I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Madonna has recently started stand-up comedy. And I was thinking a lot about the original material girl’s pivot while watching Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s new Netflix show, “With Love, Meghan.” No, there is nothing funny about Meghan’s push into the gauzy, overly curated world of cooking shows, but it does teach us something about the nature of celebrity. People who are famous enough can persuade entertainment executives to let them do pretty much whatever vanity projects their hearts desire. If Madonna wants to crack jokes or Meghan wants to make frittatas for Mindy Kaling, someone will give them the platform to do it. The only price, such as it exists, is that the public then gets to watch them fail.
If Madonna wants to crack jokes or Meghan wants to make frittatas for Mindy Kaling, someone will give them the platform to do it.
Madonna, apparently, isn’t horrible at comedy, at least according to her friend Amy Schumer. Sadly the same can’t be said for Meghan’s reinvention attempt. This new show isn’t an embarrassment, but Netflix was never going to allow that to happen. The photography is great; the music cues are perfect (and expensive); the set is professionally decorated. The whole thing (including Meghan’s hair, makeup and wardrobe) looks amazing. But, like so much of Netflix’s mediocre content these days, this seems like content made to fill a hole in the market that doesn’t necessarily exist.
At the very beginning of Tuesday’s premiere, Meghan welcomes her beekeeper, Branden, back to help her harvest honey. “Many people do this at home on their own,” she tells him while approaching the hive in her screened bonnet. “But I can’t do it. I still need you here.” Later, when she’s making a cake for her friend and makeup artist Daniel (each episode features one of Meghan’s friends, famous or otherwise), she says she doesn’t really like baking at all. Later, after Daniel arrives, the two decide to make candles with the beeswax left over from her honey-gathering. “My only basis of knowledge is the candles I own at home,” she says.
Martha Stewart she is not. The doyenne of perfection would somehow inherently know how to make candles or at least would be smart enough to thoroughly research it before the cameras turned on. But neither is she Ina Garten, reminding all of us rubes that “store-bought is fine.” This is just some rich lady doing a seemingly impromptu craft project.
To be clear, though, Meghan’s at-home craft project isn’t at her home. Meghan says very early on that the set where she is cooking, and the cottage where she is making bath salts for Daniel, isn’t her domicile at all. Here, too, is an odd break from traditional genre pleasures. With other gurus, we at least get to venture inside their unattainable manses, providing a level of intimacy, contrived or otherwise. In Meghan’s case, I honestly hope she had zero to do with the blandly precious Pinterest board come to life standing in for her actual house.
Which brings us to the biggest problem with this new show: None of it seems authentic, and none of it is especially compelling. It’s all just … fine. (With the possible exception of a one-pan pasta recipe that I would definitely steal. But I also would have loved this idea even if I saw it on TikTok, which is where most Americans get their recipes these days anyway, right?) The questions I’m left with at the end of each episode — after Meghan cooks, crafts, opines and flips her hair in the California sunshine — is why? Why these recipes? Why this show? Why now? Why her?
It seems to be that the only answer is because she married a prince. Meghan and Daniel talk about her old lifestyle website, The TIG, but they don’t explain what it is or what it does. And while some people seem to remember the blog fondly, I can’t imagine most of her Netflix viewers will have any memory of that particular corner of minor influencer culture.
Meghan is self-admittedly a novice at many of these activities, but we never see her truly struggle. So here we are, watching a famous woman figure out how to make candles, begrudgingly make a cake and, in a fourth-wall-breaking moment, hand the reality TV crew a cup of coffee or a blackberry she picked from her yard. (Wait? Is it her yard?) The lesson here is that fame will get you a platform, no doubt. But a platform isn’t self-sustaining. To keep people coming back, you need something more. Meghan is not especially charismatic, not especially funny and not especially knowledgeable. She comes across as someone with more Instagram filters than common sense. And while Meghan is also self-admittedly a novice at many of these activities, but we never see her truly struggle; we never see her cake look anything less than perfect; we never see her spill wax all over the countertop. There’s something humanizing about watching people figure out how to do something and to allow us to watch and learn from their mistakes. But there are no real mistakes in Meghan’s world, because everything is protected by the magic spell of celebrity and royalty that surrounds her. Maybe this would work on social media, where we’re more used to watching beautiful amateurs telling us how to do things in bite-sized content modules. But Meghan and her meager skills aren’t enough to hold our focus for 42 minutes. Or perhaps she could call up Madonna and get her to tell a few jokes. I hear she’s pretty funny.
Brian Moylan
Brian Moylan is a freelance journalist who specializes in television, celebrity and other very important matters. He lives in London. 
