Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Allegedly 'Cut Staff By Two-Thirds' Amid Financial Pressure

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have allegedly slashed their workforce in California, cutting staff by around two-thirds in recent months amid mounting financial pressure on the couple.

The royal commentator Dan Wakeford, who is the former editor of People magazine, claimed in his 'Celebrity Intelligence' newsletter that Prince Harry's once-substantial inheritance from his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, and his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, has 'largely been spent.'

He suggested that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who left frontline royal life in 2020 and now live in Montecito, have been forced to 'cut back' and are currently 'wildly unhappy' with how their post-royal chapter is unfolding. None of these claims has been independently verified, and representatives for the couple have not publicly responded.

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle And The Shrinking Household

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their two children relocated to the United States after stepping down as working royals, arguing they wanted financial independence and greater control over their public roles.

In high-profile interviews, Harry has repeatedly pointed to his inheritance, particularly the money left to him by Diana, as a crucial buffer in the early stages of this transition.

According to Wakeford's account, that cushion may be thinner than many assumed. He writes that the Sussexes previously employed 16 full-time staff in the US, a number he says has now dropped to five.

The roles allegedly affected have not been specified, and there is no official staff list to cross-check those figures. If accurate, it would represent a steep contraction for a couple who were building a small but ambitious operation spanning media production, charitable work and public advocacy.

It is not unusual for high-profile households to quietly reshape their teams as projects launch or stall, and as legal, security and production costs fluctuate.

What makes this instance stand out is the suggestion that the driving factor is money rather than strategy, with Wakeford framing the cuts as evidence that the Sussex experiment in reinvention is running into hard financial limits.

Questions Over Inheritance And Income Streams For Prince Harry, Meghan Markle

Prince Harry has previously acknowledged that his inheritance enabled him to leave the UK. In televised conversations, he credited the money left by Diana as having 'saved' him at a moment when royal stipends and security funding were withdrawn.

Reports over the years have also pointed to an inheritance from the Queen Mother shared among the Queen's grandchildren, including Harry, though exact amounts and current values have never been officially published.

Wakeford now contends that 'most' of those funds have been spent. On what he does not fully detail, but the Sussexes' life in California is not a low-cost undertaking.

Their Montecito home, security arrangements, legal actions against sections of the media and the staffing of Archewell, their umbrella for charitable and commercial ventures, all come with substantial overheads.

Without transparent accounts, it is impossible to know how those costs align with their income from book deals, speaking engagements, and streaming contracts.

The couple's high-profile partnership with Netflix, which has yielded the documentary series Harry & Meghan and the film Heart of Invictus, was widely reported at the time as being worth tens of millions of dollars.

Their agreement with Spotify, however, came to an early end, and some planned projects never made it to air.

Wakeford's claim that Harry and Meghan are now 'cutting back' sits awkwardly beside the enduring image of the couple as global celebrity philanthropists.

If they are reducing staff from 16 to five, as he alleges, it suggests a conscious scaling down of their day-to-day operation. Whether that reflects a permanent reset or a temporary tightening is not yet clear.

Neither Buckingham Palace nor spokespeople for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have offered comment on Wakeford's specific assertions about their finances, inheritance or staffing levels.

There is also the perennial question of how much financial scrutiny is warranted for a couple who, after all, have chosen to leave formal royal duties precisely to gain more control over their private and commercial lives.

Supporters argue that Harry and Meghan are entitled to spend their own money without a forensic public audit. Critics counter that, as long as they trade on royal status and speak about issues such as mental health, misinformation, and institutional accountability, their own choices will remain subject to intense interest.

The picture painted by Wakeford is one of a household recalibrating under constraint rather than expanding at will. Until then, the idea that Prince Harry's inheritance is largely gone, and that the Sussexes have cut their staff by two-thirds, should be treated cautiously, as an allegation rather than an established fact.