Netflix’s brutal two-word blow revealed ahead of With Love, Meghan launch
More details have come out about the Duchess of Sussex’s upcoming cooking show – and they reveal something very telling.
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When Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex officially announced in 2022 they had made a TV series about their lives, love and longstanding, incurable allergy to Crown Inc, it was a true punny gift.
What quippy titles could they go for? Selling Sussex. Keeping Up With The King’s Son and Daughter-In-Law. American Idle.
It was not to be. Harry & Meghan ended up being classified as a “documentary”, probably because it failed to include even one scene where white wine was histrionically hurled in someone else’s face. Turned out that the show was more interested in exposing institutional biases and did not once feature any Botoxed, caterwauling divorcees.
The Sussexes had not, were not, in the reality game.
Fast forward to today, and Netflix has changed course with the duchess’ forthcoming show, With Love, Meghan, categorised by the streamer as just that.
The platform has labelled the show as “Relaxing, Feel-Good, Lifestyle, Well-Being, Home & Garden, Reality TV”. Other tags applied to the series in Australia include “Food & Travel TV, Reality TV Shows, Home & Garden Reality TV”.
After more than four years and tens of millions of dollars, the long speculated about Sussex reality TV chapter is finally upon us and my, what a journey it has been to reach this Rubicon-worthy point.
When the duke and duchess announced their reported $160 million deal with Netflix in 2020 they said they planned on “creating content that informs but also gives hope”. With that brutal two-word “reality TV” label, we are clearly not in Kansas anymore Toto, but very, very much LA-adjacent and the Sussexes’ initial plans to make nourishing, eat-your-vegetables viewing have seemingly been binned.
Meghan’s girl powery cartoon series Pearl was kiboshed by Netflix and the Sussexes’ early development for a feminist retelling of Great Expectations from Miss Havisham’s perspective has sadly come to nought.
Those projects that have found their way to the screen have, overall, fared dismally.
The duke and duchess slapped their names on Live To Lead, which then nearly immediately disappeared into the ether. Harry spent years making Heart of Invictus which, while deeply moving and beautiful, was a ratings disaster and was streamed only 300,000 times.
(Even Barack and Michelle Obama’s Working: What We Do All Day – a doco about the state of the American labour market and which might be the dullest show title in history – was streamed three times more).
Then in December last year came Harry’s Polo, which was five episodes about a sport played by such shallow one percenter blokes they could drown in a paddling pool. Moreover, it was boring.
Say what you will about the Real Housewives franchise, but they give good telly. Sitting through Polo was such a trial by crass materialism and self-absorption that it nearly made me want to subscribe to The Socialist Worker.
And thus we circle back to With Love. The show might mark the Sussexes’ official first step into the reality TV-sphere, but there is only one question worth asking: Will. It. Work?
Will it work in terms of streams? And will it work in terms of pulling off an image do-over and brand refresh for the duchess?
Sadly, with my crystal ball on the blink, I can provide no clear predictions – but there have been developments.
Interestingly, Netflix is yet to do any promo for With Love. So far, there have been no interviews with Meghan, even with a keenly sympathetic outlet which would let her monologue away about love and joy and how getting stuck into some focaccia kneading is just the therapeutic ticket after another long day of watching Harry forlornly sit by the phone waiting for his father to call.
Nor have most of the starry participants in the series been doing much to create buzz. When asked about her participation in the show on the Golden Globes red carpet this week, The Office star Mindy Kaling somewhat tepidly said, “When you hang out with Meghan, you know the food is going to be good. So it’s just nice for somebody else to be cooking for me”.
In another Globes interview, Kaling described the duchess’ recipes as “really accessible”.
Maybe, however, none of this matters. Maybe With Love does not need a publicity budget and the lack of press might be totally moot.
Consider one number – 59.2 million. Across Netflix’s official YouTube, Instagram and X channels and her @meghan account, the trailer has been viewed just shy of 60 million times. Wild stuff.
The fundamental commodity that Netflix deals in is attention and the Duchess of Sussex can generate it like a one-woman nuclear fission plant worthy of fascination.
But will that global obsession translate into actual proper streams and millions of hours of viewing time? Hitting play on an under two minute taster and settling in for hours of watching a duchess rustle up what appears to be a frittata while wearing a $2100 silk and cashmere knit are different propositions entirely.
Making the job of reaching number one next week for Meghan that much harder is the fact that With Love isn’t Netflix’s only marquee launch next week. Only 48 hours after the duchess’ show comes out, Cameron Diaz’s first film in more than a decade, the big budget comedy/action movie Back In Action co-starring Jamie Foxx, will land on the streamer.
Can or will the Duchess of Sussex effortlessly whipping up a sponge cake beat out a couple of A-listers doing big-bang stunts in the race to the top of the charts?
After nearly five years living in the United States, if there is one witticism that applies as much to the Sussexes now as much as ever, though it is getting a bit threadbare from overuse, it’s Oscar Wilde’s saying, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.
Or, specifically, not being streamed.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
Originally published as Netflix’s brutal two-word blow revealed ahead of With Love, Meghan launch
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