Meghan Markle’s latest attempt at a career reinvention arrived this week with the debut of her new Netflix show With Love, Meghan.
The eight-episode series, which was initially delayed due to the wildfires in Los Angeles, features the former royal hosting “friends” at a rented Montecito, California, estate as she shares her cooking, gardening, and hosting tips.
The critics have not been kind to Markle’s (re)turn as a wannabe lifestyle influencer, though that did not stop Netflix from renewing the show for a second season. On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by The Daily Mail’s Maureen Callahan to discuss why the show doesn’t work and what it reveals about Markle.
‘Grueling to Get Through’
While With Love, Meghan has generated some actual headlines thanks to Markle scolding guest Mindy Kaling about her last name (its Sussex now, FYI) in episode two, the majority of the coverage is commentary on just how cringey, impersonal, and, frankly, uninteresting the whole series feels. “It was so boring,” Callahan said. “I love a good ‘bad watch,’ but this is not that. This is really grueling to get through.”
That is partly because, Megyn and Callahan agreed, Markle does not have an authentic connection with her guests – even the ones she claimed were friends. In the first episode, Markle is hosting her longtime makeup artist Daniel Martin. She has known him for years and her kids apparently call him “Uncle Daniel,” but Callahan said is hard to see their closeness based on how the show unfolds.
“He is her ‘lifelong friend of decades,’ ‘the before, during, and after,’ as she says, but she doesn’t know if he likes tomatoes? She doesn’t know that he is left handed? He’s her makeup artist – what is his dominant hand,” Callahan asked. “And then she says, ‘I love to send all my guests home with stuff.’ He says, ‘Listen, I live in New York City. I don’t have counter space in my kitchen.’ She doesn’t know that.”
The dynamic is the same, Megyn said, in episode two with Kaling. “She is not a friend. She came on her podcast Archetypes, and that is when they met,” she noted. “This is not some lifelong bud… They clearly didn’t know each other, and you could see there was an awkwardness.”
The Awkwardness
That “awkwardness” came through when Markle called out Kaling for calling her “Meghan Markle,” or when Markle claimed to not know the word “lewk” when Kaling asked about her highly impractical all-white outfit that she was preparing food in, or when Markle chided Kaling for not pronouncing “Le Creuset” properly.
In Callahan’s view, the moments weren’t just awkward but inappropriate. “When you are a kid and they are teaching manners… they are for you to go out into the world with, but they are really also for other people,” she said. “It is so you learn how to make other people feel welcome, and comfortable, and never ashamed or humiliated or hurt. That was a dagger. That was a guest in her fake house on her fake show who dared to call her Meghan Markle, the name we all, regrettably, know her by.”
As it relates to etiquette, Megyn noticed something telling about Markle’s interactions in the show. “If you look at the first couple of episodes, every comment she makes is about herself… ‘Uncle Daniel’ is there, there is the Argentinian woman, there is a chef she brings in, Mindy Kaling and there are no questions or comments about them,” she explained. “Except there is one question in episode one and one in episode two… that are voiced over… Anything she asks of the guest was laid in after the fact. You can see the break. It is like someone had to coach her on how to be a normal person who is an actual friend, who has interest in something other than themselves.”
Sincerely Insincere
Callahan said that speaks to the larger authenticity problem with the program. “The premise of this show is: I am going to show you how to make a happy, warm, loving home after I have successfully severed my husband’s ties from his entire family, after I have successfully severed every single tie – save my mother – from my own family of origin,” she quipped. “Who better to teach one how to create a loving, warm home?”
Whether it was the massive rainbow-shaped fruit plate Markle claimed she makes her kids for breakfast, lining her own paper to calligraph brunch menus, or encouraging people to find their own beekeeper, Megyn said this show presented a largely unattainable world that revealed a lot about Markle.
“She is the most insecure person I have seen in the public eye in a long time… The biggest absurdity of this whole thing was just how over-the-top perfect everything has to be around her,” Megyn noted. “I mean, who the hell picks berries in a white cashmere sweater and white pants? Literally, no one on earth does that… We are all supposed to go… out to our gardens… and pick our berries… and cut our mint and then cut our flowers that are edible. But don’t worry, she is a woman of the people. You can grow those just on your windowsill at home in New York.”
Ultimately, Megyn believes this show confirmed what many people already suspected about the former royal. “That is why George Clooney was at her wedding. She didn’t have family. She didn’t have lifelong friends… Everything is artifice. The show is artifice, her life is artifice, and that is what this deep insecurity is all about,” Megyn explained. “I have no friends, I have no people, I only have the next station to reach, and, therefore, you can’t have the f-cking blueberry fall on the floor; you can’t have the white outfit get a speck on it… Daniel cannot have a spoonful of the jam before it’s time, even though it is a joyful act.”
“Her whole message is With love, Meghan,” Megyn concluded. “I am going do a cooking show that is F-ck Off, Megyn.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Callahan by tuning in to episode 1,021 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.