Inside Harry and Meghan’s life in Montecito

Much has been said about what goes on behind the doors of the multimillion-dollar home in Montecito, California of Prince Harry and wife Meghan
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who recently launched The Archewell Foundation Parents’ Network and embarked on another unofficial royal tour, this time to Colombia, have been carving out a new life in the US since stepping down from royal duties in 2020.
Now, two royal experts have lifted the lid on what the lives of the couple and their two children look like today, including how they fund their lifestyle and if persistent rumours of a are true.
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Journalist and author Katie Nicholl has been the royal correspondent for Vanity Fair since 2010 and is regarded one of the world’s leading experts on the British royal family.
Nicholl, the author of the 2010 book, William and Harry, and Vanity Fair writer Erin Vanderhoof co-host the podcast Dynasty: The Royal Family’s Most Challenging Year.
During a recent episode entitled The Truth About Meghan, Harry, and Their California Dream, the pair shed new light on the family of four’s new lives in Montecito.
The couple and their children, Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three, live in Montecito – a “small Santa Barbara community” that is “popular with celebrities” such as Oprah Winfrey, who lives “down the street from them”, Vanderhoof said.
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“And they’re very close to the beach. They have, if I remember correctly, 15 bathrooms in their house,” Vanderhoof added.
“Archie has a chicken coop… [and] they’re kind of living the California dream right now.”
She said the home was much larger than their previous home, Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, which had five bedrooms and five bathrooms.
Nicholl said there was no doubt the Montecito mansion was a “vast improvement” on Frogmore Cottage.
“I think people have a bit of an impression that life in royal palaces is incredibly luxurious and extravagant and gold-plated,” Nicholl said.
“And I think the bits of the palaces that we see, you do see that, but the reality is there are buckets at Buckingham Palace collecting leaks from ceilings and the radiators often don’t work…
“It’s a far more lavish lifestyle in Montecito.” 
It is also much more private, according to Nicholl, something Harry had always craved.
The couple has a number of celebrity friends living nearby, with Vanderhoof rattling off the likes of Oprah, Kevin Costner and Ellen DeGeneres among their inner circle.
She said the couple spent their time attending charity events, going on hikes or going out for dinner with friends.
While Nicholl said she had been “underwhelmed” by the number of celebrity pals they seemed to have, she added, “I’m sure there’s a whole plethora of VIP dinner parties that are taking place at theirs that we have no idea about.”
Since setting up base at their $21 million Montecito home, Harry and Meghan have started what Nicholl called a “very successful media business” that has netted them multimillion-dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify.
There is also Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, which according to Guinness World Records, is the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time and earned “tens of millions of dollars more,” according to Vanderhoof.
While the co-hosts said the pair was still finding their feet, there was a very good reason for them to do so quickly: funding their new lifestyle.
“They’re earning a fortune,” said Nicholl.
“[But] it’s not cheap to run the mansion home that they live in and it’s not cheap to live the lifestyles that they live. So they need to continue earning because they’re not being bankrolled by the King anymore.”
One of their biggest earners was their reported $US100 million Netflix deal that resulted in the 2022 docuseries Harry & Meghan, which was hugely successful.
It also resulted in the 2023 documentary Heart of Invictus, which Nicholl said was less successful.
“Meghan has reportedly finished filming a lifestyle-focussed series,” Vanderhoof said.
“Harry and Nacho Figueras, the polo player, have a professional polo series coming out, [but] they’ve also had some failed projects.”
Meghan’s planned animated series, Pearl, was dropped by Netflix, in 2022, a year after it was announced.
Then there was their $US20 million Spotify deal, which spectacularly imploded after just one podcast series.
Vanderhoof said they wound up walking away with $US12 million after delivering just one podcast, Meghan’s 12-episode Archetypes series, leading to a Spotify executive labelling them ‘grifters’.
She said among Prince Harry’s unsuccessful podcast ideas was interviewing maligned public figures about their childhood to see what made them tick, and suggesting none other than Vladimir Putin.
Then there is Meghan’s new lifestyle business, American Riviera Orchard. 
Meghan took to Instagram earlier this year to tease the release of the brand with a video. A month later, others took to Instagram to share images of what appeared to be its first product – strawberry jam – but there has been no news since.
While rumours persist that the couple is on the verge of divorce, Nicholl said this was not true.
“I mean, there seems to be these rumours about the relationship being in trouble,” Nicholl said.
“But when I see them, I think they sort of have a chemistry that can’t really be faked. I think they look really in love and really happy and very tactile together. ”
Vanderhoof agreed rumours of divorce in the tabloids “just didn’t square up with anything that I was hearing from the inside.”
Nicholl said her sources backed these views.
“In fact, I was speaking to someone, a source right within their inner circle, and I asked them, ‘Is he really happy? Is he really enjoying this new life?’ And this person said, ‘Yeah, he is really enjoying his life.
“They’re earning a fortune. They’re shielding their children from the limelight, which Harry has always wanted to do… They’re living in the sunshine… And I think they are really happy.”