Reckoning with Her Power
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex debuts another lifestyle rebrand, now on Netflix.
I think that a helpful foray into the new lifestyle show “With Love, Meghan” is a conversation between its star, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and one of her show’s guests, television actor and producer Mindy Kaling. Kaling has arrived on Meghan’s kitchen set—a pristine, breezy place awash in crisp beiges and natural light—cracking jokes and wearing a denim-on-denim ensemble festooned with Valentino logos. “I could do Romanian deadlifts with this Le Creuset,” Kaling says of the expensive white earthenware on Meghan’s stovetop.
The conversation turns to fast food, and Mindy Kaling comments that people will be surprised to find out that Meghan Markle—Meghan’s name before marrying Prince Harry—enjoys one particular restaurant chain. Kaling finds herself swiftly corrected by Meghan, who tells her, “You know I’m Sussex now.” After her marriage, Meghan received the title Duchess of Sussex, and for legal and day-to-day purposes her surname is now Sussex. She shares this surname with her two kids, she tells Kaling.
Names are important and many people undergo various name changes throughout their lives. For the sake of simplicity I am going to refer to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex as Meghan here.
Mindy Kaling seemingly took Meghan’s correction well on the show, but this moment caused yet another wave of bad press for Meghan. Some thought that her comment made Meghan look out-of-touch and entitled. Bad publicity has plagued Meghan for years, especially following her dramatic departure along with Prince Harry from working roles in the British Royal Family during March 2020. Meghan has struggled to get a win, either in the press or through the various projects she has pursued in her post-royal life. Her professional pivot away from the Royal Family has been mired in everything from canceled projects, resignations, and complaints from colleagues, to legal dust-ups over names and trademarks. “With Love, Meghan,” which has now been renewed for another season, seems like her first post-royal project that may have legs.
It’s hard to determine what authenticity means for Meghan. On the one hand, “With Love, Meghan” is an enjoyable, aesthetically-pleasing series where Meghan gets to showcase her Californian roots and her favorite hobbies. (She now lives in Montecito with Prince Harry and their children.) We get a sense of her genuine love for hosting meals, gardening, arranging flowers, and raising her kids. Before her marriage to Prince Harry Meghan ran a lifestyle blog called The Tig, and her continued interest in this space is obvious.
On the other hand, there are evident guardrails around Meghan’s privacy. Meghan tells us that the kitchen where we watch her cook is not her real one. The disclosure is a seeming attempt at authenticity, but somehow it only further underscores an underlying theme of intense control. Meghan can do it all—she creates beautiful calligraphy-covered labels, she makes candles, and she even creates her own balloon arch at one point. With certain guests, Meghan really takes the lead. She is a bit like the student in a group project who wants to do the whole assignment herself.
Amid their learned helplessness, these guests seem amazed at her domestic skill and attention to detail. The truth is, if I were making homemade beeswax candles with Meghan, I too would let her make mine while I stood to the side and watched.
Throughout the series, Meghan repeats variations of a mantra: “It doesn’t have to be perfect.” Meghan is usually issuing this reminder while she completes projects that are so sophisticated that most people wouldn’t attempt them in the first place. At one point Meghan reminds viewers, for instance, that they can purchase pre-made dumpling wrappers instead of making their own. She sounds almost contrite when she makes this suggestion. We get the sense that these reminders are more for herself than for us.
Post-2020, Meghan has attracted a disproportionate amount of public vitriol as she and her husband try to navigate lives and careers outside the Royal Family. It seems clear that more careful thought and commitment are needed for her projects. It’s just a hunch, but I suspect that people love to criticize Meghan partially because she serves as somewhat of an effigy for their own perfectionism and inability to commit in life.
During interviews, Meghan has made it clear that she found the intricate rules and customs of the Royal Family—known popularly as “The Firm”—overbearing and suffocating. Meghan’s personal standards and preferences may be different from The Firm’s, but I think they are no less exacting or strict. Perhaps Meghan left The Firm because she wanted to run her own.
Highly successful lifestyle icons aren’t necessarily seen as tough or strict people, but maybe they should be. I mean, look at Martha Stewart. She’s hard. She literally went to prison!
You know who else is hard? The Royal Family. They are workers. They attend hundreds of events throughout the year, all while upholding the longstanding customs and protocols of the monarchy. They have hard, grueling jobs in the spotlight, and their private lives and errors in judgment are frequently exposed in the media.
Like every other family, they are also highly imperfect. They are learning in real time how to balance their lineage and traditions with present-day circumstances. Members of the Royal Family have made terrible mistakes as parents and as partners. Repeatedly, they have been forced to publicly course-correct in order to maintain their relevance.
Outsiders have significantly helped to strengthen the Royal Family’s image. I cannot think of a more fitting future Queen of England than Kate Middleton, who married Prince William in 2011. Like Meghan, Kate is stunningly beautiful and intriguing to the public. Yet Kate is Meghan’s seemingly perfect foil. While Meghan skews towards individualism and dynamic change, Kate is steady and dutiful. She sticks with things. Kate Middleton met Prince William in college and dated him for nine years on and off before he proposed.
At the same time, even after many years in the spotlight we don’t know all that much about Kate’s personality. When she does speak out, it’s usually in the name of unimpeachable causes no one could possibly criticize, like early childhood nurturance and mental health advocacy. It was a big deal that time she played the piano. Unfairly, part of Kate’s popularity might be due to the fact that she really never does anything that anyone could possibly find controversial or provocative. She toes the line, always.
Balance—between being an individual and honoring your commitments—would be nice. During his pre-marriage days, Prince Harry seemed to strike that balance quite well. He is not without his issues, but as a working royal he showed up dutifully for family events while also being silly and goofy. He was approachable; he didn’t take himself too seriously. He carried on the legacy of his mother Princess Diana, who was so very glamorous and also so very human. She understood how to harness her own substantial star power amid the demands of membership in the Royal Family. By the end of her too-short life, she had the whole world talking about AIDs patients and landmines.
On her show’s kitchen set, Meghan is relaxed, with her signature long, black beach waves, dewy, sun-kissed skin, and freckles. She wears airy, often oversized attire in neutral colors. Thin gold bracelets dangle on her wrists. Gone are the British-style fascinators and formal dresses which never looked quite right on her.
Meghan’s first guest is her longtime makeup artist Daniel Martin. Referencing her royal stint, she tells us that Daniel has been in her life for the “before, during, and after.” Meghan is often criticized in the media for burning social bridges. For women, it’s often a seeming mark of social worthiness and good character if they maintain all their relationships, no matter how stagnant or unsuitable, for their whole lives. Kate Middleton, notably, seems to keep a tight circle of mostly people whom she’s known for many years. With Daniel’s guest appearance, Meghan seems to be conveying that she does indeed maintain her friendships.
“Uncle Daniel,” as her kids call him, is bubbly and enthusiastic. He calls himself Meghan’s “only ratchet friend.” He starts to tell a story about the version of Meghan he knew back in Toronto, where she filmed the popular legal drama Suits for seven seasons. Her Suits role had been Meghan’s big acting breakthrough after years of toil.
Meghan says she can’t remember their first project together. Daniel can, however. As Daniel proceeds to paint a picture of the young, hungry actress that Meghan once was—she didn’t have PR help, so she booked him for the first time herself—the camera shows us Meghan’s nervous reaction to his story. Her wide eyes say everything—she looks vulnerable and worried that he’ll say the wrong thing or embarrass her. Meghan looks fearful and almost childlike, as if she’s holding her breath.
Most of us, myself included, have past versions of ourselves who make us cringe a little bit. I also have old friends who could tell some seriously embarrassing stories about me—most of us do!
I’m taking a lot of liberties right now, and I’m not a psychoanalyst. But I wonder if Meghan should feel so embarrassed about this younger, scrappier, B-list version of herself. That person had just overcome much difficulty to earn breakout success on a long-running and beloved television series. That version of Meghan had gotten her not only name recognition, but also financial and career stability, probably for the first time in her life. That person sounds like an extremely hard worker, someone who was not at all entitled and who was willing to do whatever it took over long periods of time to rise to the next level. Commitment and hard-nosed dedication are needed qualities in the Royal Family, and I’m sure Prince Harry saw those things in her.
We spend a lot of time trying to forget the versions of ourselves that most embarrass us. What’s unfortunate, though, is our lack of love and appreciation for those selves and what they did for us.
It’s often the past self from whom you desire the greatest distance who can most help you in your present moment. Today Meghan gets criticized for her capriciousness, her perceived sense of entitlement, and her inability to make decisions and commit to them. It sounds like there is a version of Meghan whose tenacity and grit could be very helpful to her in this moment.
A career in the spotlight cannot just be on your terms—you have to give of yourself in very real, deep ways if you want to reach a certain level of recognition and popularity. To speak the language of cooking shows, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
It depends, though, on what you want. If you want to create a lifestyle show and stop there, that is fine. That is more than most people ever achieve professionally. To get bigger rewards, however, you need to be doing hard, unglamorous work over a very long period of time. Meghan’s pre-Harry self already knows this.
In Judaism we have an obligation to separate out a little piece of challah dough before baking it. You are meant to burn that small piece of dough as a sacrifice to God. It’s a reminder that nothing you have is truly yours.
Members of the Royal Family understand that nothing they have is truly theirs. The jewelry, tiaras, estates, titles, and so forth—these are things that have been passed down to them, and will continue to be passed on to their descendants after they die. Members of the Royal Family are custodians of a tradition that is larger than their individual selves. They are worker bees, you might say.
Speaking of bees, in the opening sequence of “With Love, Meghan” we watch Meghan and her beekeeper check on a honey-producing beehive in her backyard. In this graceful scene we hear these beautiful song lyrics:
How do you bear the full weight?
How does the long way feel?
Kneading your hand too tight against the wheel?
How do you stay in that tower?
How do you reckon your own power?
I started this essay with a conversation about Meghan’s surname Sussex. She is well within her rights to use whichever surname or title she’d like. It doesn’t seem clear, however, what Meghan wants her ultimate legacy to be.
Doing hard things devotedly over long periods of time endears people to you and makes your title mean something. Otherwise the title feels a bit flimsy. Maybe a personal reckoning with her power is what is needed for this embattled public figure.
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An important discussion about Generative AI-produced art by Selim Tlili (New York, NY) published by the Tech Lab 4 Humanity at Virginia Tech.