I watched Meghan Markle’s new cringey Netflix lifestyle show, so you don’t have to. Okay, I admit I gave up after a few episodes because it was too unbearable to even hate-watch for long.
To be honest, Meghan reminded me of the female robot at the beginning of that creepy movie “Companion,” with the saccharine sweetness bar all dialed up. By that I mean, programmed and fake. Does she speak 10 languages? Maybe not, but she puts FLOWERS in crudites (and knows how to pronounce it).
Ick.
Correction – Meghan Sussex, or whatever she calls herself now. In case you missed it, Meghan snapped at “friend” Mindy Kaling in one sugary episode when Mindy referred to her as “Meghan Markle” because she’s supposedly changed her last name. Don’t the royals go by Mountbatten-Windsor or Wales? Isn’t her real name Rachel? I thought she didn’t want to be royalty because they’re a bunch of racists (a claim that crumbled upon scrutiny). Has she even been to Sussex more than a couple of times? Oh, never mind.
Here’s the problem with Meghan’s “trad wife from Montecito” metamorphosis (I thought she was a liberal feminist? Who is she, today?) It’s inauthentic. Real trad wives are actually living the life, and they don’t preach insufferable wokeness at us every chance they get (as she’s done in the past). They’re connected to their extended families, and they don’t live to merch.
Meghan’s not really a trained cook, she’s likely never made bee’s wax candles before, she’s estranged from both sides of her family, people have told other publications that she’s not actually very nice to people, it’s not even her real house, and the “friends” are B List celebrities she hasn’t known for that long (like her wedding, attended by George Clooney, Oprah and a single family member).
In short, she symbolizes everything wrong with modern, influencer, merching, look-at-me culture.
We don’t get to see Lili or Archie in this make-believe candyland, and Harry, insufferably referred to as “H,” only speaks 17 words across eight episodes.
Instead, we get to see Meghan grating lemon zest on a cake, dumping packaged spaghetti “noodles” into a pan with “blistered” tomatoes, making rainbows out of fruit (how innovative!), and prancing around someone else’s kitchen that none of us can afford (especially now with inflation), when she’s not teaching us how to fill jars with homemade bath salts to make our houseguests feel so cared for. Just like her.
At one point, she actually said, “Let’s get some honey, honey.”
I’m a Midwestern mom with multiple jobs. I don’t have time to make jars of lavender-tinged bath salts for houseguests or to bake a three-layer raspberry-studded lemon cake with homemade preserves, carefully piped between each layer from a plastic sandwich bag. Wish I did.
I also don’t have time (or the money, frankly) to harvest honey with a borrowed beekeeper and turn it into carefully crafted homemade candles. I just buy them for $5.99 at the Piggly Wiggly. Don’t get me wrong. I admire people who have time for those things, and maybe we should all find a way to slow down. Everyone loves a clever DIY hack. I enjoy cooking homemade meals for loved ones, and maybe I should put Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels into neatly wrapped plastic bags with a bow for house guests, like Meghan says she does. My mom and friends come over for movie nights, but they don’t usually stay for a bath.
My grandpa used to tap trees in the woods to make his own homemade maple syrup here in Wisconsin, and it was the best syrup I ever tasted, so I am all for things like that. We need to move, as a culture, away from a processed, mass-produced society toward something more real and healthy. Just ask RFK Jr.
The problem is that Meghan’s show feels like the former even as it pushes the latter.
Don’t get me wrong. I like watching Pioneer Woman, Ina Garten, and even Giada, if I can get past her faux-Italian accent. Cooking shows are a good way to clear one’s mind from the negativity in the news. I might even check out Pamela Anderson’s new lifestyle show (which, apparently, eerily resembles Meghan’s) because I like how Pamela’s evolved. I find her transformation interesting. I like how she’s embracing aging and dares to show up at awards shows without makeup, and I want her to succeed because she seems authentic and nice. That’s the keyword here. Authentic.
There are two big problems with Meghan’s version of this.
She’s not likable. And she doesn’t seem genuine. She seems like she’s playing the kind of person she wants us all to believe she really is – a role. So she can profit off it. Maybe it’s her head-spinning list of reincarnations that’s confusing. What happened to the podcast?
We’ve moved into the Age of Authenticity, where candid conversations on three-hour podcasts help people win elections, you need actual talent (not just a title or mother wound), and people appreciate those who acknowledge their imperfections (like Pamela without makeup). We’ve moved out of the age of scripted and edited TV, air-brushed celebrity, and careful curation, and into the rambunctious world of TikTok and Facebook reels. Meghan’s latest venture feels very 2019 – or earlier, frozen in the Time of the Tig.
Her show is basically a Pinterest Board. If you’re going to do a Pinterest show, at least make the hacks interesting. I don’t need Meghan Markle to tell me that I can form blueberries and strawberries into a rainbow or put sliced cucumbers on a plate. And, sorry, but I’m not going to sprinkle little flowers on the plate. My daughter would probably say, “Mom, why are there little flowers in my carrots?”
I can’t figure out who Meghan Markle really is, and therein lies the true problem. If you’re going to cry racism on Oprah, please have facts to back it up. Don’t lecture us about climate change while jetting around in private planes. And leave Kate alone.
There might be an audience for the real Meghan, with all her obvious imperfections. Who among us is perfect? I certainly am not. We loved Princess Diana because she was like us; she had traumas, and we related to her pain and loneliness. She didn’t copy others; she led from the heart (such as when she clutched the hand of an AIDS victim). Diana was real. I’m still not over the sadness of her death. I got up at 4 a.m. as a kid to watch her wedding.
It might be interesting to see a glimpse into Meghan’s actual life behind the scenes with Prince Harry and the kids. I’d be curious to see her actual house and Lili, not just from behind. I’d be curious to learn what she is REALLY like. But then you have to deliver that. This doesn’t.
Meghan’s new show is about how great her life is, how perfect, how wonderful she is, and what a great Stepford Wife… er hostess she is. It’s a lesson in narcissism. “Don’t you want to be like me?” is the message. “You can be like me!” But the rest of us are just trying to pay the bills.
She’s been dubbed “meagain” and this show is basically “Me, me, me, again!” Look, she makes honey from real bees! She turns them into candles! She puts little leaves on lemon cake! She has tea parties in a flower-festooned gazebo in a floral dress and makes balloon arches! She cooks in white shirts but never gets a stain on them! When she’s not uttering banal cliches or drawing them on a chalkboard with perfect calligraphy, she’s gasping in awe for the cameras and informing us (again and again) how great she is, how wonderful her life is, how family-focused she is… except.
Except she didn’t film the show in her actual house; we don’t see it. It’s someone else’s rented mansion.
We all know the real story. She is estranged from her dad, and her half sister, and her half brother, and the rest of her mom’s family, and her best friend from high school, and her father in law (the King of England), and her stepmother-in-law, and her brother-in-law, and her sister-in-law, and her previous best friend Jessica Mulroney and the entire country of England and… you get the point. She ghosted Piers Morgan, supposedly.
Who is Meghan Markle, really? It appears that she is whatever she thinks she can merch, at the moment.
In that way, she is a symbol of everything that is wrong with culture. The late Queen, who didn’t deserve the stress the Sussexes heaped on her at the tail end of her life, embodied values worth emulating. Duty, honor, country. In short, service. She didn’t give interviews, didn’t complain, didn’t politicize, and didn’t commercialize. In so doing, she became a truly unifying figure.
True royals don’t merch.
Maybe the Netflix series IS the real Meghan Markle.
