Chanel Pysnik is leaving Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Archewell Productions after 5½ years as head of nonfiction, film and TV, ending a run that began in May 2021 and helped shape the company’s early slate. She said it had been an honor to build the production outfit alongside Harry and Meghan for nearly six years.
Her departure matters now because Archewell is still working under a first-look deal with Netflix, even as the company has kept moving after Harry and Meghan went back to the UK in August. Pysnik was one of the people closest to that output: she worked as an executive producer on Harry & Meghan, which became Netflix's most-viewed documentary premiere, and on With Love, Meghan, which earned a Daytime Emmy nomination this year.
She also oversaw Archewell's first feature documentary, Cookie Queens, for Roadside Attractions, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, and had a hand in Heart of Invictus, Polo, Live to Lead and the short film Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within. Before Archewell, Pysnik was a nonfiction executive at Disney+ and, with credits including Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, American Dynasties: The Kennedys, The Story of Late Night, Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History and Unmasking a Killer.
Harry and Meghan said Pysnik was one of their first hires and had spearheaded the strategic framework for their unscripted work. That makes her exit more than a routine staff change; it removes a long-serving executive from a small production company that has been trying to keep its slate moving while its founders' lives keep shifting. The next question is simpler than the headlines around it: who, if anyone, takes over the nonfiction job now that Pysnik is moving on.
