Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel says the Duchess of Sussex is still getting booked for reality and TV projects at WME, even after he personally stepped back from her account.
Ari Emanuel told broadcaster Megyn Kelly that Meghan Markle remains on the William Morris Endeavor roster and that other agents there are lining up “reality stuff and TV stuff,” while he is no longer her day-to-day representative.
The comments land after Emanuel confirmed he and the duchess parted ways on personal representation last year. The choice, he said, was his. She signed with the Beverly Hills powerhouse in April 2023 for content production and brand partnerships, joining a team that at the outset included Emanuel, Serena Williams’s agent Jill Smoller, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s agent Brad Slater.
Daily Mail reporting on the Kelly interview captured Emanuel’s blunt description of the handoff and the work still moving through the agency.
Emanuel framed the split as bandwidth, not a public break with the client.
He told Kelly he runs TKO, has launched a new company, and keeps a full client load. He said he did not want Meghan’s account occupying his head every morning the way hands-on clients do.
"Listen, I got a busy life. She is finding her voice, I am happy for her. The great thing I hope as a parent of starting William Morris Endeavor is there's people here that they can handle stuff and handle clients."
He went further on the workload.
"And for me, I just had a lot on my plate with I've started a new company, I run TKO, I have clients. And it was better to let them deal with her and execute against her needs and her desires. And I'm happy that everybody's doing it for me."
Earlier this year, reports claimed WME had dropped her and that she had not met with Emanuel since January 2024. Multiple sources told the Daily Mail at the time that he was off her personal team but that the agency still represented her. WME had previously insisted it continued work tied to Archewell projects with Prince Harry.
In a Sunday Times magazine interview last month promoting his memoir, Emanuel put the distance more starkly.
"Here's the great thing: I don't have to think about that any more."
Kelly pressed him on whether the duchess’s slate was producing bookings and money. Emanuel would not detail titles or networks. He said other people at the agency are handling it and that he is not involved.
"I think she's actually getting booked and there's reality stuff and TV stuff. They're doing stuff. I don't know about it."
He compared the shift to parenting. He has four children and said agents at WME have been trained to do the job without him hovering.
"I don't want to be a helicopter parent. And here at the agency, agents can go do their job. They've been taught really well. They are doing their job. Fantastic."
Rumors have swirled that Meghan could appear in a third season of the Netflix series The Gentlemen. Emanuel did not expand on that tip when it came up.
The booking talk arrives as the Sussexes manage another stretch of public friction with the royal household and a carefully staged return to British soil. After six years based in the United States, Harry and Meghan came back to the United Kingdom with their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, and quickly faced questions about status and protection.
A letter sent on the King’s instruction last month insisted they should be treated as “private citizens” on that return, a line that, according to the coverage, surprised the couple. They have also traded public statements with Buckingham Palace over security arrangements. Their children’s school journey raised enough concern with the security team that the family moved schools.
That security sensitivity is not new around Meghan’s public profile, including past episodes such as a phone number leak that triggered a security review.
On the ground in Britain, the couple have leaned on charity optics. They are set this Thursday to visit the Community Recording Studio in St Ann’s, Nottingham, a youth and community charity that began with music access and now offers creative activities, sport, mentoring, and youth development. It is billed as their first joint engagement since the latest UK return.
Reactions to that homecoming have been mixed in the same circles that once watched every palace step, a pattern also visible when Smart Works welcomed the UK return while Cotswolds neighbors stayed cool.
They are reported to have settled into the Cotswolds rather than folding back into senior royal routines. They are thought likely to spend Christmas with Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, 70, in California, not at Sandringham. In August they appeared at a David Foster Foundation 40th anniversary event in Canada.
Lifestyle messaging has not always matched the camera trail. Experts have noted how Cotswolds photos with Ellen DeGeneres undercut quiet country-life claims, feeding the same scrutiny that follows every rebrand.
Emanuel, the Chicago-born executive chairman long treated as the real-life model for the Ari Gold character in HBO’s Entourage, built Endeavor in 1995 and merged it with the William Morris Agency in 2009. Ghostwriter John Moehringer, the same writer behind Harry’s January 2023 memoir Spare, worked on Emanuel’s book Roll the Calls. Emanuel and his wife, Sarah Staudinger, were photographed at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023, not long after Meghan’s WME signing.
For Meghan, the April 2023 deal was sold as a bridge into production and partnerships after the royal exit. The intervening years have included high-profile swings and misses on the entertainment side, including the report that she lost a Guy Ritchie casting after fierce British backlash.
Personal branding efforts have sometimes veered into the surreal, from charity-floor appearances to collector oddities such as a personalized book for Princess Eugenie listed on eBay at a steep price.
Emanuel’s newest remarks do not name a network, a format, or a premiere date. They do state that WME agents are still packaging her for reality and television while the man who once led the account has deliberately cleared her from his morning mental load.
He told Kelly the move had “nothing about her.” He needed to shift focus to other priorities and could not stay “rangeful” on her behalf the way he does for clients he still steers himself.
That is the picture he offered: a duchess still inside a major Hollywood machine, still being pitched for the unscripted and scripted pipeline, and no longer sitting on the super-agent’s personal priority list.
When the palace exit was sold as a leap into authentic independence, the fine print still looks a lot like booking calls, brand packaging, and agents working the reality aisle.
