Meghan, be more Martha
In her pursuit of perfection, the Duchess of Sussex has failed to recognise one very human truth
Netflix
- Caroline Frost
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Now the dust has settled on Meghan Markle’s lifestyle (of the uber-privileged Californian variety) show, with its catalogue of “scathing reviews” and a respectable but not dazzling spot in Netflix’s top ten, I repeat what I said on its arrival: this isn’t the most offensive TV show ever. Critics have slammed our hostess’s tone-deaf offerings of lavender tea bags and rainbow fruit platters in a world gone to economic and political chaos, but there’s more than enough wealth porn on TV – from Selling Sunset’s azure pools to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s country pile – to prove that our appetite for ogling at rich people’s lives remains bottomless.
But to succeed in this crowded market of aspirational guru-dom, you have to be both original and authentic. The blurb for With Love, Meghan promised us “practical tips and candid conversations with new and old friends”. The former includes demonstrations of filling a jar with Epsom salts and pouring boiling water over pasta. Meghan says she’s hoping to make magic out of “elevating ordinary things” – but this ordinary? For the candid chat, her friend, former Suits make-up artist Daniel, starts by telling his hostess, “You’ve always shown your love through food” – which is lucky for the premise of the show.
To another pal, Meghan confesses, “I don’t believe in perfect.” Friend says, “It looks perfect.” Meghan does humble face and says, “That’s sweet.” Rinse and repeat for eight whole episodes.
To succeed as an aspirational guru, you must be authentic
As for authenticity, sadly Meghan blew this out of the gate by filming all her cooking and gardening in an $8 million farmhouse down the road from her own home, rendering the lingering shots of sunlit garden benches and shelves full of brimming jars as impersonal as a supermarket ad. In an early episode, she and a friend sit down to cake and to marvel at their surroundings – pool, blue sky, mountains… “What is this view?” friend asks, but nobody knows, because nobody’s been here before. All this, plus Harry’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo and Meghan’s merch launch the same day as the show, add up to a feeling that we are her customers, not her community, whatever she might say about wanting everyone to share in this life, even if you “have a little flat in London”. Ouch.
The original all-American influencer, Martha Stewart. Getty
In the same week, it is enlightening to turn to the documentary Martha, also available on Netflix, exploring the rise, fall and redemption of Martha Stewart, America’s original influencer, whose way with a paint brush, a pair of rose clippers and a cookie cutter led her to become the country’s first woman billionaire.
In the 1970s they came for her flan trays, in the 1990s they came for her magazine and TV show, and then in 2003, they came to see her being arrested. After she was convicted the following year of lying about insider share trading and spent five months behind bars, Stewart made an unlikely but resounding comeback as the star turn on Comedy Central’s Roast of Justin Bieber where she described life in prison as “easier than making blueberry scones”.
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Stewart is now 83, too old and too rich to care, and all the more interesting for it. Post-royal fallout and exile, Meghan Markle is still at the rictus-grin stage of trying to convince us it’s all OK in her world. I imagine she’ll be a lot more interesting in a few decades when she realises it’s in the cracks that we are human. As one Martha commentator says of her friend, “Everybody thought she was perfect… she quit being a goddess and became one of us.”
Authors
Caroline Frost
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