In the two days since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made the bombshell announcement that they’re moving back to the United Kingdom after six tumultuous years in California, theories have been spinning about why the couple would want to return to a country that they’ve both depicted as racist, hostile and a genuine risk to the safety of them and their two young children.

It’s been especially hard for royal observers to wrap their heads around why Meghan wants to live in England again, given that the American former TV actor has become so widely unpopular with the British public — who feel betrayed by “Megxit” — that she refused to be seen in public with Harry during their trip to the U.K. in July.

Here’s one explanation for “the Sussex thunderbolt” — coming from famed editor and royal author Tina Brown, Daily Telegraph reporters Victoria Ward and Camilla Tominey, People magazine and Hollywood industry outlets.

Meghan has a new acting job, a return to her old profession after she’s struggled in her efforts to become a Martha Stewart-level lifestyle guru. People magazine, citing reports in Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, said the Duchess of Sussex, 45, is in “early talks” to appear in Season 3 of “The Gentleman,” a Netflix drama created by director Guy Ritchie. Season 2 premieres Sept. 3, while Meghan’s role in Season 3 “is currently being written, so it’s unclear how many episodes she would appear in,” The Hollywood Reporter said.

An acting job in the U.K. “allows Harry, at last, to get Meghan’s buy-in for his growing desire to get the hell out of paradise and go home to the world he understands,” Brown wrote on her Fresh Hell Substack.

The role would be Meghan’s first serious acting gig since leaving the cable legal drama “Suits” to marry Harry in 2018. “The Gentlemen” is a spinoff of Ritchie’s 2019 film, and it follows an English aristocrat who unexpectedly inherits his father’s country estate and learns it is being used by a criminal syndicate to run an underground cannabis empire.

But even if Meghan didn’t have a job waiting for her in the U.K., she reportedly felt she had no choice but to join Harry in moving back to his home country. He was so “miserable in California and increasingly unhappy with the life they built in Montecito,” entertainment writer Rob Shuter reported on his Naughty But Nice Substack.

Sources have told Shuter that the “marriage is in serious trouble — and moving back to the U.K. is their last attempt to save it.”

“They are not in a good place,” a source told Shuter. “Harry is deeply unhappy, and Meghan knows she cannot keep asking him to live a life that is making him miserable.”

“Meghan is not doing this because she wants to,” Shuter’s source further said. “She is doing it because she believes she has to. She does not want to lose Harry, and she knows something has to change.”

After the couple fled the U.K. on their “freedom flight,” complaining about the confines of royal life and the harsh, unrelenting scrutiny of the British media, they touted their potential to become fabulously wealthy media moguls, acclaimed philanthropists and global thought leaders. But in the process of trying to attain what they called “financial independence,” they alienated Harry’s family and their crucial ties to the royal establishment by doing a Netflix documentary and publishing a memoir that disparaged family members, the monarchy and aspects of British society.

It soon became clear that Harry and Meghan’s only creative capital was in their ability to dish royal dirt — and their source of material began to dry up as King Charles III, Prince William and other members of the royal establishment distanced themselves from the duo. Harry and Meghan eventually lost their lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify, including Netflix’s support of Meghan’s lifestyle show and her As Ever gourmet food products company.

The number of setbacks left Harry “moping around their nine-bedroom,16-bathroom Montecito mansion, suing tabloids, and instructing staff not to share any negative press with Meghan,” Brown reported.

“Tension around money (also) was ratcheting up as projects with Netflix and Spotify were either minimally renewed or bit the dust entirely.”

Another financial catastrophe struck the week Harry and Meghan were in the U.K, Brown continued. He “lost big time” in his privacy case against the Daily Mail, and is potentially on the hook with six other defendants, including Elton John, for $24.3 million.

Over the past year, Harry has made no secret of the fact that he wanted to spend more time in the U.K. and reconnect with “the country, family and sense of belonging he left behind,” Shuter wrote. Among other things, the king was diagnosed with cancer in early 2024, news that no doubt made Harry think he might not have much more time to make things right with his father.

Harry also made it known that he wanted his children, Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, to be educated in British schools and to have the opportunity to get to know their grandfather and even some of their royal cousins.

More cynical royal observers, including Brown, have said that Harry and Meghan need to get back in the king’s good graces sooner rather than later, especially with reports that William has considered stripping them of their royal titles once he ascends to the throne.

With their return, the king has made it clear that the Sussexes will live in the U.K. as “private individuals,” meaning they will not return to royal duties and they will not be given a royal residence to live in, as the Times U.K. reported.

But royal observers also see Harry hoping he can reestablish his relationship with the king and prove his value as a working member of the royal family. That way, he might be able to force William into reconciling with him — or to at least consider giving him a job again as a working royal once he becomes king.

“The move to the U.K. solves two identity crises for the Sussexes in one blow,” Brown said, especially given the report that Meghan has an acting job in the U.K. “It was Meghan’s fish-out-of-water misery in London that made a return to England so unlikely before now. … A job for Meghan frees Harry to make a last run at staying royal before his father dies and his brother ices him out for good.”

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