Duke and Duchess of Sussex to present new Netflix documentary series
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to present a new documentary series on "effective leadership" for Netflix.
Live to Lead has been made in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation and is inspired by the late South African leader.
It will be released on December 31 and features seven, 25-minute episodes comprising interviews with climate change activist Greta Thunberg, the late associate justice of the US Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, feminist campaigner Gloria Steinem and New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ahern among others.
The series will mark the second Netflix offering from the Duke and Duchess following their six-part documentary, Harry & Meghan, which was released in two parts earlier this month.
In a trailer released on Monday, the couple speak alternately as they say: "This was inspired by Nelson Mandela, who once said: ‘What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived it is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead’.
"This is about people who have made brave choices to fight for change and become leaders. And giving inspiration to the rest of us to live, to lead."
Sussexes are executive producers
Netflix said the series would allow "extraordinary" leaders to "reflect on their legacies and share messages of courage, compassion, humility, hope and generosity".
It said the programme would "highlight the fundamental values, daily disciplines and guiding principles that leaders employ to motivate others and create meaningful change".
The series was created by New Zealand-based production company Blackwell & Ruth and produced in association with the Sussexes’ Archewell Productions and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
The Duke and Duchess are named as executive producers.
It is based on I Know This to Be True, a series of interviews first produced as books by Blackwell & Ruth, in conjunction with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, in 2020.
Each individual is asked questions about their values, daily disciplines and thoughts on the world. Further book titles are expected to follow, raising the prospect of a second series of Live to Lead.
In the trailer, Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020, says: "At every turn in my life, I thought ‘do I really want this’? And if the answer’s yes, you find a way."
Steinem adds: "Leadership mainly means ‘by example’. We do what we see way, way way more than what we’re told."
Another contributor, Bryan Stevenson, a US lawyer and social justice activist, says: "We actually have to make a choice to do uncomfortable things."
Meanwhile, Albie Sachs, an anti-apartheid activist and former lawyer, is filmed saying: "Don’t follow your dreams, follow your life. Your dreams follow you." South Africa’s national rugby union team captain and social inequality campaigner Siya Kolisi will also feature.
The trailer states that "their voices give us hope, their actions shape our world".
Series part of couple's $100m Netflix deal
In July, the Duke delivered a keynote speech at the UN headquarters in New York to mark International Nelson Mandela Day.
He revealed he had a photograph of Mandela with his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, taken just five months before her death in 1997 "on his wall and in his heart every day".
And he said that the ongoing "global uncertainty and division" had inspired him to "go back to Mandela’s writings" for insight into how to find light in the darkness.
The new series will mark a change in tack from the Sussexes who used their Harry & Meghan documentary to take aim at the British media and the Royal family, claiming that palace aides were prepared to lie to protect Prince William, but not them.
The Duke also accused the publishers of the Mail on Sunday of causing his wife to miscarry.
The couple signed a deal said to be worth around $100 million with the streaming giant in 2020.
Meghan’s first solo project for the streaming platform, an animated series called Pearl, was dropped in May. But a documentary called Heart Of Invictus, about the Duke's Invictus Games, is due for release next year.
Live to Lead will come just ahead of the publication of the Duke's memoir Spare on January 10.
