What do we learn from all eight episodes of season two of With Love, Meghan, which went live this morning?
Meghan knew she loved Harry by their third date – in Botswana – although he was the one who said ‘I love you’ first. Harry has helped her grow as a person: he told her to use dock leaves if ever she is stung by nettles. Goodness, that Eton education was money well spent!
Meghan ate lots of dates while pregnant. She has boxes of mac ‘n’ cheese in her freezer. Harry hates cinnamon and lobster and yet she still married him! She loves a McDonald’s drive thru apple pie and is triggered by a sink full of dirty dishes.
Archie is the ‘sweetest most tender sweet adorable child of all time’ and Lili loves pink; now, there’s a surprise. Meg gets a blotchy chest when nervous, which is why she favours roll necks (the clothes – Khaite, Anine Bing, Veronica Beard – are all symbolic polished, Succession-level stealth wealth).
Meghan always wanted to be a ‘mom’ and reveals when she was away from her kids for three weeks it made her ‘not well’. She also lets slip what she misses most about the UK. Not the castles and the history, but Magic FM. ‘I have grandma taste!’ Put that in your palace and smoke it.
While many people will be hate-watching the second series of Meghan’s Netflix show, I actually found it more entertaining than the first (the new eight episodes were filmed straight after the first). There is no single skillet pasta from season one, no Mindy Kaling, sadly (she’s the actress and comedian who couldn’t pronounce ‘Le Creuset’ and by calling her Meghan ‘Markle’ triggered the ‘I’m Mrs De Winter now!’ moment). What we do have is model Chrissy Teigen, who looks like someone attacked her face with a bicycle pump. Long gone are the fresh-faced days when she and Meghan appeared as ‘briefcase models’ on Deal Or No Deal, some 20 years ago.
Teigen is more famous now as wife to US singer-songwriter John Legend and the mother of four kids who once joked that she adds baby powder to flour when she fries chicken ‘so it smells like tender toddler booty’.
No such finger-lickin’ cannibalism on this show, though we do have ‘engagement chicken’. The very recipe Meghan was preparing the night Harry proposed no less, although that night ‘it was horrible’ she admits, having been confused by imperial measurements.
Other guests we have actually heard of this time are Michelin-starred chef Clare Smyth, who catered their wedding and reveals Meg has ‘great knife skills’; fashion guru and star of Netflix series Queer Eye Tan France (he advises Meghan to slather her face weekly with thick yogurt to ensure she ages like fine wine, not bananas); and American-Iranian chef Samin Nosrat, who wrote Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She reveals to Meg she has dinner every Monday with a close-knit group of friends, at which Meghan looks wildly jealous; she does seem lonely – most of the guests she is meeting for the first time, aside from mega-wealthy cosmetics entrepreneur Jamie Kern Lima (aka Buzz Lightyear), who interviewed Meghan on her podcast in April – and quite often bored. There is less energy about Meghan in these episodes.
While many people will be hate-watching the second series of the Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix show, I actually found it more entertaining than the first, writes Liz Jones
Meghan with model Chrissy Teigan, who looks like someone attacked her face with a bicycle pump
Will the second series reach the top 300 on Netflix and make the company rethink their current, first refusal deal with Meghan and ‘H’, which is as diluted as her alcohol-free spritzers? Well, the Sussex squad superfans were out in force on social media to make damn sure it’s a hit: ‘Let’s watch this on Netflix, let’s resist the urge to post videos. Netflix is not counting Twitter likes or SM [social media] views.’
The new series coincides with the restock of the As Ever shelves with her brand of jams, pancake mixes and flower sprinkles – a marketing wheeze as crisp at the edges of her handmade (or as the Americans call it ‘hand’) apple pie.
Of course, most critics will rip this show to shreds, proclaiming, ‘I couldn’t make it past lavender towels!’ – surprisingly, an early take from Forbes magazine was: ‘More commanding and confident… great depth and warmth’ – but for me it’s televisual Valium, as soothing as warm chai sipped on a windswept beach.
It is all staged and fake, of course – it’s again filmed in a hired house near her home in Montecito – but then, so is Nigella. And while you just know Nigella has a core of steel, Meghan really is this gauche. She calls bread-making ‘moving meditation’ and means it. What I love about Meghan – aside from the fact she makes a pressed forget-me-not necklace for Guy, her beagle (RIP) – is she seems genuinely earnest: it really is not an act.
She repeats the phrase ‘so sweet’ often and seems warm with the crew. I adore, too, the day drinking; there is nowhere she goes without a coup of champagne. So, here at last is the chink in her armour: who wouldn’t resort to alcohol given the headlines, the hate? She alludes to the rumours and trolling obliquely, even referring to an old canard that she’d had a child pre-Harry: ‘If I’d have kept a secret like that, that would have been impressive.’
Does Harry appear? Only in framed photographs, though we do see a baseball cap she had made for him to mark his 40th.
He’s like a ginger ghost, however, haunting every scene. I’d have loved him to slope, bare-chested, behind Meghan as she channelled Demi Moore, making pottery. Now, that would have got the series into the top ten…
