The concept of Netflix’s new lifestyle series With Love, Meghan seems simple enough: Here is Meghan Markle — or, as some know her, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. She is a beautiful woman that you’ve heard about in the news, with an aesthetically gorgeous life that in all likelihood is quite economically far from your own. Wouldn’t it be nice, Netflix seems to ask, to let Markle tell you the supposedly easy things you could do to make your life, in some small way, resemble hers? Well. You’d think so! But this is Meghan thee Markle we’re talking about. The public’s reaction to her is never, ever going to be simple.
“If you thought With Love, Meghan….would be a smug, syrupy endurance watch, and that you would rather fry your eyeballs than sit through it, I have news for you. It is so much worse than that,” wrote The Times columnist Carol Midgley. “Is it as bad as we feared?” asked Telegraph writer Allison Pearson. “Oh, far worse than that, dear reader, but at least it has the makings of an accidental comedy classic.” Wait, here’s one more: “Meghan Markle is beautiful,” Kirsten Fleming wrote for the New York Post. “She is also boring, vapid, and entitled.”
So yeah. Instead of going down smoothly, With Love, Meghan has sparked criticism around its star’s supposed unrelatability, snobbery, and lack of a personality. If two out of three of those descriptors scream dog whistle to you — ding ding ding! Welcome to the fascinating, infuriating world of Markle hate, where the racist double standards are strong.
When it comes to Meghan Markle it takes a keen eye to differentiate between fair critiques by media professionals and the rampant misogynoir that’s followed her since the moment her relationship with Prince Harry was announced.
Not all criticisms against With Love, Meghan have been inaccurate or unfair. In her Vulture review, Katheryn VanArendonk called With Love, Meghan “an utterly deranged bizarro world voyage into the center of nothing, a fantastical monument to the captivating power of watching one woman decorate a cake with her makeup artist while communicating solely through throw-pillow adages about joy and hospitality.” And honestly? What a bar. It’s also a reminder: When it comes to Markle it takes a keen eye to differentiate between fair critiques by media professionals and, uh, the rampant misogynoir that’s followed this woman since the moment her relationship with Prince Harry was announced. Some people are just doing their jobs, telling us if a new TV show is belabored or boring. Others have a vendetta — some sort of point to prove that Markle’s every move is offensive. The latter often involves calling Markle some craftily hidden synonyms for “uppity.”
So how do we parse the discourse around With Love, Meghan? Is the hate justified? Or is it just another case of the internet piling on a Black woman for not meeting its irrational standards? And does the rubric on which the public and the press alike grade Markle even make sense?
To understand With Love, Meghan it’s imperative to remember how we got here. This particular narrative arc started in 2014, when Markle founded her lifestyle blog The Tig. As Markle’s version of Goop, The Tig was about living a worldly life, broadening your horizons, and aspiring for beauty and wellness in the everyday. In 2017, when Markle became engaged to Prince Harry, she shut the brand down — a sacrifice to help smooth her path into royal life. But…well…as some other British guy once said, “the course to true love never did run smooth.” That was definitely the case here.
As a working royal Markle’s every move was scrutinized, from her choice of nail polish (entitled!) to her love of avocado toast (drought…causing?). Every action or tiny shard of personality revealed to the public was put under a microscope and used against her. Markle’s pride in having good handwriting became supposed proof of her being “emotionally insecure and self-pitying”; the letter she wrote at age eleven protesting a sexist dish soap commercial made some see her as “aggressive and brandish.” To put it simply: The woman couldn’t catch a break. Ever. Not once.
The press and the public’s relationship to Markle has been rooted in misogynoir since the moment her relationship with Prince Harry became public. They called her “straight out of Compton” and used a white woman’s alleged tears to vilify her. Markle was so horrifically treated by the press, the public, and reportedly the royal family that the experience very directly drove her to suicidal ideation. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore,” Markle told Oprah. In 2020, as a direct result of all of the above, Markle and Prince Harry stepped back from their senior positions in the royal family.
Without the financial backing provided to senior royals — and with their son Prince Archie to protect — Markle and Prince Harry needed money, and fast. They needed a new place to live that could shield them from paparazzi scaling walls. They also required extraordinarily expensive security detail to protect them from daily death threats. So they signed many-million dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify.
Read that last paragraph again and ask yourself a question: Is relatability really a fair scale to judge Meghan Markle on when those are the realities of her life?
With Love, Meghan feels like a grasp backwards in time, an attempt to reclaim what was lost when Markle shut down The Tig. It’s got the earnest energy of the 20-teens. But oh so very much has changed in Markle’s life since then. Those changes — a desperate need for privacy, security, and to placate the masses — put With Love, Meghan between a rock and a hard place. It can be hard to connect when there is a clear layer of protective armor between host and audience.
Much has been made, for example, of the fact that With Love, Meghan was not filmed in Markle’s own Montecito home, but in a rental nearby. “Our kitchen is where Mama just cooks for the family,” Markle told People about her decision to protect her home space, “and with a crew of 80-plus people, that’s a lot of people to have in your house!” In many comments sections and media critiques alike, her choice to film elsewhere has lent itself to accusations of inauthenticity.
But let’s make something clear: The vast majority of this genre of show are filmed on sets. Martha Stewart Living may have started at Stewart’s own home, but it eventually moved to a studio. The Martha Stewart Show and Rachael Ray were both filmed in front of studio audiences. Giada DeLaurentiis’ Giada At Home was filmed at a rental. It’s no coincidence that these white women didn’t face the same intense scrutiny for doing what lifestyle shows do. With long hours and an 80-person crew, filming in a designated workspace is the most practical choice. That’s without even taking into account Markle’s extraordinary circumstances — like the paparazzi known for casing and planting cameras around her residences. If that was your daily reality would you want to make the layout of your home public? Because I wouldn’t.
With Love, Meghan is as gentle and benign as can be. Markle emphasizes in every episode that “we’re not in pursuit of perfection, we’re in pursuit of joy.” But for a lot of people following Markle’s every move anything other than perfection is unacceptable. She knows that, and we know that. As a result, privacy and discretion are the unspoken core of With Love, Meghan. And that creates some of the problems people are picking up on.
“Meghan lovingly mentions the kids throughout – Archie is partial to goldenberries, Lili has a patented clean-up song – but always with a high gloss of perfection,” Michelle Ruiz pointed out in British Vogue. “Do they ever lick icing off the mixer? Not eat vegetables daily?” But imagine, for a second, the likely scenario if Markle did share those stories about her children. The headlines and rabid comment sections debating whether she’s a neglectful or narcissistic mother because there was one Wednesday when her children didn’t get their rainbow fruit plate. My theory is that so much of the distance between Markle and the audience in With Love, Meghan‘s first season lies in how self-conscious she is about how people see her, and understandably so. You can see it in the show’s first episode, when Markle teaches makeup artist and friend Daniel Martin to make a one-pan spaghetti. “When I make this, I make it for my family,” she started. Then stopped herself, laughing nervously. “Not that my children are eating heaps of noodles! But I’ll make enough that I can put leftovers in their lunchbox.”
I personally don’t care if Markle’s children gorged themselves on delicious, vaguely artisanal spaghetti until they vomited. TBH that sounds like a perfect day in the life of a five-year-old. But you know there would have been thinkpiece on thinkpiece if Markle revealed anything at all worth debating about her kids.
This is the catch-22: It’s impossible to be inviting and defensive at the same time. Markle needs money. She’s also building a new lifestyle brand, a Tig 2.0, with As Ever. An aspirational energy is key in these pursuits — but so is connection. And connection is made very complicated when you’re trying to engage with a public that played a role in making you want to die.
There’s a stilted quality to Markle. It’s visible in the season’s most viral moment, when Markle corrected guest Mindy Kaling for referring to her as, well, Meghan Markle. “You know I’m Sussex now,” she said, smiling and talking through clenched teeth. She went on to tell Kaling how important it is to her to have the same surname as her children. “Holy pretentiousness, Batman,” wrote one TikTok commenter. “Meghan is bringing fake humble mean girl energy,” wrote another. Why is it, again, that we expect humility from Black women we don’t know?
The moment with Kaling is awkward, sure. It’s also gone in a flash. To assign much depth to the interaction is to grasp at straws, desperate for gossip in a fresh-lavender-scented wasteland. The fact that this is the biggest scandal people can pull from this show is further proof that the excessive disdain is unwarranted. “Clean as you go,” Markle repeats throughout the series, wiping away vegetable detritus and candle-making string so as not to make us look at messy counters. Clean as you go seems to be the show’s philosophy in a bigger way as well.
Maybe she didn’t connect with everyone through With Love, Meghan — but she connected with me, at least a little bit. And for a show like this, I think that’s enough.
With Love, Meghan is perfect laundry-folding TV. It is not meant to be watched with rapt attention; you are supposed to put it on in the background of your regular-degular life and let Markle and her rotating cast of buddies convince you that you, too, can salt-bake a fish. This is a show about sanding down life’s edges. It’s about making your world more beautiful; it’s not about all the regular or even ugly moments in between. The series has made no room for anger, sadness, or even the messy moments of Markle’s history we already know about. It’s hard to say how much of that is for our sakes — don’t we deserve some smooth-brained TV? — and what’s for her’s.
But here’s what I actually did learn about Markle’s personality watching With Love, Meghan: she is so not cool.
I mean that with absolutely no judgment. In fact, Markle’s awkwardness was the thing that entertained me most while watching the show. Despite her undeniable beauty and the chicness of her Loro Piana, Markle is the type of person who calls her friends “gals” without a hint of irony. She looked stricken and confused when Kaling asked about her “lewk,” not at all understanding that she was asking about her outfit. She is stiff and stilted a lot of the time, over-conscious of her words and her body. She seems to channel this nervous energy into the aforementioned smoothing — making bath salts and repackaging Trader Joe’s pretzels in an attempt to make a horrible world seem less harsh. With Love, Meghan is a coping mechanism in more ways than one.
It’s unclear what came first, the intense scrutiny or the uncoolness. I’ve seen the same affect in my most worldly, cultured friends — the ones who have anxiety but try to cover it by being good at absolutely everything. I have no idea if the same is true of Markle. Just like anyone else talking about her on the Internet, I do not know her. My interpretations are as much projections as anyone else’s. But lemme tell you: After watching Episode 5 I am convinced I can salt bake a fish, and I am actually going to try. Maybe she didn’t connect with everyone through With Love, Meghan — but she connected with me, at least a little bit. And for a show like this, I think that’s enough.
For season 2, which Netflix recently announced, I have one tip for Markle and her producers: Up the music budget. “When I have a little bit of time at the end of the day, I do this, have a glass of wine, and enjoy it,” Markle said while demonstrating how to make a beautiful floral arrangement. “I also do this typically with a lot of music.” “What track would you be listening to right now?” her director asked. “Depends,” she said. “I listen to a lot of 70s soft rock, and a lot of yacht rock, and a lot of soul. And then also: French dinner party music.”
These shows are ninety percent vibes. If With Love, Meghan won’t give us the raw edges of this woman’s personality — and honestly, why should it? — then the least it could offer is the authenticity of Meghan Markle swigging wine and jamming out to yacht rock. Next time, Netflix: Give us the music, too. This is what we should be fighting over.
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