Rumors about Prince Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle have been swirling lately amid the end of their multimillion-dollar deal with Spotify and as some reports claim that the Duke of Sussex has reached out to his brother in regards to a possible “truce.” While there is no hard evidence to suggest there is actually trouble in paradise, one of their fellow residents of Montecito, California, wrote about his experience with them, saying he was snubbed when trying to welcome them to the neighborhood. He also offered a pretty blunt reason for why he was surprised the royal couple moved there in the first place.
Frank McGinity is an 88-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who has lived a “tiara’s toss or two” from the Harry & Meghan stars since they relocated from London to California in 2020. Despite Montecito being somewhat of a celebrity enclave, McGinity didn’t see it as a place that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would want to settle down, as he explained in his memoir Get Off Your Street (via the Independent):
We don’t see them very much around here. It’s surprising they came here. People are typically older. It’s where the elephants come to die.
That is certainly a unique way to describe the neighborhood! The ocean town near Santa Barbara is home to celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, who dropped $14.8 million last year to purchase Oprah Winfrey’s Tuscan-style farmhouse in Montecito, thus also becoming neighbors to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The area features a long list of celebrities who call or have called it home, including Ariana Grande, Rob Lowe, Tyler Perry, Meg Ryan and Natalie Portman.
That selection, at least, features a pretty wide age range, and it doesn’t sound much like an elephant graveyard to me, but hey, I am no expert.
Frank McGinity, however, seems to be quite the expert, and that was apparently the reason for his visit to the Sussexes’ abode that had a less-than-ideal outcome. A synopsis for his memoir paints McGinity as a world traveler, with Get Off Your Street offering travel tips and insights from his adventures across all seven continents. In the book he said he went to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s home to deliver some films he had made about the history of the local area. However, he said he was stopped by security. In his words:
The gate guy turned me away and wouldn’t take the film, just saying ‘they’re not interested.’ I was trying to be neighbourly.
It certainly sounds like quite a thoughtful gift from Frank McGinity, but I can also see how the royals might have been wary of accepting items from people who show up at their front gate. This story is the latest in the near-constant scrutiny of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s actions, as the Duchess has been accused of staging paparazzi photos and not interviewing her guests on her Archetypes podcast, amongst other things.
Harry & Meghan is available to stream with a Netflix subscription, but while that gives fans an inside look at their lives, viewers aren’t able to see inside their Montecito home, as the docuseries was actually filmed in another mansion a few miles away.
