Brian Robbins and his wife Tracy at the Jamaican premiere of Bob Marley: One Love in January 2024. Photo: Getty
For television In a series called Legacy, Jesse Armstrong's satirical black comedy-drama featured very little about the royal family.
Luckily, for those who were disappointed by this omission, the British royals appear to be making a cameo appearance in real life. -a life-hijacking saga spanning the media family that owns Paramount Global and partially inspired the HBO series. And not just any royals, but the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Harry and Meghan are close friends of Brian Robbins, the conglomerate's CEO, and his wife, fashion designer Tracy. The couple live just steps away from each other in Montecito, California, and were first spotted together at the January premiere of Paramount's reggae biopic Bob Marley: One Love in Kingston, Jamaica.
The former royals' visit to the Caribbean country raised eyebrows, not least because they were photographed with Prime Minister Andrew Holness. Holness has made no secret of his desire to replace the monarchy — Harry's father, the king — with a republic. Meghan married her first husband, American film producer Trevor Engelson, on a Jamaican beach in 2011, and Harry toured the country the following year to mark the late queen's Diamond Jubilee. But other than that, the couple has no obvious connection to the island. What the hell were they doing there?
It was later revealed that the Sussexes had been flown to Jamaica on a private Bombardier jet parked by Paramount Pictures, sparking simmering rumors that the pair might try to capitalize on their newfound friendship to revive their flagging media careers. Spotify dropped them from the £15m deal after Meghan's podcast flopped — and an executive publicly called them «bloody scammers» — while their Netflix slate was cut to a polo documentary and a cooking show. Their £80m deal with the streamer expires in 2025; the couple clearly needs all the Hollywood friends they can get.
Tracy Robbins' Instagram post about her fruit jam on the American Riviera — a gift from the Duchess of Sussex. Photo: Instagram
The foursome are so close that Tracy was one of 50 people to receive a jar of Megan's strawberry jam, one of the first products from her American Riviera Orchard brand. Her jar was number 17, and she took to social media to say she wouldn't share it with anyone. It is unclear whether her husband was also included.
Then, in May, the Sussexes celebrated their sixth anniversary with a double date, accompanied by the Robbins, at Lucky’s Steakhouse in Montecito, where steak costs a whopping $175 (£137) and Dover sole will set you back $72. Robbins, unusually for a Hollywood executive, has a lot in common with the duchess. Like her, the former actor and director once starred in a hit TV show before becoming responsible for a series of flops (including Eddie Murphy’s fart-obsessed comedy Norbit). And like her, he was met with ridicule when he tried to change careers. They certainly had plenty to talk about.
But there's one topic that probably hasn't come up at the dinner table: Paramount-owned South Park, which poked fun at Harry and Meghan for their «worldwide privacy tour» in a 2023 episode. Still, if Harry and Meghan decide Paramount is the place to revive their fortunes, they may be disappointed: Robbins, through no fault of his own, may no longer have his job.
As the couples' friendship became public knowledge, Paramount, the legendary giant behind films like «Top Gun» and «Forrest Gump,» began to attract suitors including the scion of a tech billionaire, Japanese rival Sony and private equity firms.
Brian Robbins with Paramount owner Shari Redstone, May 2024. Photo: AFP
Paramount is controlled by Shari Redstone, who, from a continuity perspective, is the Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) to Logan (Brian Cox) of late patriarch Sumner Redstone. Redstones National Amusements owns 77 percent of Paramount's voting shares, giving the family enormous say over the future of the company, which is being forced to sell itself as it struggles to adapt to the streaming world and loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
Last week Paramount's board agreed an $8bn (£6.3bn) deal with Skydance Media, the production company run by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle and Sir Tony Blair's backer Larry. But at Tuesday's annual general meeting, Ms Redstone kept investors guessing whether she would approve the sale and instead expressed «confidence» in Robbins and his fellow executives, who are nonetheless unlikely to remain under any new regime.
Robbins, 60, was named as one of the three bosses to replace Bob Bakish after he was ousted by Redstone in April. “Brian didn’t have a typical resume,” Redstone said of the executive in an interview with Variety last year. “He has his own view of business. I want us to move, change and look to the future, and I feel like Brian is making sure we don't get left behind.”
His rise is the culmination of a long and varied journey for Robbins. The family was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Blood Brothers actor Floyd Levin and his wife Rochelle. When Robbins was 14, the family moved to Los Angeles to help Levine get bigger and better roles.
This is Brian Robbins from Head of Class!!
#Splatterday #CellarDweller pic.twitter.com/XPqyAZspd4
— AllFlickering Against the Dying of the Light (@allflicker) July 16, 2023
As a child, Robbins would talk to his father before auditions, and eventually dropped out of UCLA to try acting himself. Levine suggested he take his mother’s maiden name so he could be seen as a human being, not a Nepo kid. Roles in Knight Rider and Growing Pains followed, and then he got his big break as a precocious teen on ABC’s Head of the Class. “It was amazing,” Robbins told Variety last year. “I was 18 years old, and I was on one of the biggest shows on television.”
Although his role as Eric Mardian brought him a certain level of wealth and fame, Robbins became much more interested in what the sitcom's writers and crew were doing. He eventually decided that his future lay behind the camera. «Acting wasn't my thing,» he said. «I didn't want to be over 50 and auditioning for guest roles on CSI. » For a year after joining the show in 1986, Robbins wrote episodes. «He was just very cocky,» Howard Hesseman, who played the teacher on the show, told the New York Times in 2002.
Robbins discovered that he had a knack for determining what young audiences wanted to see. and in 1995 created All That, a Saturday Night Live-like sketch comedy program for Nickelodeon. Other hits followed: the 1997 film Good Burger (based on a Nickelodeon sketch starring Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell), the Superman series Smallville and Samuel L. Jackson's Coach Carter.
While in charge of the class, he met Dan Schneider, who became a frequent collaborator, especially at Nickelodeon. Schneider, creator of iCarly and Drake & Josh has become a lightning rod in recent years for controversy over allegations of sexual harassment and the creation of a toxic workplace culture for often child stars. The 58-year-old is the subject of a five-part documentary, Quiet on the Set, which outlines allegations during his time at the children's network. I definitely owe some people an apology,” Schneider said after the documentary aired, although he has denied allegations of abuse and is currently suing the producers.
Brian Robbins with Eddie Murphy on the set of Norbit Photo: Alami
One actress, Laurie Beth Denberg, told Business Insider in last month that she told Robbins she was concerned about Schneider's treatment of Amanda Bynes, star of «The Amanda Show,» which Robbins' company produced, but he did nothing. Robbins has not responded to the allegations against Schneider.
Some of Robbins' film projects failed miserably. The worst was perhaps Norbit, the supposed 2007 comedy he directed and which starred Eddie Murphy as both the title character and his abusive, obese wife. Norbit was so bad that it was blamed that year for costing Murphy an Oscar for an entirely different film, Dreamgirls.
Robbins tried to put on a brave face. “The only films that get good reviews are the ones that no one watches,” he said. “I just don’t think you can make films for critics.” Some in the entertainment world still call him «Norbit Man», and «not Norbit himself» is considered the main rule of the awards campaign.
A couple of years after this difficult period, he stopped directing due to the strain it placed on his family life (he and Tracy have three children), and Robbins moved into management roles. He commissioned a slew of shows and films, including Nobody's Fool, which was directed by Sussex's superfriend Tyler Perry, before Redstone convinced him to become president of Nickelodeon in 2018.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the premiere of Bob Marley: One Love as guests of Brian Robbins Photo: Marcus Ingram/Getty Images
Three years later, he became head of Paramount Pictures, putting him in charge of a giant studio that was nearly a century old. His hits include Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible and Transformers, and he is currently prepping Ridley Scott's Gladiator sequel for a fall release. Robbins was hailed for making the counterintuitive gamble of releasing PAW Patrol in theaters (to much ridicule from Norbitian critics) rather than immediately streaming it on Paramount™ last year. It exceeded all expectations, grossing over $200 million at the box office on a budget of just $30 million.
If Robbins does have some free time at the end of the Paramount takeover saga, could he be the man to help the Sussexes achieve their goal of becoming Montecito media moguls? Their production company Archewell has seen a huge churn (its head of television, Bennett Levine, who left in January 2024, has yet to be replaced), and their friend Brian is impeccably connected and has a proven track record of getting things done. Norbit or not, they'll be lucky to have it.
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