With Love, Meghan makes visiting the Sussexes look utterly exhausting – review
The Duchess of Sussex’s first solo Netflix venture mixes craft projects with inspirational truisms, and will leave you feeling queasy
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You knock on the door of Meghan Markle’s Montecito mansion. Or perhaps it’s the stand-in house rented for filming her Netflix show With Love, Meghan? You were summoned here with a note written in immaculate calligraphy script, attached to a wicker “harvest basket” teeming with fresh fruit and vegetables. Once you’re inside, your host, impeccably dressed all in white despite having spent the morning picking berries, corrals you into assisting her in an endless series of crafty and culinary tasks that are one part Pinterest, one part posh Blue Peter.
If popping round to the Sussex household is even half as exhausting as it appears to be on With Love, Meghan, the much-vaunted “lifestyle” show presented by the duchess in her first solo venture for Netflix, then surely all her visitors need to take a nap every few hours. And if they do retire to the guest room for a lie down after their shift, they’ll be greeted with a tray of treats beside the bed. Meghan loves to create “good morning and goodnight moments” for her pals, she tells us in the first instalments; they can expect to open their bleary eyes to gift wrapped snacks and cut flowers.
With Love feels like a millennial blog come to life; it’s the TV version of The Tig, the website that Meghan launched and ran in her pre-royal, jobbing actor days, filmed with all the soft-filtered gloss of a Center Parcs advert. Each episode sticks to a simple formula. A guest – either someone that Meghan has known for a while, like her longtime make-up artist Daniel Martin, met while making her short lived Spotify podcast, like actor Mindy Kaling, or admired from afar, like chef Roy Choi – turns up at Casa Sussex. They coo over something she’s made earlier, then they’re recruited to chop fruit and vegetables for another marvellous culinary creation. Edible flowers are strewn over everything. Even fried eggs.
There’s stilted chatter that seems designed to shoehorn in the odd reminder of her royal-adjacent status. When Kaling refers to her host as “Meghan Markle”, our domestic goddess jokingly chides her that “I’m Sussex now”. Talk of a lemon cake prompts a picture of Meghan’s wedding cake to float onto the screen. But if you’ve tuned in hoping for gossip, don’t expect anything more than the most veiled of jibes at palace life.
‘With Love’ feels like a millennial blog come to life (Netflix )The only tea that is being spilled here is brewed with fresh mint picked from Meghan’s garden, or an allergy-busting concoction containing turmeric and cayenne pepper that she blends up for Martin. The only talk of culture clash with the British establishment comes when Meghan ponders why her husband says “ladybird” instead of “ladybug”, while fashioning a kid-friendly edible version of said insect from tomatoes, olives and tiny dots of balsamic glaze. Harry barely features, aside from a few “Men! What are they like!”-style references to his love of bacon.
Meghan, it has to be said, looks radiant in her various neutral-toned outfits. Our host loves to mix high fashion and affordable labels; at one point she tells us she’s wearing Zara trousers with a knitted top by Loro Piana, the stealth wealth brand beloved by Succession’s Kendall Roy. She’s also clearly at ease in front of the cameras. But her earnestness will grate on more cynically-minded viewers. Everything she does is couched in some sort of uplifting, easily digestible life lesson. Harvesting honey from the Sussex family beehives becomes a “reminder to do something that scares you a bit”. Even a cake without icing is described as “beautiful on the inside”.
Mindy Kaling is one of the guests who visits Meghan in Montecito (Netflix )The show simultaneously strains for aspiration and relatability in a way that never gels. When she cooks up a spaghetti dish for Martin in episode one, the emphasis is on speed and ease. “We don’t have time for pot changes!” Meghan trills. Later, she proceeds to fashion some candles from beeswax, hardly a classic activity of the time-starved. In another instalment, she assures us that she “never gets fussy with place settings” as the camera rests on a fussy place setting. At one point, Kaling suggests that the immaculate kids’ party tablescape that she and Meghan have worked on can be done “on a budget”, which may well be true. But how many parents have the luxury of time required to spend hours sourcing tiny trowels for party bags?
The heady blend of aesthetic curation, inspiring truisms and those inescapable edible flowers might well leave you feeling a bit queasy – or simply worn out at the prospect of having to adequately perform gratitude for all the thoughtful touches involved in Meghan’s “guest experience” (“You filled this cellophane bag with peanut butter pretzels for me? How lovely!”). After a few episodes, I need a lie down. Please don’t feel the need to pop a care package by the bed.
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