Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace, review: a grotesque car-crash scene plumbs new depths
The third in a trilogy of American made-for-TV movies about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan: Escaping the Palace turns out be the Return of the Jedi of the bunch. Tonally, it’s wildly different from its two predecessors, which aired on the popular Lifetime channel, and were so camp it was hard to tell whether they were terrible films or incredibly sly parodies of terrible films.
As it tells the story of “Megxit”, the defining drama of our age, Escaping the Palace is revealed to be decently made, proficiently acted and generally free of histrionics. Squint hard enough, and you could be watching a very cheap version of Netflix’s The Crown. It’s certainly little less tasteless or exploitative than the endless “exclusive” royal documentaries that Channel 5 and ITV have recently been churning out.
And that’s despite its grotesque opening set-piece. Escaping the Palace begins with a dream sequence in which Harry (Jordan Dean) witnesses the aftermath of the crash that claimed the life of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. Stumbling through the smoke, he opens the door of the car – only to find the prone body of Meghan (Sydney Morton)! It’s a crass sledgehammer moment that seems to set up the film as a pantomime retrospective on the events leading up to the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview in March.
That, however, makes it all the more disappointing that the 87-minute feature immediately calms down, and proceeds to recap the couple’s historic break with the Royal family in reasonably cleared-eyed fashion. Lifetime has built its reputation on demonic true-crime capers (with titles such as Fatal Honeymoon) and horrifically hokey biopics (such as Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland and the Lindsay Lohan-starring Liz and Dick, about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton). So how can it be that this retelling of the Sussexes’ departure for America feels so calm and stolid?
One possibility is that the genre of royal biopic has itself reached a critical mass of ludicrousness. The most recent season of The Crown featured a scampish Prince Andrew plonking his helicopter in the Queen’s back garden and then inviting himself in for tea. And in Kristen Stewart’s critically-lauded Spencer, we will shortly see Diana communing with the ghost of Anne Boleyn. How can a mere Lifetime movie compete?
The real-life soap opera, too, has often threatened to jump the shark. Whether it’s Prince Andrew’s no-sweat recollections about his time at Pizza Express, or the Sussexes showing Oprah their collection of animal-rescue chickens at their Californian mansion, how could a fictional script rival such events for indignity?
Escaping the Palace even has an entirely serious message about racism and the tabloid press’s treatment of Meghan. “You need to b----y well make a statement with me decrying racism,” Harry tells William. “As future king, push back on this bullying.” In scenes such as these, the Lifetime film plays with a straight bat, and unlike its two glossy predecessors, isn’t remotely amusing.
Instead of being poorly performed or iffily scripted, Escaping the Palace’s big sin is to be faintly stupefying. Firstly, we all know how this story ends (and it isn’t edifying). Secondly, the actors are apparently under strict instructions to resist chewing the scenery. Sydney Morton’s Meghan is thoughtful and kind; Jordan Dean’s Harry looks like Ed Sheeran back in his sleeping-on-the-Tube days.
In this Game of Thrones-esque tale of intrafamilial rivalry, William and Kate are similarly played by a disappointingly restrained Jordan Whalen and Laura Mitchell. They can act! Whalen looks realistically balding! At no point does it feel as though you’re watching a Spitting Image spoof brought to life! Even Bonnie Soper, as the Diana we meet in flashbacks, comes across as vaguely plausible. (Again, note that she refrains from nattering with an undead Anne Boleyn or, as in the most recent series of The Crown, rollerblading around Buckingham Palace while listening to Elton John.)
Thankfully, doing their bit for unintentional hilarity are Prince Charles (Steve Coulter) – presented as a confused Alan Partridge clone – and Keegan Connor Tracy as Kate and William’s stony-hearted PR advisor. She gets the movie’s killer line, when outlining her plans to sideline the Sussexes: “We shall use what I believe is called ‘cancel culture’.” If she is top villain, the role of deputy baddie goes to William. “Meghan is an American,” he fumes to Kate. “She acts more like a celebrity than a royal. She doesn’t appreciate the difference.”
And yet his determination to put manners on Meghan is eventually revealed to flow from a deep sense of duty towards the institution of the Crown – the same message that Peter Morgan has been hammering home with his Netflix series. If the monarchy comes tumbling down, William tells Kate, Meghan can go back to acting, adding that “I’ll be the guy who let a centuries-old institution fail. That will be my legacy.”
Escaping the Palace begins with the furore over Danny Baker’s Tweet, likening the Sussexes’ son Archie to a chimpanzee, and concludes with the couple receiving Oprah in their wicker-chair wonderland in Los Angeles. It’s just a few years in their lives – and an hour and a half of screen time. But goodness, Harry and Meghan 3: Woke-yo Drift is plodding – and without the promise of unintentional comedy at every turn, the entire endeavour feels pointless.
That said, royal-watchers counting down to the next season of The Crown may wish to seek it out. Because whatever else is to be said about Escaping the Palace, it’s competently put together. What a disappointment. On the other hand, Lifetime’s Prince Andrew biopic surely can’t be too far away.
Harry and Meghan: Escaping the Palace has yet to receive a UK release date