Why Meghan’s new Netflix life-style present MUST be a success: ALISON BOSHOFF reveals why the stakes could not be larger for the Duchess (and the way the challenge is already attracting some controversy…)

Is Meghan in a jam? Following the release on Thursday night of the one minute and 50 second official trailer of her forthcoming Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, she’s been roundly ridiculed.

She’s been accused of everything from being a fake and a copycat to holding a knife incorrectly, dangling her hair in the food and endangering the gastric health of her celebrity guests by poking polished fingernails into uncooked bread dough.

So what, you might think. But the problem is that the show, and its global popularity, is a make-or-break moment for the Sussexes.

Their £80 million deal with Netflix runs out this autumn and With Love, Meghan could be their last contribution to the streaming giant.

The tell-all documentary Harry & Meghan was a huge hit for Netflix in December 2022, but Prince Harry‘s Heart Of Invictus was one of its lowest-rated programmes in 2023 and his show Polo, about the elite sport, was lambasted and failed to make any Netflix Top Tens when it was released in the autumn.

Numerous other announced projects, such as a film adaptation of the chick-lit novel Meet Me At The Lake, have come to nothing.

If they are to have any chance of getting the deal renewed, With Love, Meghan must be a hit.

Indeed, following Megxit and their move to California, the Netflix deal is understood to be their main source of income. Meghan’s deal with Spotify was famously terminated in 2023 after she and Harry ‘failed to meet productivity benchmarks’. A joint statement from Harry and Meghan’s company and the streaming giant said they had ‘mutually agreed to part ways’.

The stakes are even higher as With Love, Meghan is intended to act as a launchpad for her American Riviera Orchard brand, which is expected to start selling its first products imminently, despite ongoing niggles over copyright.

That business, which is understood to be run in conjunction with Netflix, could be their financial lifeline. But Meghan will need to sell her vision to the masses – and make them buy into it – for it to work.

Proof of the importance of this relaunch to the Sussexes came on New Year’s Day when the Duchess re-launched herself into social media with an Instagram post. Unusually, it was issued with the comments turned off.

She has previously complained that she had been through ‘almost unsurvivable’ trolling on social media and husband Prince Harry has repeatedly criticised social media companies including Instagram’s owner, Meta, for having a negative impact on mental health.

Sources ‘familiar with the matter’ told Vanity Fair this week that she returned to the platform ‘following meetings with executives at Meta, Instagram’s parent company, about fostering healthier online experiences’.

This hasn’t stopped the criticism. On YouTube, where Netflix posted the video of the trailer, there are thousands of comments and they appear to be entirely negative.

One runs: ‘Meghan With Love for whom? Certainly not her father, her husband’s family, or the friends she ghosted after they were no longer useful. Such warmth and love, such authenticity, feeding celebrities food cooked by a chef in a rented prop house.’

Some critics complain the show is not original, others that it’s quite a pivot for Meghan, who has talked numerous times about her ‘higher purpose’ in life. That purpose hasn’t previously involved putting edible flowers on doughnuts, or having a tea party in a greenhouse.

And some think that launching any aspirational lifestyle show is tone-deaf as many across the world struggle with the cost of living crisis. Blogger Meghan McCain commented: ‘This is why the world doesn’t like you, nothing else. Just completely and utterly tone deaf to the moment.’

Indeed, the trailer for the forthcoming show has prompted more debate than many full-length movies. So why is it so controversial – and can it succeed?

The fake ‘house’ – and gardens

The ‘at home’ cooking show shows Meghan at a house which is not hers. As with Harry & Meghan, which was filmed at another Montecito mansion, With Love, Meghan does not come to you from the couple’s private residence.

Instead, the production company are thought to have paid $500,000 for ten weeks of filming at 130 Tiburon Bay, which is owned by local millionaires Tom and Sherrie Cipolla. It’s a stone’s throw from her own kitchen, where she filmed the Insta promo for American Riviera Orchard when it had a hasty ‘pre-launch’ ten months ago.

This kitchen has a 48-inch Thermador range cooker, costing £15,000, plus masses of white Le Creuset cookware, copper pans, walnut chopping boards and Shun Santoku knives, which cost around £200 each.

The gardens of the house look set to feature as well, with the Duchess filmed digging up lettuce and carrying salad veg in a trug from the garden which she does not, er, garden.

(To be fair to Meghan, using someone else’s kitchen as yours is nothing new: Nigella Lawson was in hot water for allowing viewers to believe a TV studio was her home over the course of numerous series.)

All my own work?

The film’s producers at The Intellectual Property Company have, unusually, opted not to share any of the names of the crew on the IMDb website. Meaning that we don’t know yet which home economist supported her with recipes and actual cooking on the show. Netflix and the Sussex office declined to comment.

During production, the venture was known as ‘PTJ’ – the acronym apparently standing for ‘Project Joy’.

Reheated recipes 

Recipes are notoriously passed around, tweaked and copied to the point where it’s difficult to be original. However, a couple of Meghan’s most eye-catching offerings in the trailer are most certainly not her own inventions.

The ladybird canapes – where a sliced tomato is the body, a halved black olive the head and dots of balsamic vinegar are the spots – were a Pinterest staple online from 2016 onwards and have been made and Instagrammed by influencers ever since.

Her cakes – a Victoria sponge filled with cream and raspberries and a madeira topped with raspberries and mint – are also extremely common.

The edible flowers in ice cubes were done by US lifestyle guru Martha Stewart over a decade ago, while the edible flowers on doughnuts again have long been a popular recipe on Instagram.

Looks familiar 

The aesthetic of the show is also strikingly generic. The Marchioness of Bath, Emma Thynn, dresses in pretty florals and is surrounded by fresh flowers when she cooks on her YouTube show Emma’s Kitchen. The Marchioness has also been shown beekeeping, as Meghan is.

In 2023, Kensington Palace shared photogenic pictures of the Princess of Wales beekeeping.

One in the eye

With Love, Meghan’s showrunner Leah Hariton previously completed four series of Selena + Chef, featuring the actress Selena Gomez cooking with various chefs including Gordon Ramsay.

Not only is the look of both big-budget shows similar, the ‘funny’ incident in which Meghan gets lemon in her eye while squeezing one for a drink resembles an incident in which Selena Gomez mistakenly squirted herself with the fruit in one of her shows in 2023.

That ‘blooper’ also made it into the trailer for Selena + Chef.

Knives out 

There are many comments online about the way Meghan holds a knife and chops spring onions. Holding a finger along the top of the knife is considered a no-no, while her chopping technique seems to indicate that she’s not had even basic training.

Closest friends? 

There’s a lot of Meghan hugging and giggling with her friends in the promo – including her make-up artist friend Daniel Martin and Delfine Blaquier, the wife of Harry’s polo playing chum, Nacho Figeuras. But not everyone in it appears to have a direct personal connection to the Duchess.

Instead, it looks as if some guests will be showing her recipes – like Roy Choi, a Korean-American chef famed for his food truck empire.

He appears to confirm that they didn’t know each other before filming when he tells her: ‘We are family now.’

Netflix did not respond when asked how much he was paid for taking part – but have not denied some of guests have been paid.

Other guests include Tracy Robbins, the fashion designer wife of Paramount boss Brian, and Mindy Kaling, the comedy writer who was great friends with Canadian stylist Jessica Mulroney.

Mulroney and Meghan were once oh-so close – she was the chief bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince Harry and her children were page boys and flower girls. But they broke off contact after an incident in which Mulroney fell out with an internet influencer and was accused of racism.

Another guest, Kelly McKee Zajfen, actually knows Meghan via the Duchess’s first husband, Trevor Engelson. Engelson was friends with Kelly’s husband, Julian.

Thumbs down

In the 24 hours after it was uploaded the trailer received 494,000 views on YouTube. There were 6,600 likes for the video and apps suggest there were 42,000 dislikes, almost seven times as many. There were 10,805 comments, and the most popular were overwhelmingly negative.

Top comments include: ‘The most unintentionally hilarious satire I’ve ever seen: a woman who has taken a wrecking ball to her and her husband’s families, who has been accused of bullying on practically an industrial scale leaving people ‘crying’ and traumatised; a ‘dictator in heels’; a woman who mocked elders. She calls this With Love, Meghan?! Absolutely hilarious.’

D-day is coming

The afternoon of Tuesday, January 21 will be a significant one – that is when Netflix release their weekly global Top Tens. If the show does not make that in week one – after all the global attention – that would be a big surprise.

To be a hit, the programme will need to do well through all of its eight episodes and also to keep and continue to attract viewers after the initial period.

Meghan could yet turn this project into a triumph – and launch a commercial empire on the back of it.

But if it fails, one wonders quite where she and Harry – who appears for a split second in the trailer – will go next.