2.21.25 Newsletter

The Royal Appointment, Germany's Election, and a 'Bombshell' Entertainment Update

Are younger people becoming more conservative or is a conservative talent agency cultivating Gen-Z to spread their message on TV?

Incredible reporting from Byline Times led me down a rabbit hole of the new frontier of alt-right media that you’re going to want to see for yourself.

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Lots to get to but first, I have a little podcast I have not talked about enough with

Amanda Matta

called Off With Their Headlines. Episodes drop weekly and this week we discussed Meghan’s brand launch and Amanda sat down with the author of The Queen’s Spade, Sarah Raughley, to discuss her fictional account of real-life African goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Sara Forbes Bonetta (Aina).

It is a fantastic reimagining of what Aina’s life could have been and Black female rage that forces you to stare it right in the face and not look away. I cannot recommend it enough or the conversation with the author that also touched on similarities with, you guessed it, The Duchess of Sussex.

Royal Corner

The Royal Appointment

Subject Line: Oh to Be a Fly on the Wall

Last night’s Buckingham Palace reception looked like an absolute HOOT!

What reception? Well, Queen Camilla hosted famous actors of the National Theatre. Queen Camilla is a patron of the theatre, taking on the role in 2022 after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. If you’re a royal follower, you might be asking yourself, “Wasn’t Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, a patron of the National Theatre?”.

Don’t worry, we’re getting there.

The position was handed over to Meghan with “great ceremony” and was:

seen as a kind of personal recognition from the then Queen, as well as a sign that the palace had acknowledged and embraced her former acting career.

And now we transition into the tried and true narrative of, look how the royal family is thriving and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle continue to…not thrive? Again, we have to have tension to sell papers. She writes about Meghan’s brand launch:

As Ever, Meghan's launch video contained a lingering note of frustration that she hasn't been able to talk about cooking and gardening all these years, with her time in the Royal family now seeming merely a blip that thwarted her true ambitions of running an influencer-friendly lifestyle brand.

This is such a gross misinterpretation of what she said, not to mention its dripping with condensation. These are the same people who wagged their fingers at the idea of Meghan pursuing a career in politics (not something she has ever stated herself). But now that she’s literally going back to something she started years ago it’s a problem?

To finish the ‘sliding doors’ analogy, the writer brings up how the King visited Imperial College London to learn about developments in ‘battlefield combat and injury recovery” while Harry, you know, continued to build an impactful, healing sports competition for veterans, while spotlighting the need for better care post-service.

It is is exactly the sort of engagement Prince Harry would and should have been doing had he stayed.

Girl I know you weren’t invited to Harry and Meghan’s Nigeria tour, but you can visit hospitals without being a working royal.

In another lifetime, Prince Harry would have been front and centre of a job like this, fresh from his winter Invictus Games last week.

Prince Harry could be front and centre—or at the very least the Invictus Games—if the monarchy wasn’t so damn petty. It says a lot that acknowledging, or working with Invictus Games, is apparently detrimental to the British Royal Family. Or, maybe it’s a reminder that if they went with the half-in/half-out solution the couple proposed they could be doing this work on behalf of the British Royal Family! And, perhaps, if large swaths of the British media didn’t insist on covering Harry and Meghan like some villainous cartoon characters.

Politics

Germany Was Having Trouble What a Sad, Sad Story

(This is a line from The Producers, which will come into play at the end of the newsletter. It’s a theme dahhhlings.)

But seriously, there’s an election on Sunday in Germany and while the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) isn’t polling in first place, second place is a little too close to comfort. This is the closest thing to a modern-day Nazi-adjacent party. Since Germans actually learn their real history, this is incredibly disturbing.

Right now the favorite to become the next German Chancellor is the CDU’s (Christian Democratic Union) Friedrich Merz. The current Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who is a part of the Social Democratic Party, took over from Merkel in 2021. The SDP is currently polling third.

It is not surprising that a few years after the pandemic started, coupled with inflation, that we are seeing a rejection of the current party in power across the world. Germany is no different. The lack of confidence in our institutions is fertile ground for alt-right extreme groups to move in and offer a ‘viable’ option.

We’ve also seen a reaction to alt-right politics in recent elections. Take France for example. In July 2024, the first round of voting showed the Far-Right group and their leader, Marine Le Pen, leading the pack.

(Marine Le Pen is another one of these names that never seems to go away, floating in the bowels of human society like a Twinkie that never quite breaks down.)

French citizens were like, “yeah no” (in French obviously) and the second and final voting round a week later, the NPF (New Popular Front), the left-wing party, captured the most seats in the National Assembly.

Most likely, the conservative party will win in Germany this weekend. But even defeating the alt-right in one election, doesn’t mean they won’t regroup and try again.

Anyway, don’t make the same mistakes as us, Germany.

Pop Culture

Let Me Be Your Star

Smash, unfortunately only aired 2 seasons, but the fandom for the Broadway show within a show lives on. Now, Smash is headed to the Imperial Theatre on April 10th.

Vanity Fair has a lively piece on the genesis of Smash and one of its producers, a little unknown named Steven Spielberg, who wanted to create a new musical each season and then bring it to Broadway.

Ambitious, but ultimately undoable. What Spielberg wanted (and got) was a guarantee that the songs would all be original.

Thank you Spielberg.

Included in the Vanity Fair piece is why Smash ultimately fell apart. There were issues in the writers room:

Rebeck, according to reports at the time, wanted to deepen the characters by revealing more of their troubled domestic lives. Others wanted to stick to the drama of creating a Broadway musical […] Rebeck, one of the few female writers to oversee a network show back then, felt ganged up on by the mostly male producers.

Predictable.

The second season featured too many execs., too many subplots, and not enough direction.

How will the Broadway show differ from the musical? One of the writers, Elice, explained:

The premise of the stage version of Smash is that of a Broadway team trying to put on a cotton candy version of Marilyn Monroe’s life when everything goes horribly—and hilariously—awry. “It’s a rip-roaring comedy!” Elice, ever the ad man, pitched.

It kind of sounds like The Producers and, in that case, sign me all the way up.

Have a great weekend,

Meredith