I imagine that most people would agree that Meghan Markle hasn’t exactly had the easiest time since leaving her acting career behind to marry Prince Harry in 2018. We all know that the years since have been filled with rumors about she and her husband and tension between them and his family, but since they left their royal duties the couple has attempted to launch a number of entertainment projects, including several for those with a Netflix subscription. Unfortunately, they’ve been struggling to get many of those projects off the ground, but at least Markle can say that Suits is dominating on the streamer.
How Well Is Meghan Markle’s Suits Doing On Netflix?
Though she earned her first on-camera acting credit for a 1995 episode of Married…with Children, it wasn’t until she debuted in the role of the talented and outspoken paralegal, Rachel Zane, on Suits in 2011 that Markle started to become a household name. Though she left the series in 2018, it’s clear that many fans still look on her time there, and probably the show in general, with fondness. According to Nielsen (via The Hollywood Reporter), the legal drama hit Netflix on June 23, and for the week of June 26 through July 2 it set a streaming record for views of an acquired show, with people watching for 3.14 billion minutes during that time.
Wait, I don’t think you read that right, and that’s my fault. In one week, audiences watched 3.14 billion with a big fat capital “B” minutes of Suits. I know that number sounds completely insane, but it’s even better news for the post-finale life of the show (which ended back in 2019) when you know that the previous record holder, Manifest, was viewed for 2.49 billion minutes in June 2021 on the same service before it became a Netflix original.
Additionally, the Suits numbers beat the two other shows with billions of viewing minutes for the week by quite a lot. The Witcher Season 3 nabbed only 1.31 billion minutes, while Hulu’s The Bear Season 2 hit 1.01 billion viewing minutes. Forget all that blockbuster “Barbenheimer” talk, y’all. This is Suits summer!
Seriously, though, with the way things have been going for the duo when it comes to their work in Hollywood, this might be the best news they’ve gotten in a while. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have had their Netflix deal since late 2020, and though the past few years have, obviously, been a tough time in which to produce series and movies, fans have only seen the royals’ incredibly popular but brutally reviewed Harry & Meghan docuseries and Live to Lead so far.
One of their many proposed shows, the animated series Pearl, was canceled by the granddaddy of all streamers in May 2022 before seeing the light of day, and it was just a few weeks ago that rumors ran around that their Heart of Invictus docuseries was also rumored to have been scrapped, but was later confirmed to still be on the books, though there’s no firm release date for it just yet. On top of that, while Suits is still dominating in Netflix’s Top 10 (it was at #6 as I wrote this article), their Spotify deal (reportedly worth $20 million) has been dissolved after the duchess delivered only one season of her podcast, Archetypes.
Hopefully, this success won’t be the last one they see at Netflix, as there are lots of people who are still very eager to see what kind of content the former working royals can turn out.
