Five episodes into With Love, Meghan, audiences will have learned three things about host Meghan Markle: she takes pride in making breakfast for her family every morning, her favorite tunes to listen to are ‘70s soft rock, Yacht rock and French dinner party music, and she no longer wishes to be referred to as Meghan Markle.
“It’s so funny that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle,’ you know, I’m Sussex now,” the Duchess of Sussex tells guest Mindy Kaling in episode two of the Netflix series. “You have kids and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children.’ I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me, but it just means so much to go, ‘This is our little family name.’”
Described on Netflix’s tudum platform as “a heartfelt tribute to the beauty of Southern California,” With Love, Meghan lives up to its name in that sense with the picturesque views of the mountains that can be seen from the backyard of Meghan and Prince Harry’s Montecito home, some 80 miles north of Los Angeles where she shares a homemade buttercream cake with her longtime friend and makeup artist Daniel Martin in episode one. Or the lush home garden from which she picks goldenberries for a rainbow-themed charcuterie board, harvests honey for beeswax candle-making and picks fresh vegetables for the meals she prepares for her guests, single-skillet spaghetti being one of them.
The dish is perhaps the most relatable aspect of the eight-episode series, which is arguably too perfectly shot for its own good as Meghan doesn’t so much as get a spattering of egg batter on her Zara pants, Loro Piana top or Jenni Kayne cardigan that’s draped around her shoulders when she comes to set early to bake a fresh frittata for Kaling’s arrival, much less share aspects of her personality outside of having a bright green thumb and a passion for home-cooked meals and hospitality.
It’s in that regard that the show doesn’t live up to its promise of a reimagined lifestyle program or “candid conversation with friends, new and old.” The closest the series comes to that is L.A. chef Roy Choi explaining the racism that underlies the negative reputation of MSG in food as they prepare to dine on Korean fried chicken and champagne in episode three. Otherwise, the show comes across as an oddly timed peek into how the other half lives.
With Love, Meghan has been criticized by critics as being out of touch since the release of the trailer on Jan. 2. Ten days later, Meghan announced she was pushing the original premiere date of Jan. 15 back to Mar. 4 as a result of the Los Angeles wildfires. However, with an economy many believe is on the brink of a recession and a socio-political environment in which the demographic most likely to be able to connect with the show’s trad wife aesthetic is equally likely to resent Meghan for her racial identity and her calling out the poor treatment she’s received because of it, it’s hard to see the lifestyle program as relevant or to anyone except Meghan and Harry, who inked a five-year deal with Netflix worth a reported $100 million in 2020. (A representative for Netflix told Vanity Fair in their February cover story “American Hustle,” which heavily critiqued Meghan and Harry’s bumpy transition from British to Hollywood royalty, “We don’t disclose our financial deals with talent, but I can confirm to you on the record that the $100M figure is not correct.”)
Nevertheless, watching With Love, Meghan, for all of its attempts at “practical how-tos,” it’s hard to discredit this nugget that producer Jane Marie, who worked with the couple as they were developing audio projects at Archewell, told VF of the duke and duchess: “They have this naivete and their hopefulness about what’s possible in terms of storytelling and good works and all those things.”
Immediately upon the show’s March 4 debut, criticisms roared in from both American and British press, categorizing the series as “an ego trip not worth taking” and an “exercise in narcissism,” adding that longstanding assessments of the former actress and Suits star turned American princess likely underscored Meghan’s reticence to share more of herself with her audience. To an already leery viewer, Meghan lacking the openness and vulnerability that would allow a naysayer to connect with and change their opinion of her doesn’t help. And while it’s unfair to ask Meghan to apologize for her wealth or the world she and her friends who join the show live in, the attempts at being aspirational, like remarking how sweet it is to build a balloon arch by hand for her kids’ parties rather than hire someone else to do it, fall flat when there’s no honest conversation about the difficulties of motherhood with fellow mom guests — an element that would better ground the series for viewers than the overuse of edible flower sprinkles.
Media and public scrutiny of Meghan has been both lengthy and unwarranted since she first became romantically tied to Prince Harry in 2016. Unfortunately, unlike her 2022 Archetypes podcast, which gave listeners a greater understanding of both who she and her guests were outside of the personas placed on them, With Love, Meghan, no doubt in its attempt to protect its host from greater critique, presents her as nothing more than a stereotype of a perfect wife and mother. Without the ingredient of relatability, which audiences crave more than anything, the series doesn’t serve up much more than fancy recipes that, according to the latest data on the price of eggs, most viewers can’t afford to make anyway.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
