Meghan Markle Is Just a Girl, Standing in Front of Fans, Asking Them to Love Her

In the opening scene of With Love, Meghan — Netflix’s new cooking and lifestyle show starring Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex — we are greeted by the woman herself, wearing a white beekeeper’s top and hood as she harvests honey in the garden of her home in Monetico, California. Or rather, as she observes the harvesting of the honey, done by her beekeeper. Turns out, though Meghan and her husband, Prince Harry, have had the bees for some time, she has never felt entirely comfortable facing them on her own. Toward the end of the scene, she turns to the camera and half-whispers: “It’s a reminder to do something that scares you.” 

It is perhaps also a reminder that, when doing something that scares you, it’s a good idea to have some help.

The eight-part series — filmed not in Meghan’s own home but, she acknowledges, in a rented house nearby that gives off impersonal Airbnb vibes — might as well have been designed to trigger Meghan’s critics, who, like a swarm of angry bees, are buzzing away in the background of everything she does. But from a branding perspective, the show has obvious potential. In theory, it should allow Meghan to break out of the cycle of endlessly re-litigating the couple’s feud with the royal family, while also giving her a chance to carve out her own public persona. (Harry is mentioned often throughout the program but features only fleetingly in the finale.) It is an earnest attempt to revisit the passions of the duchess’ pre-royal life, when she ran a lifestyle website called The Tig while starring on the fast-paced legal drama Suits.

With Love, Meghan has been swiftly renewed for a second season, but, as with most of Meghan’s post-royal ventures, it’s hard to escape the contradictions at the heart of her latest rebrand. She speaks often of how things don’t need to be perfect while striving to make them perfect. She betrays an obvious concern about how she’s perceived alongside a seeming lack of self-awareness. It all makes her core message frustratingly unclear. 

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Amid the constant public debate over who the “real” Meghan is, With Love, Meghan tells us something undeniable: She loves cooking and is not only very good at it, but also has a genuine passion for entertaining. The episodes give the distinct impression that many of the ridiculous things she does in them are not just for the show. Meghan is someone who really puts edible flowers inside of ice cubes. She really picks berries from the vines on her $14 million property and turns them into homemade preserves she mails to other celebrities. She really hand-assembles organic gift bags full of seeds and herbs for kids’ birthday parties. 

Yup, the Duchess of Sussex is that girl: a Type A, detail-focused person who has probably gone through life being an overachiever, like Gilmore Girls protagonist Rory Gilmore, or self-described “precocious kid” Taylor Swift. (Forget Meghan Markle, she’s more Marnie Michaels.) At one point, as she carefully hand-writes a brunch menu in neat lettering embellished with tasteful loops, she recalls getting an A-minus in penmanship class. “I’ll take the minus for a little bit of character,” she says, though it feels like she still remembers the name of that teacher and where they live.

This is the first issue the show runs into: Instead of letting her control-freak flag fly, Meghan constantly gives lip service to the joys of embracing supposed flaws. In the first episode, she is visited by Daniel — her former makeup artist and bestie who, surprise, also used to be beauty editor of The Tig. Upon arrival, she makes him a beautiful crudité board full of artfully arranged vegetables that looks like something out of a magazine. “This is imperfect, but it doesn’t have to be perfect,” she tells him, before he responds with what we’re all thinking: “It looks… pretty perfect.” 

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Next, Meghan puts Daniel through a domestic bootcamp. (Seriously, being her “guest” sounds exhausting!) First, she puts him to work helping her make a one-pot spaghetti, subsequently serving him around the amount I’d eat to check whether the pasta is ready. Next, they make candles together with wax from her bee farm. (She says it’s the first time she has tried candle-making, but I’m calling BS on that, sorry.) Finally, they decorate a cake using some of her homemade raspberry preserves. “It doesn’t have to be precious,” she insists yet again, while painstakingly decorating the top of the cake with fresh raspberries and tiny lemon verbena leaves placed just so. She keeps referring to her creation as the “cake that’s beautiful on the inside” (which she seems to think is a profound metaphor) when on the outside it looks like an edible work of art.

In another episode, as she makes crepes for a group of friends, she once again declares: “We’re not in the pursuit of perfection, we’re in the pursuit of joy.” It feels like an ideological rebuke of someone like Martha Stewart — a mogul who rose to fame by proudly aiming for the highest possible standards. Except, no matter what Meghan says, it’s very clear that she is a perfectionist. What might endear her to fans would be to admit that, while she might be that person, they don’t have to be in

order to incorporate some of her practices into their lives. Instead, we’re left with the image of someone who is so detail-conscious that she bought a fancy copper composting bin so it would look “pretty” on her marble countertop, constantly telling us at the same time that she’s super easygoing.  

As anyone who has ever met a perfectionist knows, these traits are often about a need for control. With Love, Meghan is produced by the Sussexes’ production company, Archewell Productions, and it’s clear that Meghan is being highly selective about what she shares here and what we’re allowed to see. There is no reference to her royal life or the Sussexes’ issues with both sides of their family. (The closest we get is when Meghan describes Daniel as being in her life “for the before, during and after, shall we say.”) 

Such is her need for control that Meghan sometimes seems less than comfortable with her guests joining her in the studio kitchen. (At one point, Daniel goes off-script and cheekily tastes a spoonful of her homemade raspberry preserve from the jar, which draws a pained expression from her.) By contrast, she is far more at ease — likeable, relaxed, and genuine — when some of her idols, including the chefs Roy Choi and Alice Waters, come to teach her their techniques. Here, it’s obvious that she admires their work and wants to ask thoughtful questions. (She also reveals a more engaging side of herself by answering theirs.) She seems much more comfortable in this supporting role — as an enthusiastic, gifted student — to the point where it’s a shame that this wasn’t the format of every episode. It actually suits her much better when someone else is in charge.

It often feels like Meghan’s guests have a better idea of what the audience wants to watch, too. Sure, it’s about the food and the Duchess of Montecito fantasy, but it’s also about being entertained. Mindy Kaling understands that a lot of fans have a fascination with finding out new details about Meghan’s life, and manages to extract juicy information from her — that she used to eat Taco Bell and pizza with hot sauce. “I don’t think anyone in the world knows that Meghan Markle has eaten Jack in the Box and loves it,” Kaling says. But rather than lean into the fun of the moment, the duchess corrects her. “It’s so funny too that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle.’ You know I’m ‘Sussex’ now?” she says, before launching into a sermon about how “meaningful” it was to change her last name. 

This moment stands out not only because it’s awkward — Kaling is just trying to joke around and, let’s be honest, everyone knows her as “Meghan Markle” — but because it demonstrates how Meghan can’t get out of her own way. Not only is she constantly renaming her brands — American Riviera Orchard was recently transformed into As Ever due to a trademark dispute — she’s also rapidly rebranding herself as she shifts from actor to activist to royal and, now, she hopes, lifestyle guru. It’s not uncommon for celebrities to reinvent themselves, but her identity can be difficult to ascertain when, as the Duchess of Sussex, she’s staging her own royal tours of Colombia while “Meghan Sussex” is selling us a polished and pristine home fantasy on a TV show. And with each pivot she takes, it feels like we’re the ones being scolded if we’re not meeting her exactly where she’s at.

Meghan’s inability to laugh at herself — or even give a winking nod to how she comes across, like Gwyneth Paltrow or Nigella Lawson often do — exemplifies that her problem isn’t her ambition to become a lifestyle mogul, but more how she is going about it. There are basic issues of execution. Why, instead of a selection of slightly random products (like ready-made crepe mix) does she not have a cookbook accompanying this show? Much more of a problem, though, is her confused narrative. At one point, surveying one of her luscious, green vegetable platters, she says: “It’s not deep, but it’s thoughtful.” It’s another Instagram-ready phrase that sounds good but seems to contradict her own message. Until this point, I was under the impression that she wants us to think there is something deep and meaningful about “elevating” (a word she uses constantly) everyday experiences. Yet again, the sense of wanting the best of both worlds follows her everywhere.

And at the heart of these contradictions is the constant tension over whether or not Meghan really wants to be royalty. In the Netflix docuseries Meghan & Harry, she mocked the pageantry of curtsying to the late Queen Elizabeth II, but she seemingly has no problem with people bowing to her, as they sometimes  do when she meets the public. In the credits for her cooking show, she uses her royal title — Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex — which is how she describes herself on Instagram, too. But in the show’s title, she’s just “Meghan.” Renaming herself “Meghan Sussex” feels like a way to bring these different versions together. Perhaps it’s so difficult to work out who she really is, or wants to be, because she hasn’t yet decided that for herself. If that’s the case, she would be better off presenting herself as a person whose identity is in flux — someone who, after a difficult period in her life, rediscovered her flair for entertaining. Life isn’t always perfect, but your crudité board can be.