After her Spotify disaster – is Meghan about to bring back The Tig? Duchess pays paperwork to restart lifestyle blog, she paused for her short time as a working royal

She was criticized as “not a great audio talent” by a Hollywood bigot after her Spotify series was canceled, so it’s no surprise that Meghan Markle plans to retreat to more familiar territory.

I can reveal that the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle blog, The Tig – which she left in 2017 as she prepared to marry Prince Harry – is set to make a comeback this fall.

After filing for a trademark for the blog last November, The Tig has now received a so-called Notice of Allowance document from the US Patent and Trademark Office, as no other company has contested its trademark.

Now Meghan, 42, only needs to provide a statement of use, proving the blog is active, to get the trademark fully registered.

Thanks to the six-month time frame for providing this document, Meghan will either have to do it all in October or pay for another six-month extension.

The application to relaunch the blog, which Meghan marketed as a “hub for the discerning connoisseur,” was first filed in July 2021 by LA attorney Marjorie Witter Norman, but stalled when Meghan failed to file the trademark application. signed.

Documents show that The Tig will include interior design, travel and – perhaps to the horror of the royals – ‘commentary on personal relationships’.

Meghan set up the site in 2014 when she was an actress in the legal drama Suits and named it in honor of her favorite Italian wine, Tignanello. She closed the site in 2017.

United Talent Agency boss Jeremy Zimmer criticized Meghan in June saying, “Turns out Meghan Markle wasn’t a great audio talent, or necessarily any talent at all.”

It was revealed last week that Netflix paid £3 million for the film rights to a romance novel called Meet Me At The Lake that Meghan and Prince Harry will produce.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex bought the rights to Carley Fortune’s romantic novel Meet Me At The Lake at an estimated cost of up to £3 million.

Fortune’s second novel, a New York Times best-selling author, is a romance about two long-lost lovers, Will and Fern, whose paths coincidentally cross ten years after first meeting and sparks fly between the pair.

The book has just the right formula to raise millions for Netflix, movie expert and founder of Movie Metropolis Adam Brannon said last week.

And insiders claimed earlier this month that Prince Harry and Meghan’s Spotify deal ended prematurely because there was too much “red tape” and they were “not given a formal explanation” that would cause them to fail.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s lucrative Spotify project was dramatically pulled after they spent three years producing a 12-episode podcast and celebratory special.

The pair also reportedly failed to produce enough content to receive the full payout from the reported £18 million deal they signed after stepping down as senior working royals.

But an Archetypes production source claimed that Harry and Meghan “had a lot of ideas and pitched them” — though the project was delayed by massive amounts of red tape between the two parties and “things moved very slowly on both sides.”

It was reported that the source said last week, “They weren’t given any formal ground to get things started, so they were on shaky ground before the ink was dry.”

That’s what another source close to the Sussexes told me People magazine that they were held to a higher standard than others, and had “a lot of things that are in different stages.”

They told the publication, “Very few other production companies measure up to what actually gets on the air.”

They noted that royal life was “not a world they wanted for their family” and that their later career choices reflected that.

Joe Quenqua, a senior media strategist, told the magazine that the couple’s Archwell brand was suffering from “serious growing pains,” while a royal insider said “there wasn’t necessarily a five-year plan” when Harry and Meghan left the UK for the US in early 2020 .

The defense of the royal couple’s podcast episode ideas follow claims in June that Harry suggested interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin about his “childhood traumas.”

During brainstorming sessions, he apparently got the idea to talk to ex-President Donald Trump and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about their formative years and how those experiences made them the adults they are today.

Spotify’s initial announcement for 2020 referred to both Harry and Meghan producing and hosting multiple “podcasts.”

But Meghan only completed one, about the social stereotypes surrounding women in 2022, as well as a joint half-hour Christmas edition in 2020 with a group of celebrity friends and their son, Archie.

The couple also faced an attack from fellow Spotify podcaster and senior executive at the company, Bill Simmons, who called them “grifters.”

While “industry sources” blamed the Duchess for faking several interviews on her show.

The alleged insiders claimed that Meghan interviewed the show’s staff with her guests before the audio of her voice was edited in the final episodes.

Podcast-focused outlet Podnews said “multiple sources” have claimed that “some of the interviews on the show have been done by other staffers, with (41-year-old Meghan’s audio) questions added after the fact.”

However, the site has not highlighted any specific episodes where this could apply.

In a joint statement emailed, Spotify and Archewell Audio, Meghan and Harry’s production company, said in June that they have “mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we have created together.”

Sources close to the Duchess also went out of their way to say that she wants to move her Archetypes series to another streaming platform.

Following news that the Spotify deal had been cancelled, rumors circulated that the pair’s £80 million Netflix deal, signed in 2020, could meet the same fate.

But the streaming platform spoke out in support of the pair, with a Netflix spokesperson saying: ‘The bond with Archewell Productions is one we value very much. Our exciting journey with them is not over yet.’

There are still questions about what’s next for the Duke and Duchess, but in June experts suggested that Meghan could become one of the highest paid influencers in the world, with £200,000 per post to endorse brands.

The Duchess did not respond to requests for comment.