With Love, Meghan review - Meghan Markle's desperate attempt at rebranding herself as relatable royal is 283 minutes of torture
Elevated? More like overrated...It’s finally here – Meghan Markle‘s new Netflix cooking show, With Love, Meghan… and the reviews are coming in already.
The Duchess of Sussex and her husband Prince Harry signed a staggering £80million deal with the streaming giant after they left The Firm for good in 2020.
With Love, Meghan coincides with the launch of the former actress’s lifestyle brand and website, As Ever, and is made up of eight episodes, coming in at just under five hours.
The royal made the decision to delay the series launch a couple of months after the devastating LA wildfires in January, but I’m not convinced it was worth the wait.
Meghan Markle friends are all singing from the same hymn sheet
The series feature a celebrity guest list, made up of her friends, as well as local chefs. However, it feels like there was a cue card behind the camera to remind her pals to hammer home who the royal is behind closed doors.
After reports from experts that Meghan is attempting to be more ‘relatable’ to fans around the world, it’s no surprise each and every friend manages to include this reminder. What a coincidence? Likely not.
Although Meghan oddly asks how she and her friend of 15 years, make-up artist Daniel Martin, met (I guess she forgot?), he brings up on how considerate she is. He recalled their first job together and how she asked if he wanted a drink or food.
In the episode where Mindy Kaling pops over, there’s an awkward moment where she refers to the duchess as Meghan Markle and Meg fires back that she prefers the name ‘Sussex’. This comes after they are discussing the 43-year-old growing up on microwavable TV dinners and takeout. Mindy can’t believe Meghan would eat Jack in the Box takeaways when she was younger.
And when Delfina Figueras rocks up in episode four, the pair enjoy a hike. But, wait, we have to watch the moment ‘Delfi’ says she loves seeing Meghan ‘being her true self’ while out in the sun. It starts to become mundane, hearing over and over again that this is how Meghan really is, despite being in front of a camera crew in a rented Montecito home, dressed up, in full make-up and hair.
Au natural? Not really.
Duchess failed to review her egg usage in With Love, Meghan
If Meghan is trying to appear more relatable then perhaps she should have considered her love affair with eggs in her review of recipes for With Love, Meghan.
Before Mindy arrives, she uses a dozen eggs to bake her a frittata, and in another episode, makes herself egg and avocado toast before cooking up an egg and bacon ‘manwich’ for the producer.
America is struggling with a nationwide egg shortage after 166 million chickens had to be culled due to an outbreak of bird flu. Buying limit signs are plastered in supermarkets and prices have skyrocketed after the number of egg-laying hens plummeted by nine per cent in January 2025.
How can her viewers follow recipes without breaking the bank or conducting a heist for the dozen eggs they need in one dish?
Don’t send Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet home with sugar
In Mindy’s episode, Meghan shows her how to host a garden party, and we learn that Meg’s pet peeve is when the birthday party gift bag contains sugary treats. The best part of a children’s party is not on her agenda.
Instead, she creates a ‘gardening’ gift bag, full of a compostable pot, seeds and gardening tools for tots.
Don’t forget, if you’re a busy mum or dad – and 75% of mothers and 91% of fathers work – you must create a balloon arch from scratch, glaze tomatoes so they look like ladybirds and ensure sandwiches are in fun shapes or they won’t be eaten.
When Meghan asks Mindy if she puts together her own food for her children’s parties, the comedy star honestly replies the person she ‘hires’ does. But Meg chimes in she’ll teach her how to do it herself. It defeats the object for people who don’t have the time to do it.
Elevated, elevated, elevated
I’d be happy if I didn’t hear this word for another 12 months. It’s the Duchess’ favourite word, as she couldn’t help but throw it in every other sentence.
What wasn’t elevated in With Love, Meghan was her lack of awareness or review of what the average day looks like for the standard person. Having a friend come over to stay? Then you need to fork out extra cash to make your own bath salts instead of buying your own, and remove snacks from their original plastic packing and put them in another plain plastic packaging just so you can handwrite your own label.
Necessary? Nope. If any of my friends are only coming over so I spend a couple of hours ‘preparing for their arrival’ and spending money that I don’t need to, they’re not my friends.
Reminder to self, edible flowers aren’t cute anymore if you add them to every single dish.
Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet’s ‘hobbies’
Meghan and Harry live in a huge multi-million-dollar mansion in the luxury Montecito neighbourhood. They have vast amounts of land, a chicken coop (which was perfectly showcased in B-roll because of Archie’s name), their own crop garden, fruit trees and a long list of other highlights.
But what does Meghan tell us about the little prince we hardly get to see? He allegedly likes to stick a tea bag in a glass jar out in the sun and sit and watch it change colour. Here’s the bit that’s hard to swallow. When making her ‘sun tea’ she tells us it takes 2-3 hours to do so. Are we supposed to believe a five year old sits outside for three hours watching water?
It’s fine for parents to have different interests than their children, it doesn’t need to be forced. But the common theme from Meghan’s cooking show is that this is the ‘real Meghan’ she wants us to believe, and that’s the recurring theme in this With Love, Meghan review.
I hear you Meghan, but I’m not buying it.
Have you watched Meghan Markle’s new cooking show yet, what’s your review of With Love, Meghan? Leave us a comment on our Facebook page @RoyalInsiderOfficial.
