In my local park, the cherry trees have bloomed, which means the swarms have arrived — not of insects, but a species even more bothersome: influencers. There they stand, young women posing oh so spontaneously beneath the photogenic trees. Just as the blossom brings the influencer, so the influencer brings the influencer husband. He patiently takes photos of his beloved and exists to help her promote her brand. Never mind writing sonnets — this is how a man expresses his devotion today. And thanks to the strange quirks of history, the most famous influencer husbands in the world are Prince Harry and Alec Baldwin.
Let us start with Harry, who has just had a very dramatic week, although it’s getting difficult to remember when Harry last had an undramatic week. As you may have read, he and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho resigned last week from Sentebale, the charity they founded in 2006 in memory of their mothers to support children in Lesotho affected by Aids.
Everything about this story is sad, and it’s also sad to remember when Harry was best known for this kind of thing, rather than what he’s known for now. I’m old enough to remember 2005, when photos of Harry in a Nazi costume were splashed across British front pages, and, spurred on by that scandal, he began to search for some meaning in his life, and a life outside Britain. He spent more time in Zimbabwe with his then girlfriend Chelsy Davy (always clearly the most fun of all his girlfriends); he co-founded Sentebale; his unit was deployed to Afghanistan. A few years later he founded the Invictus Games for wounded servicemen.
This period, 2006-17, was peak Harry: the proactive, charity-focused, teasing-Usain-Bolt, sending-comedy-videos-to-the-Obamas Harry. He also had a loving relationship with his brother and father, and seeing Charles — once the human embodiment of emotional constipation — fondly embrace his sons at the London Olympics warmed even the most republican of hearts. All that bad blood — from Diana and Charles’s brutal divorce, followed by Diana’s even more brutal death — finally under the bridge.
Yet here we are now. In 2023 Sophie Chandauka was made chair of Sentebale, and things went swiftly south, to the point that the princes and the trustees have all resigned, and Chandauka has accused them of “misogynoir”. One of the trustees told The Times that the fault lay with Chandauka’s “almost dictatorial” style of governing. Chandauka, however, said yesterday that “the toxicity of [Harry’s] brand” had hindered the charity, and alleged that last year his team asked her to defend Meghan after negative media coverage: “I said no, we’re not setting a precedent by which we become an extension of the Sussex PR machine.” The Charity Commission is investigating, but, given how dependent Sentebale was on Harry’s popularity, it is a sad reflection of how much that’s now fallen if some want him out.
There is a bleak irony to Harry losing Sentebale so soon after the release of Netflix’s much-derided series With Love, Meghan. No need to pick over the carcass of Meghan’s attempt to join the influencer economy, but if Harry left Britain to find a meaningful life, is this really what he envisaged — smiling vaguely in Montecito as his nepo wife ties ribbons to plastic baggies of nuts in front of a camera crew? Surely it was more fun to muck about in Botswana than watch his wife express herself with crudités.
The Invictus Games were held in February, so the next ones aren’t until 2027. Without Sentebale, Harry is fast becoming just an influencer husband, a prop in Meghan call-me-Sussex’s aspirational-but-relatable-but-actually-aspirational content. Meanwhile, Harry has fallen out so badly with his family that he reportedly didn’t even know his father, 76, was in hospital for side effects from his cancer treatment until it was on the news.
The influencer husband — like the trad wife — poses the question: how much dignity should you sacrifice for love? Which brings me to Alec Baldwin, an actor I’ve always enjoyed watching. I’m going to assume readers are au fait with his recent dramas, including but not limited to: his Spanish wife, Hilaria, turning out not to be Spanish; firing the gun that killed the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins; suddenly producing as many children as I have tote bags (seven, since you ask).
Hilaria and Alec now have their own reality show, which one reviewer described as “a new low for TV”. New depths were plumbed two weeks ago when the Baldwins were being interviewed about the show. “It’s gonna be great — you’re a winner!” Alec said to Hilaria. “Oh my God, when I’m talking you’re not talking!” Hilaria bleated. “I’m sorry,” muttered Alec. “This is why we’ll have to cut him out of the show,” she said to the camera, apparently unaware her husband is the only reason she has a TV show, given he starred in Glengarry Glen Ross and she is a former yoga teacher from Boston who pretends to be Spanish.
Harry and Baldwin were unhappy in their shallow worlds, and looked to love for something deeper. Unfortunately, they chose partners entranced by the shallows. Their stories could be fables, if the end results weren’t so bathetic. Baldwin presumably has too many legal and childcare bills to walk away from reality TV, but Harry knows from his time in Lesotho that there is much more to life than generating content. There were good reasons for him to leave Britain, but his world since seems to have shrunk, not expanded. As Pink Floyd once said, possibly as a warning to influencer husbands, don’t exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage.
