Sarah Ferguson has failed to land a big money book deal in America, a senior Hollywood source has revealed.
Major US publishing houses have rejected a pitch for the former Duchess of York to write a tell-all memoir.
Fergie, 66, had been hoping to secure an advance “in the region of $2million (£1.49million),” according to the source, who added: “She ended up with a string of rejections and zero response at all in a few cases.
“It seems no-one is remotely interested in being seen to be enabling her to cash-in on the Epstein scandal that has torn her own family apart and completely ruined her ex-husband.”
Instead the former royal has been publicly shamed by the release of email exchanges revealing her closeness to Jeffrey Epstein, including one in which the late paedophile claimed to have been bailing her out financially for 15 years.
In another she thanked the billionaire financier “for being the brother I have always wished for” and in a third made a crude sexual reference to her and Andrew’s youngest daughter Princess Eugenie, now 35, who was 19 at the time.
Fergie once enjoyed a lucrative career across the pond, where she has worked as a roving correspondent for NBC’s Today show and appeared in numerous commercials as the public face of Weight Watchers, as well as becoming a prominent author of children’s books.
As this newspaper exclusively revealed last month, the former duchess is desperate to reignite that career after she and ex-husband Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, finally parted company when he was evicted from their former home – Royal Lodge in Windsor – early last month.
Our source said yesterday: “Any notion she might have had about keeping her American dream alive now seems to have been killed-off completely. Commercially, as the failed book deal shows, she’s become a pariah.”
That view was echoed last week by Andrew Lownie, author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, who said that the ex-duchess, who has not been seen in public for months, “will find it very hard to come back.”
Fellow British royal author Robert Jobson added in a US interview: “She was introduced to this (royal lifestyle) and has kept living it,” describing her as “desperate for money.”
Asked for a comment about her attempted book deal, a spokesperson for LA-based celebrity agency Artists First, which still represents her in America, said: “Don’t expect a call back on this.”