Ahead of the new trailer dropping for her Netflix series, With love, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex made the somewhat necessary move of making her return to Instagram after leading the private life of a royal for so long. Moments after she created her first personal post since she joined the royal family, Markle received swift backlash from detractors online. This is typical anytime Markle does or says anything that is shared online, and has been the pattern ever since she married into the royal family and has therefore been subject to harsh criticism in the UK media for her every word and action.
After the trailer for Markle’s new series dropped on social media, this pattern kicked in again. Users on the platform X lobbed accusations that the trailer made the series look “pretentious,” “contrived,” and “narcissistic.” Conservative media outlets were quick to focus on these snide online comments, rather than taking an unbiased look at the preview’s merits. Most of the criticism could be summed up with the question of who does Markle think she is, telling people how to artfully curate their lives? But this criticism is so swift and harsh, it begs the question, what’s going on beneath the surface?
Online Criticism For ‘With Love, Meghan’ Feels Familiar
The harsh criticism the Suits actor has faced ever since her foray into the royal family has long been understood as a by-product of racial discrimination that many Black women face simply by existing in spaces traditionally reserved for white people. And yet, with every new venture since the UK media began to heap criticism on her, Markle has been subjected to the same bitter onslaught of criticism, even before her work is fully realized. It happened again with the launch of “American Riviera Orchard,” which was subject to immediate criticism online when she created an enigmatic Instagram page for the home and lifestyle brand.
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Markle has an undeniable history in the lifestyle space, prior to her ever being exposed to the upper-crust tastes of the royal family. Dating and eventually marrying Prince Harry had a marked impact on Markle’s career, as the family even began to intervene in her work as an actress. Her popular self-published lifestyle blog “The Tig” ran for three years before it was shuttered as she pursued life with the royal family in the UK. The site was a curated window into Markle’s Southern California lifestyle and her travel adventures abroad. But it wasn’t just travel, recipes, and beauty tips on the site, as it also featured brief “Tig Talk” questionnaires answered by a variety of successful individuals throughout the years, including Emmy Rossum, Serena Williams, and Priyanka Chopra, as well as other in-depth interviews. With Markle’s projects, there is always significant substance behind the curated joy.
The ‘With love, Meghan’ Trailer Already Shows the Series’ Strengths
Markle’s new series shares a showrunner with Selena Gomez‘s reality TV venture Selena + Chef, where the singer/actress invites celebrity chefs to teach her how to prepare some of their favorite dishes. The Max series has remarkable production value, considering it is filmed in Gomez’s home, and there is coziness lent to the series by this “filmed at home” aspect. It is already clear from the trailer that Markle’s series will have a similar production value and flow that is found in Gomez’s successful series.
The trailer for With love, Meghan also has excellent production value, as should be expected, since Michael Steed, producer and director of the beloved Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown docu-series, was behind the camera for all eight episodes. There are also several celebrity guest visitors and professional experts booked, each of whom add value to the program in their own right. By all appearances, the show has everything one would expect from an elevated lifestyle series, spearheaded by someone who has a professional background curating lifestyle advice.
Markle Is Reclaiming Her Professional Space
In the preview trailer for the upcoming series, Markle claims to have always had an interest in “taking something pretty ordinary, and elevating it.” From her work on “The Tig,” to this new venture, there is clear branding consistency. If viewers want to interpret this as “pretentious,” that is their prerogative. But, the criticism Markle is already facing online seems colored by racial discrimination, since it frequently boils down to outrage at the Duchess having the audacity to assert her right to claim space in the lifestyle field dominated by white women like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kourtney Kardashian. Considering the lifestyle space is inherently pretentious, the attacks seem to be more personal than professional in nature.
The online and media attacks on Markle’s new venture typically center around projections regarding her and Prince Harry’s failure to deliver on other ventures in the past, which often don’t account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these projects, nor the fraught nature of entertainment production in general. Speculation about Markle and her husband’s desire to extend their lucrative deal with Netflix often has critics bending over-backwards to somehow paint this ambition in a negative light. They’ll frequently link Markle’s new venture with observations that critics did not respond well to Prince Harry’s recent polo-documentary, or some other drama that doesn’t have anything to do with her new series at all. And yet, from all appearances, the criticism of With love, Meghan is unfounded, and the series will deliver a thoughtful and intentional return to the lifestyle space for Markle.
With love, Meghan will air on Netflix on January 15, 2025.
