Models agency in Denmark and has been enjoying high profile modelling gigs ever since. In February, he sent royal fans into a frenzy when he graced the cover of Vogue Scandinavia.

The 22-year-old oozed sophistication when appearing in the magazine and looked effortlessly stylish in a matching pink Dior jacket and trousers as he posed in front of a number of colourful flowers.

When he is not modelling, Nikolai is studying Business Administration and Service Management at the Copenhagen Business School.