In the first episode of Netflix’s new series “With Love, Meghan,” the series’ host is visited by a friend from a past life. Make-up artist Daniel Martin has known Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, “for the before, during and after, shall we say,” she tells the camera. In other words, he’s been around since she was simply the television actress Meghan Markle (a name, she later tells guest Mindy Kaling, she no longer uses), before the media circus that attended her wedding to Prince Harry and their subsequent break from the royal family, up to the present day in her life in glam exile in Montecito. A friend of such long standing deserves to be celebrated, and so, over the course of a whirlwind episode, Meghan prepares “teabags” of bath salts; arranges flowers; harvests honey; makes a pasta dish, crudité, and beeswax candles; frosts a cake; and brews “this elixir that I think will be so healing” for Martin’s allergies.
The grind, for a star for whom this show may represent a last stand at holding on to her place in the public eye, never stops. And yet all of this effort is carried across in an on-camera attitude that resembles Meghan’s on-camera wardrobe: Well-tailored and beige. In that first episode, Meghan — less-than-adept at speaking on her feet — tries out seemingly endless repetitions of the one-and-a-half-entendre “let’s get some honey, honey.” She reaches for a we-get-it metaphor about how the cake she frosts might not be appreciated for its exterior until one discovers the wealth of filling within. And she’s fleetingly haunted by the spirit of “it’s a good thing” domestic doyenne Martha Stewart — a figure who, vastly more than any of Meghan’s royal in-laws, looms over these proceedings — while picking berries, telling the camera “the sweetness of this fruit is a real thing.” When her old friend remarks that the peas Meghan serves are particularly beautiful, “like green pearls” (in other words, you know… peas), one senses that, in him, Meghan has found a kindred spirit.
That’s because “With Love, Meghan” exists as a sort of celebration of all things Duchess of Sussex — and, as with past of her media outings, no amount of praise seems enough. Each episode features a jumbled timeline whereby Meghan hosts a friend of hers, famous or not, then jumps back in time to show how she prepared the food or the tablescape. Then, back in the present, she once again recaps what we just saw, so that the guest may marvel at Meghan’s ingenuity. All play along — many guests are Meghan’s real-life friends. But some lay it on thicker than others. Kaling recalls receiving a jar of preserves from Meghan’s brand American Riviera Orchard, which was entirely retooled before its new launch under the name As Ever. Those preserves, Kaling says, represented “probably one of the most glamorous moments of my life.”
To get to visit Meghan’s serene, unruffled world represents a sort of fantasyland moment for her guests (not least because, as Meghan indicates, the show is not in fact shot in her home but in a house provided for the purpose — raising the question of what this show, billed as a look into Meghan’s homemaking style, is even about). “I feel like this is all fake,” Meghan’s makeup artist friend tells her, as they gaze out on a mountain vista after a jam-packed day of little projects. He said a mouthful: Meghan’s particular sensibility, a clean and traditional-meets-modern mélange, runs up against the limits of having to fill eight long episodes with only a certain number of new ideas. And so, through repetition, Meghan’s quirks come to seem like affectations, from the multiple times she remarks on the beauty of an egg yolk to her dedication to placing “edible flowers” on just about any comestible.
This show follows in the wake of various other Meghan-branded projects, from the upbeat podcast “Archetypes” to the revealing Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan,” that have failed to connect: The podcast was perhaps too vague, while the targeted and tactical approach of the doc left viewers wondering whether Meghan had anything specific to say not rooted in her experience of the royal family. “With Love, Meghan” makes that answer seem further away, as its star seems unwilling to step outside the role of perpetual A student. In one episode, she bakes donuts for the chef Roy Choi, telling the camera “I need to impress this man! Not just with my donuts — with my tidiness, with my kitchen savvy, my cleanliness.” It’s unsurprising that, on presenting Choi with the treat, she says in a rushed, breathless tone, “Do you believe my little donuts? I made them for you,” but it is a little surprising that this moment was left in the cut.
Martha Stewart, who modernized the homemaking-show template in which Meghan now operates, lives in a state of serene superstardom; Ina Garten, for my money the best to ever do it, exudes let’s-have-a-drink chill in part because her knowledge is genuinely boundless. Meghan either lacks similar competence or feels constrained from sharing it, and so her insights, or the way she talks about them, can feel as canned as a limited-edition American Riviera Orchard preserve. She muses to the camera that it’s possible one might want to label a jar of homemade chili oil, but it’s not strictly necessary: “Your cue on this one will be, you see the chilis in it.” (Thanks, Meghan.) When informed that the dumplings she may dress in said chili oil are called “ingots” for their resemblance to forged bits of gold, she replies, “I love hearing the meaningful stories behind things!”
That’s precisely the problem. So much of “With Love, Meghan” is devoted to trying to gin up capital-M Meaning that Meghan seems to forget that the only reason anyone would do any of this — whether that’s bake a cookie dappled with edible flowers or watch a lifestyle show — would be because it’s fun. Since her first forays out in public life after the genuinely sympathetic Oprah Winfrey interview of 2021, Meghan and her husband Harry both have seemed confident that interest would naturally follow them. But there isn’t enough here to justify the running time, nor its star’s belief we’ll keep watching.
The show plays out like a forced march, one in which Meghan’s guests must, as the price of getting to share an afternoon in a made-for-TV kitchen with her, praise her first. It’s no less than Alice Waters, the effective inventor of a California-upscale culinary aesthetic in which Meghan now exists, who comes to help Meghan prepare a brunch party to thank her loved ones for their support as she tries to launch an all-around lifestyle brand. But she’s gone by the time the frittata is served. “Thank you for loving me so much and for celebrating with me,” she tells the assembled parties at the season-closing brunch; she also announces that Waters helped her prepare the food, to which an unidentified guest says: “Amazing. Wow.”
Then, in his one appearance on the series, Prince Harry, Meghan’s husband, calls out a toast. “To you!” he shouts. To Meghan, indeed. “With Love, Meghan” is made with a great deal of love — in the sense that the greatest love of all is the one that a person has for herself.
