The Guest List at Ted Sarandos's BEEF Party

Nicole Avant held Meghan Markle's hand and pulled her in for a hug on the front steps of her Montecito estate. The cameras caught it. They were supposed to catch it. Five weeks earlier, Netflix — the company Nicole's husband runs — had dropped Meghan's lifestyle brand As Ever. Every entertainment reporter in the country had written the breakup story. And here was the co-CEO's wife, holding hands with the woman the trades said was out.

The occasion was a "tastemaker" party for BEEF Season 2, hosted by Ted Sarandos and Avant on the evening of April 10. Lee Sung Jin, the show's creator, was the featured speaker. Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny — the season's leads — mingled with Nick Kroll, Lionel Boyce, and Orlando Bloom. But nobody was talking about the show. They were talking about who else was in the room.

Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-CEO who hosted the BEEF Season 2 party at his Montecito estate on April 10 — the same executive three Variety insiders described as "fed up" with the Sussexes just weeks earlier.© UKinUSA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Prince Harry stood next to Sarandos, smiling for photos. This is the same Sarandos that three Variety insiders described as "fed up" with the Sussexes just weeks earlier. The same Netflix that downgraded Harry and Meghan's overall deal to a first-look arrangement last August, after Meghan's show With Love, Meghan landed a 20% Rotten Tomatoes score for its second season and got cancelled. The Sussexes' attorney, Michael J. Kump, had written to Variety insisting that "Meghan texts and speaks with Mr. Sarandos regularly, and has been to his home." The photos from April 10 were the proof. Whether they proved the relationship is fine or just that everyone agreed to look like it is — that's the question the photos can't answer.

Harry had his own storm rolling in. Two days before the party, Sentebale — the AIDS charity he co-founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2006, in memory of Princess Diana — filed a defamation lawsuit against him and Mark Dyer in London's High Court. The charity alleged Harry orchestrated a damaging media campaign against it. His spokesperson fired back: "He categorically rejects the offensive and damaging libel claim. It is extraordinary that charitable funds are now being used to pursue legal action against the very people who built and supported the organisation for nearly two decades." So Harry showed up in Montecito with a Netflix deal hanging by a thread and his own charity suing him, and he smiled for every camera in the room.

Nicole Avant, Sarandos's wife, who held Meghan Markle's hand and pulled her in for a hug on the front steps — a gesture the cameras were meant to catch, five weeks after Netflix dropped Meghan's lifestyle brand.© U.S. Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Then there was the couple nobody expected. Katy Perry walked in with Justin Trudeau — the former Prime Minister of Canada, who stepped down in March 2025 and is still divorcing Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. Perry and Trudeau went Instagram-official in December 2025 after she split from Orlando Bloom in June. Bloom was also at the party. Just standing there, in the same house as his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, the former leader of a G7 nation. Trudeau's 18-year-old son Xavier had already given the relationship his public blessing, saying of Perry in a February Instagram video: "She's cool, she's nice. We talked for hours, talking about my music. She gave me advice and next steps for me."

Lee Sung Jin, the reason everyone was supposedly there, had just re-upped his overall deal with Netflix and is writing Marvel's X-Men reboot on the side. "Season two was even harder than the first," he said. "I wanted to take some big swings and risks while retaining what is special about the show." BEEF Season 2 premieres April 16 with eight episodes. Isaac plays Joshua Martín, a country club general manager. Isaac and his wife, Danish filmmaker Elvira Lind, had just premiered their documentary collaboration King Hamlet in Copenhagen earlier in 2026. He was one of the few people in the room whose biggest news was actually the show.

Netflix CCO Bela Bajaria had tried to wave off the Sussex drama a few weeks earlier, telling reporters: "Don't believe whatever you read." But that's the thing about a guest list like this one. You don't need to read anything. You just need to look at who showed up, who stood next to whom, and who smiled the hardest.

The Sussexes still have a first-look deal with Netflix and a polo drama in development, but no new Meghan-fronted series. Harry's defamation case proceeds in London. Perry and Trudeau headed to Coachella the next morning. And somewhere in the background of every photo from that evening, BEEF Season 2 exists — a show about the grudges people carry and the lengths they'll go to settle them. Fitting.