With Love, Meghan, sees the Duchess of Sussex share cooking, gardening and hosting tips with famous friends, ITV News Reporter Olivia Guthrie has more
The Duchess of Sussex’s new ‘lifestyle series’, With Love, Meghan, has premiered on Netflix after being delayed in January due to the Los Angeles wildfires.
The show is being seen as a make-or-break moment for the Sussexes, who signed a multimillion-pound deal with Netflix in 2020.
The couple’s other high-profile entertainment deal for a podcast with Spotify was cancelled in 2022 after only 12 episodes.
The eight-episode series sees Markle inviting famous friends to “a beautiful California estate, where she shares cooking, gardening and hosting tips”, Netflix says.
The first episode features Markle preparing a “thoughtful guest basket”.
It begins with Meghan harvesting honey from bees as she says: “The biggest thing is keeping a low tone – talk in our bee voice.”
Dressed in a beekeeper’s suit, Markle says she’s scared of handling the bees but described it as “beautiful to be this connected”.
She adds: “It’s like also that reminder to do something that scares you a little bit.”
The Duchess of Sussex is also seen preparing a bath salts recipe for friend Daniel Martin, who is “coming over”.
Markle has faced criticism over authenticity for hosting the show from a Californian farmhouse rather than her own Montecito home.
The Duchess of Sussex acknowledges she is not filming in her own home though, saying: “This isn’t my house. Daniel’s going to be staying at my house, but I’m going to prep everything here as I would at home and then bring it back to my house so I can have it there for him.”
In another episode, Markle is filmed picking fruit in her garden.
She reveals that some of the homemade jams she made also caused friction among her celebrity friends.
In a light-hearted exchange with actress and comedian Mindy Kaling, they discuss how the jars were numbered up to 50.
Kaling joked that “I, of course, as a very hierarchical person, was like ‘who are these other 50? Does having a lower number make me more special?”‘
The Duchess explained that “It was not a ranking, it was just ‘let me share them’ and then people started to take it very personally.”
However, Markle did admit that she saved the jar labelled number one for her mother, Doria Ragland.
“I did save one of 50 for my mum of course, felt like the right thing to do,” Markle said.
The focus on working at home has led to the Duchess being accused of promoting the tradwife trend – which is short for traditional wife.
But in an interview with US magazine People to promote the show, Markle said she did not see herself as a tradwife.
She described how she liked to live a “hybrid” lifestyle and detailed how she preferred to present Chinese takeaway food as beautifully as possible.
“I like being able to do a hybrid but even when I get takeout, I will try to plate it beautifully,” Markle said.
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