‘Exercise in narcissism’: Critics slam Meghan Markle’s new Netflix cooking show

Meghan Markle’s controversial new Netflix lifestyle series has copped a scathing global backlash, sparking speculation about the future of the flailing Sussex brand.

Meghan Markle’s controversial new Netflix lifestyle series has already copped a global drubbing from critics.

The eight-episode show, With Love, Meghan features the Duchess of Sussex showing off her cooking and gardening skills.

TV writer Stuart Heritage, writing for The Guardian, described the series as “pointless” and said it should be the couple’s “last TV show.”

Meghan Markle’s new Netflix series has been slammed by critics.

Branding Meghan “thirsty” and “joyless”, he said the series would not save the flailing Sussex brand “unless the broader public suddenly develops a hankering for long-form television programs about a woman filling children’s party bags with seeds and manuka honey”.

The Telegraph’s Anita Singh said the show is “an exercise in narcissism, filled with extravagant brunches, celebrity pals and business plugs”.

Katie Rosseinsky, of The Independent, gave the Netflix series a one-star review and called the concept “queasy and exhausting”.

The show has been branded “an exercise in narcissism, filled with extravagant brunches, celebrity pals and business plugs”.

Jane Moore, a panellist on British morning talk show Loose Women, called the Duchess of Sussex out for not filming in her own Montecito mansion.

“Even if you’re not interested in homemaking stuff, you’d watch it to learn more about their house,” Moore said.

“You don’t see their house, it’s a rented house down the road.”

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MEGHAN’S TV COMEBACK: ALL THE TOP MOMENTS

Netflix describes the eight episode show as: “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex invites friends and famous guests to a beautiful California estate, where she shares cooking, gardening and hosting tips.”

Guests include actor and producer Mindy Kaling, former Suits co-star Abigail Spencer and Korean-American chef, Roy Choi, among others.

Harry and Meghan’s staggering $100 million deal with Netflix, which they’ve held since 2020, is set to expire this year.

“We need a new deal, H.” Picture: Netflix

Their previous outing together, documentary, Harry & Meghan, broke records for the streaming giant when it aired in December 2022.

However, other projects like the Prince’s Heart of Invictus, Live to Lead and the dismal Polo have significantly underperformed.

There’s obviously a lot riding on the success of this new show – including potentially another five-year Netflix deal.

So here’s a breakdown of what to expect on With Love, Meghan.

EPISODE 1: HELLO, HONEY!

Dressed in a beekeeping suit, Meghan Markle opens her eight-part series watching the delights of honey creation from the Sussex’s Montecito property.

Speaking in a soft voice, Meghan is all smiles as she show viewers her passion for nature before migrating to a lavish home – not hers – where she does her utmost to show she’s the hostess with the mostest.

She arrives dressed in a white linen ensemble armed with bunches of flowers and then gets stuck into making bath salts for her “dear friend” Daniel Martin, the former make-up artist from the TV series Suits.

“And this is how you chop the vegetables.” Picture: Netflix

She refers to the time the pair spent writing for her website The Tig, which she ditched before she married Prince Harry in 2018, before they later use bee’s wax from earlier to get stuck into some serious candle making.

“It’s like the amazing race of candles,” Meghan quips before then jumping into baking a three-layer honey lemon cake armed with berries.

“Baking is not my favourite thing but I will do it for one of my favourite people,” she adds, which certainly crosses out a long list of people including her father who she doesn’t speak with. 

She drops in a reference to her wedding cake – which featured lemon – and said she and Martin “did the tasting together” before they finally tuck into the dessert.

EPISODE 2: WELCOME TO THE PARTY

Meghan has declared she has ditched her surname and goes by Sussex.

Correcting her actress chum Mindy Kaling – who also featured in her Archetypes’ podcast – for calling her Markle, Meghan sets the record straight.

“You know I’m Sussex now, I share my name with my children and I didn’t know how meaningful that would be to me but it just means so much but that’s our family name, our little family name”.

The move means she has the same surname as her children Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three.

In episode two Meghan is seen wandering through her Montecito property’s rows of berries and announces that she’s going to be organising a kid-friendly tea party with her friend.

“It’s Sussex. Meghan Sussex.” Picture: Netflix

Back to the kitchen it is, this time whipping up a frittata before making cringe references to Prince Harry and his love for bacon, announcing that a whiff of pork brings her “husband and three dogs” to the kitchen, not her “perfume”, she jokes.

“My bacon brings in all the boys from the yard”.

She even delves into Prince Harry’s perhaps questionable dietary habits when she serves up a dish.

“I have a family, a husband, who no matter what meal is put in front of them, before he (harry) tastes it he adds salt,” Meghan declares.

Prince Harry then makes his first appearance, well sort of – vision is played of Meghan trying to make a balloon arch for a kids’ birthday party and Prince Harry can be heard saying: “What’s going on my love?”

She replies, “We are making this balloon arch for Archie’s first birthday”.

Harry isn’t impressed. “It doesn’t look like an arch”.

Mindy even questions Meghan what labels make up her white and cream ensemble, with the Duchess admitting her white trousers are from budget fashion chain Zara, which leaves Mindy shocked.

EPISODE 3: TWO KIDS FROM LA

Korean chef Roy Choi is the star of episode three when he and Meghan share details of their lives growing up in California.

The pair are seen whipping up dishes in a million-dollar estate and Meghan reveals when her daughter Lilibet likes the food she’s eating, “she starts to sway a little bit”.

Meghan then starts swaying herself.

She tells Choi her own memory highlight of Koreatown in Los Angeles, is “that you could go to all ages clubs and karaoke bars”.

Korean chef Roy Choi and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, bond over their shared love of karaoke and food. Picture: Netflix

Meghan shows her wild side and says back in those days it was “so much fun” before Choi turns to her and says, “Man, you and I are so similar”.

Meghan then reveals that she's incredibly baffled why MSG (Monosodium glutamate) had a bad name in the “90s or early 2000s when you’re ordering food, no MSG, and I don’t know why that quite happened”.

Choi explains: “It was racist, it was racist against Asians. There was a thing about Chinese restaurants”.

But Choi said that’s changed in America: “What we have now is a more democratic food culture where information can be accessed and you don’t see any young people saying MSG gets you sick anymore”.

Markle adds, “I’m glad we’ve evolved in that way”.

Then its onto playing some bad music and Meghan pretending to dance in her kitchen, cringe viewing, while she waits for her dishes to cook.

Then back to disclosing more details about Prince Harry’s diet: “My husband loves fried chicken”. 

EPISODE 4: LOVE IS IN THE DETAILS

Meghan’s celebrity friend, Delfina Blaquier, who is married to Argentinian polo player Nacho Figueras and “plays polo with my husband”, stars in the episode four.

Showing again how unrelatable she is, Meghan continues to roll out her rich and glamorous friends in the series to join in her in the lavish multimillion residence she’s baking up a storm in.

Meghan said she and Blaquier love hiking together – sometimes with their husbands – and Meghan has the perfect afternoon plan in place.

“She’s (Delfina) always wanted to learn how to make focaccia bread, I only learned recently so I’m going to teach her how to do that, have a little picnic, make a beautiful garden pasta,” she announces.

“We’ll do a nice charcuterie board, have some great tea … go for a hike and do what we normally do, laugh, hang out”.

“Slicing pieces is difficult.” Picture: Netflix

Meghan and Harry’s rescue beagle Guy, who died in January, also features in this episode given the Duchess of Sussex is busy baking dog biscuits which she neatly packs into a glass jar finished off with a bow and labelled, “dog biscuits”.

She offers Guy one of her doggie treats before gifting the dog biscuits to Blaquier’s pooch Nina.

Meghan even reveals she was once “scared roasting a chicken” for fear of getting it wrong, but that aside, the two women go off on a hike.

She reveals she was a girl scout when she was five or six and she “sold a lot of cookies” and her mum (Doria Ragland) was “my troop leader”.

EPISODE 5: SURPRISE AND DELIGHT

It’s weird to see Meghan drive, right? Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, Meghan is driving to get some flowers from the flower market because her friends – actor Abigail Spencer, who she worked with on Suits, and Kelly Zajfen, who co-founded Alliance of Moms (it’s American, so that’s how ‘mom’ is spelled) – are coming over for a “light and healthy” meal with Meghan.

At the flower market, she buys a heck of a lot of flowers.

In this economy, come on, Meghan.

As she arranges the flowers at whatever mansion she is pretending is her house, she says her daughter Lili has a song about cleaning.

“Clean as you go,” Meghan sings. “Clean, clean, clean, clean. Clean as you go.”

It’s not terribly original but Lili is only three.

“Just keep cleaning, just keep cleaning.” Picture: Netflix

Meghan’s dog Guy, who passed away in January, is there with her too and he is the only adorable and worthy of watching thing in this episode.

After arranging flowers, Meghan does a costume change and sets about making floral ice cubes.

Then her friends arrive and they salt bake fish together. As you do.

We learn Archie is a good fisherman and that Harry – or ‘H’ as Meghan calls him – is a great cook.

Meghan makes a veggie platter, fancily called a ‘crudité’, too.

As the three friends eat outside, they reminisce about how they met. Meghan and Kelly have been “friends for a long time.” Abigail and Meghan met at an audition in 2007, and while Meghan did not book the show, Abigail did.

But years later Meghan booked Suits, so take that, Abigail!

Abigail, who worked with Meghan on Suits but did not have any scenes with her, says Meghan was “head of morale” on the show, whatever that means.

Then they gush about how lucky they all are to have each other.

Dessert is next. Meghan uses strawberry preserve for it – is this the famous American Riviera Orchard jam, now known as As Ever jam?

Most definitely.

EPISODE 6: THE JUICE IS WORTH THE SQUEEZE

Meghan starts the day with avocado toast and egg.

She takes the time to put edible flowers and pretty things on it and even cleans the plate – who even does that for their own food?

Then she makes a ‘man-which’ for Michael, her producer, who chomps down with delight.

Then she buys more flowers. To be fair, the flower arrangement she puts together looks beautiful.

Meghan’s girlfriends are coming over for game night – they’re going to play mahjong – and she’s preparing for their arrival. A local chef is coming over to help her make Mexican food.

But first – quick costume change.

Then Chef Ramon comes over and they make chicken tinga and a ceviche, which takes up more than half this episode and is really educational to someone out there who loves cooking, I’m sure.

Is the episode over yet? Picture: Netflix

Meghan also shows us how to make dehydrated blood oranges and lemons, for when we have “extra” citrus fruits.

Which, again, in this economy, who does?

Founder Tracy Robbins shows up and they make margaritas in huge mason jars for the four friends.

The jars even have labels with their names – Meghan has labelled hers “Meg” in her perfect handwriting and the producer remarks he’s never seen her call herself Meg.

What a discovery! Alert the press!

Philanthropist Victoria Jackson and literary agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh arrive and they eat the tinga and ceviche, plus the plantain chips Meghan made earlier.

“When’s the cookbook coming?” her friends ask.

Just you wait, friends. Just you wait.

EPISODE 7: ELEVATING THE EVERYDAY

Next celebrity friend rolled out is Taiwanese-American businesswoman Vicky Tsai who co-founded luxury skincare brand Tatcha.

This episode spends a chunk of time devoted to Meghan making a ‘harvest basket’.

Seen wandering through a lavish garden Meghan decides to inject some reality to the high-flying lifestyle that she’s portraying in the series.

“We don’t all have a garden like this, I fully recognise that, I didn’t grow up with a garden like this,” Meghan tries to explain.

The basket even features Meghan’s very own chilli oil and her son Archie’s own eggs, in a custom-made egg carton labelled, “Archie’s Chick Inn”.

Meghan Markle treats skincare founder Vicky Tsai to some homemade cream for her coffee. Picture: Netflix

And for those who think Meghan hasn’t got a grip on reality, think again, because she and Tsai don’t have time to make dumpling wrappers.

Tsai tells Meghan: “I think there’s nothing to feel guilty about because we are both working mums”.

They agree it’s both important to find “the balance”.

She also reveals details of her childhood – with unsurprisingly no mention of her father Thomas – instead sharing pictures of her mum Doria.

“We didn’t have a lot but we travelled, my mum was a travel agent, we just tried so many flavours in so many different places,” Meghan says.

EPISODE 8: FEELS LIKE HOME

What better way than a Netflix series to sign off with a very public stab at your dreaded family?

That’s exactly what Meghan does in the final episode where she spends time putting on a brunch party for family and friends with the help of chef and restaurateur Alice Waters.

“It’s time for a new chapter,” Meghan tells viewers as she organises flowers and platters of food in her enormous garden before her guests arrive.

Alice Waters and Meghan rambling around the garden. In the house that does not actually belong to Meghan, but just go with it, OK? Picture: Netflix

But you need to get past the gift wrapping - probably the most useful part of the series - where she advises viewers to always use double-sided tape.

It’s time to get down to Meghan’s inner thoughts about her life right now.

When a sunglasses clad Prince Harry rolls up with her mum Doria, she thanks them.

“I just want to raise a glass to you guys,” she says as Harry hooks into a Mimosa.

“This feels like a new chapter that I’m so excited that I’m able to share and I’ve been able to learn from all of you.

“So I just thank you for all the love and support and here we go, as a business”.

But Meghan’s blatant jab doesn’t stop there.

“All of that is part of that creativity that I’ve missed so much, so thank you for loving me so much and celebrating with me,” she adds.

Prince Harry also praises his wife’s effort for putting on a brilliant brunch spread.

Thrown the rhetorical question: “It’s good, right?”

Harry replies while hugging his wife: “Well done. You did a great job.”

Meghan adds: “Thank you.”

And Harry then says: “I love it.”

Originally published as ‘Exercise in narcissism’: Critics slam Meghan Markle’s new Netflix cooking show