How Sarah Ferguson’s 'Chaotic' Parenting Squandered Her Talk Show Dreams With NBC
Reports claim Fergie's daytime TV ambitions with NBC came crashing down after she abruptly flew to London, leaving her daughters in the care of network executives.
Sarah Ferguson has long tooted her own horn about being a 'good mother' to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, but insiders have alleged quite the opposite. On that note, a new report claims that Fergie's daytime TV ambitions with NBC came crashing down after she abruptly flew to London, leaving her young daughters in the care of network executives who had traveled to meet her. Moreover, she reportedly failed to apologize, nonchalantly returning two days later as if nothing had ever happened.
Writing on his Substack, Naughty But Nice, royal columnist Rob Shuter revealed that long before NBC crowned Ellen DeGeneres their leading face for talk shows, they were eager to work with Fergie and her signature chaotic charm. However, the network's ambitions derailed during a disastrous trip to the UK, when a group of American executives flew across the pond to finalize a deal for her own talk show, only to find themselves drafted as temporary babysitters. He quoted a source as having said, "Sarah suddenly announced she needed to go to London for a few days. The next thing they knew, she had left the NBC executives alone with Beatrice and Eugenie," completely vanishing for two days without any explanation.
Chiming in, another insider scoffed, "These folks flew overseas to negotiate a television deal. Instead, they found themselves acting like royal babysitters. There was no apology, no explanation—that was classic Fergie chaos." Interestingly, friends of the ex-Duchess alleged that she often used the phrase 'going into the fire' whenever she felt stressed and wanted to escape a situation. As for NBC, while they temporarily let go of the situation and did tape a pilot with her, they ultimately moved forward with The Ellen Degenrous Show. "They loved Sarah's energy. But they realized very quickly they could never trust her."
Unsurprisingly, this isn't the first time Ferguson has been accused of callously abandoning young Beatrice and Eugenie when things became too much for her. In his book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the Yorks, royal author Andrew Lownie argued that her photos with her daughters were "completely staged from beginning to end." Sources told him that, in reality, nannies reportedly hovered just out of frame, ready to whisk the girls away the moment the shots were taken. At public events, she would allegedly clutch Beatrice and Eugenie's hands for the waiting cameras, only to pass them back to their caretakers once the flashes stopped.
