Prince Harry's chief of staff has left after three months in the latest example of the couple's struggle to retain employees.
Josh Kettler joined the Archewell team in May a week before the couple toured Nigeria and joined them in the West African country as they promoted the prince's Invictus Games tournament for wounded veterans.
Kettler was also with Harry during a high-stakes visit to London that month for a service of Thanksgiving for the Invictus Games at St. Paul's Cathedral, which was broadly successful, though he was unable to arrange a meeting with his father, King Charles III.
The U.K. newspaper Daily Mail reported Monday that he had quit, though Newsweek understands he left by mutual consent having been hired on a trial basis.
All of the Sussexes' staff departures tend to draw attention after a period in December 2018 when The Sunday Times reported that some had found Meghan a challenging boss. The U.K. newspaper's headline coined the nickname 'Duchess Difficult,' which stuck in the British press for some time afterward.
The Sunday Times headline read: "Meghan loses second close aide, Samantha Cohen, as rumors swirl of 'Duchess Difficult'."
It later transpired Meghan had been privately accused of bullying two PAs out of Kensington Palace and making life tough for Samantha Cohen, her most senior aide, by then-communications secretary Jason Knauf in an internal email.
Now, the Sussexes are up to a reported 18 staff departures over six years, or an average of three a year.
Prince Harry and Meghan's U.S. Staff Departures
Some staff turnover is natural in any organization, but the existence of bullying allegations against the couple sets an additional backdrop to the discussion and some departures have come at awkward times.
In January 2023, Variety reported Oscar-nominated producer Ben Browning and head of marketing Fara Taylor had left Archewell the same month that Harry's book Spare and the couple's Netflix show Harry & Meghan appeared to prompt a collapse in their U.S. popularity.
A month earlier, Mandana Dayani left as president of Archewell, which Team Sussex said had been planned. Around the same time, Rebecca Sananes left after producing Meghan's Archetypes podcast.
Sananes issued a parting shot on social media, suggesting producers make podcasts successful, rather than the talent.
Bennett Levine, a production manager, also left in January 2024.
The History of Meghan Markle and Bullying Allegations
When the bullying allegations against Meghan were first published days before her 2021 Oprah Winfrey television interview, the couple's press team branded them a "smear campaign."
And she was dismissive when asked about the scandal by The New York Times during its Dealbook online summit in November 2021: "Firstly, I would urge you not to read tabloids because I don't think that's healthy for anyone.
"Hopefully one day, they'll come with a warning label like cigarettes do, like, 'this is toxic for your mental health,'" Meghan added.
"I think the way that I have now moved as my husband and I have started to build this together on our own, we're just doing it the same way as if we were employees of it, right; so, to treat people the way you want to be treated."
However, Prince Harry painted a more complicated picture in his memoir Spare, which described seeing palace staff hunched over their desks weeping.
The prince wrote: "Nerves were shattering, people were sniping. In such a climate there was no such thing as constructive criticism.
"All feedback was seen as an affront, an insult. More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept.
"For all this, every bit of it, Willy blamed one person. Meg. He told me so several times, and he got cross when I told him he was out of line."
Harry also addressed the departure of one of the PAs Meghan had been accused of bullying: "She was also said to have driven our assistant to quit; in fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she'd traded on her position with Meg to get freebies.
"But because we couldn't speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant's departure, rumors filled the void," Harry added.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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