Meghan Markle has baffled more reviewers with season two of her Netflix show With Love, Meghan – after it was branded ‘staged, fake and dull’ upon its release.
The Duchess seemed to block out criticism of her show, which launched yesterday, last night as she continued to plug the series on social media.
British Vogue suggested the first episode alone left them confused, asking ‘why does Meghan chop onions so slowly?’ and ‘why does Meghan need edible flowers next to her cooker?’
Dried flowers made multiple appearances in the second season, with one guest appearing to mock the Duchess for sprinkling them on her plate.
While cooking with Queer Eye presenter Tan France, the television personality asked Meghan what she was putting on her French toast.
Meghan replied: ‘Flower sprinkles. I love them’ – to which France paused and remarked: ‘Wow. That’s the gayest s*** I’ve seen in a long time.’
Yesterday, the Guardian dismissed the cooking and lifestyle show as ‘so boring’ and ‘so contrived’, while The Telegraph described the Duchess as a ‘Montecito Marie Antoinette’.
The Mail’s Liz Jones similarly branded the programme ‘staged’ and ‘dull’, but unlike other critics, commended Meghan for being ‘genuinely earnest’.
But even with celebrity guests including Chrissy Teigen, John Legend and Tan France, many critics argued the show lacks substance – and claim Meghan failed to be authentic.
Meghan Markle has baffled more reviewers with season two of her Netflix show With Love, Meghan – after it was branded ‘staged, fake and dull’ upon its release
Model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen turns up with her husband, the singer-songwriter John Legend, in the series
Radio Times’ Caroline Frost said Meghan ‘failed’ to be ‘authentic’ by ‘cooking and gardening in an $8m farmhouse down the road from her own home’
Meghan Markle opens up about her family a number of times in the lifestyle show, which features cooking, crafting and hosting tips
British Vogue
British Vogue’s Radhika Seth admitted she ‘loves’ With Love, Meghan, but described it as ‘confounding’ as she was left with ’39 burning questions’ after watching the first episode alone.
The questions included ‘why does Meghan chop onions so slowly?’ – and ‘why does Meghan need the edible flowers next to her cooker?’
While cooking in the kitchen with France, the Queer Eye presenter asks the Duchess what she just put on her French toast. Meghan replies: ‘Flower sprinkles. I love them.’
France hesitates and then remarks: ‘Wow. That’s the gayest s*** I’ve seen in a long time.’
Vogue’s initial review concludes: ‘The first episode, featuring New York culinary legends David Chang and Christina Tosi, is everything you’d hope for – a half an hour rollercoaster of flower arranging, crafty interludes and making niche flavored marshmallows.’
Daily Mail
The Mail’s Liz Jones branded the new season ‘staged, fake and dull’ – but did praise Meghan for being ‘genuinely earnest’.
‘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,’ Jones wrote.
‘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.’
Jones added: ‘For me it’s televisual Valium, as soothing as warm chai sipped on a windswept beach.’
Town & Country Magazine
Style, travel and leisure magazine Town & Country afforded Season Two of With Love, Meghan a glowing review, saying Meghan ‘shines’ when she is learning new things from her guests.
The publication particularly liked the finale with star chef Jose Andres, who serves as Meghan’s paella teacher.
‘When Meghan is slightly out of her comfort zone, With Love, Meghan succeeds; the series is best when she is learning alongside the audience, and authentically reacting to new things,’ the review concludes.
The Guardian
The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan gave the new series just two stars, writing: ‘It’s so boring, so contrived, so effortfully whimsical that, do you know what? In the end, it does become almost fascinating.’
She continued: ‘She’s still sprinkling flowers over everything, by the way. I don’t know if it’s a choice or a compulsion, but if you stand still long enough in (not) Meghan’s kitchen, the chances are you will be covered in violets and served alongside a mug of grey foam to a nano-celebrity who is beginning to realise he has not been paid enough.’
The New York Times
The New York Times offered Meghan a welcome review, titling it ‘In With Love, Meghan, the Duchess Leans Into Joy’.
‘For her fans, the show’s focus on her soft life in both seasons is rare and welcome,’ the publication adds.
Meghan landed another series despite her last being met with excoriating reviews from critics, who branded it ‘bland’ and ‘toe-curling’
The Times
The Times’ Hilary Rose had a negative reaction to the show, penning: ‘It was the bookbinding that finished me off. No, wait. Maybe it was the moment when Meghan wrapped a wooden box in a sarong, stuck a flower on top and stood back for applause.
‘Mainly, though, it was the bookbinding, a TV programme about watching glue dry. It went downhill from there.’
She added: ‘With Love, Meghan is baffling. It occupies the sweet spot where irrelevant meets intolerable. It’s like an advert for somewhere we’ll never go and aren’t invited, an ego trip in a sun hat that boils down to this: Meghan is pretty and likes roast chicken and flower arranging.
‘That’s an entry for Miss World, not a concept for ten hours of TV.’
Radio Times
Radio Times’ Caroline Frost said Meghan ‘failed’ to be ‘authentic’ by ‘cooking and gardening in an $8m farmhouse down the road from her own home’.
Ms Frost added the setup was as ‘impersonal as a supermarket ad’ – despite Meghan claiming in an interview with Bloomberg that she has returned to her ‘authentic’ self in recent years, someone she couldn’t be a few years back.
‘It was different several years ago where I couldn’t be as vocal and I had to wear nude pantyhose all the time!’ the Duchess said, adding it ‘felt a little bit inauthentic’.
The Telegraph
The Telegraph’s Anita Singh said Harry’s absence from the show – despite the programme being based on the couple’s Californian home life – was becoming ‘increasingly weird’.
She added: ‘The closing credits play out to the lyrics ‘don’t let it be the last time’. Please, let it be the last time.’
The newspaper gave the series just two stars, and titled its review ‘More tone-deafness from the Montecito Marie Antoinette’.
The Independent
The Independent were perhaps Megan’s harshest critics, giving the new series just one star.
The publication titled its review ‘Watching this is like being gaslit by a multi-millionaire’ – adding that viewing the show will leave ‘many of us feeling inadequate’.
‘It’s like an AI was fed every Nancy Meyers film ever made and instructed to burp out a TV series,’ critic Helen Coffey wrote.
Throughout the eight-part season, Meghan is seen baking with her guests – at one point preparing sourdough for Teigen and creating homemade McDonald’s-style apple pies with Tan France using ready-made puff pastry.
‘Let’s get our puff pastry ready,’ Meghan says in one episode, ‘We’re going to use pre-made, good puff pastry as opposed to making our dough from scratch.’
She later adds: ‘I love the idea of being able to rethink baking to be just a little more spontaneous.’
With Love, Meghan follows the same format as the critically-savaged first series.
She makes the American cheese crackers Cheez-Its and salt and vinegar crisps, and serves up beverages such as a ‘lavender grey latte’ made from Earl Grey tea, lavender, and frothy honey and vanilla milk.
The Duchess also uses the phrase ‘moving meditation’ twice to refer to methods of creating calm, and tells another guest: ‘I’m thinking about putting each of us in our comfort zone and out of our comfort zone. So I thought we’d begin with flower arranging.’
According to Meghan, she cooks breakfast for both her children most days, fried eggs and pancakes.
‘But I like to do surprise pancakes for the kids,’ she revealed during one episode.
‘So I always put some ground flax seeds or some chia seeds in and Lili will ask, ‘can I have my chia seeds? I want to have freckles.”
Although Prince Harry and their children came along to watch filming on a number of days, none of them feature in the show in person. Prince Harry did appear fleetingly in the final episode of series one.
The Netflix show was filmed last year in a rented home in Montecito, close to the Sussexes’ own mansion.
The first series pulled in 5.3 million views, in the top 5 per cent of Netflix shows for the first half of 2025. Meghan and Harry signed a five-year contract reported to be worth $100million with Netflix but that has now been replaced by a first-look deal which gives the streaming giant first refusal on any shows they create.
One proposal said to have been mentioned among a long list of possibilities is a documentary marking the 30th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death in 2027.
Meghan in the new trailer for the second season of her lifestyle and cooking show
The Sussexes’ office this week declined to confirm or deny if that is under consideration.
Meghan also tells her love story with Harry, revealing it was him who said the ‘L word’ first. She adds that she really understood she was falling in love with ‘H’ on their third date, which was a safari trip to Botswana.
Asked by TV personality Tan France if there was a moment when she realised this was the real thing, Meghan said: ‘Yes, that was on our third date.
‘We met in Botswana and we camped for five days together. You really get to know each other when you’re in a little tent together and it’s like – what is that outside the tent? That’s an elephant. Are we going to be safe? Yeah, you’re safe. OK.’
In another scene, France asks what Meghan just put on her French toast, to which the Duchess replies: ‘Flower sprinkles. I love them.’
France hesitates and then remarks: ‘Wow. That’s the gayest s*** I’ve seen in a long time.’
The former actress says that she knew from when she was a girl that she wanted to be a mother. ‘I’d receive my allowance and I’d go to Kmart and buy a real diaper bag. I’d want a real diaper bag to take care of my doll. I always wanted to be a mom. I love it. It’s better even than I expected.
‘The longest I went without being around our kids was almost three weeks. I was not well.’
She says that her son Archie, who is sixth in line to the throne, is a gentle boy. ‘He’s like the most tender, sweet child of all time,’ she says.
Both children are nagging her for a pet. ‘My kids really want a cat!’ she tells model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, who turns up with her husband, the singer-songwriter John Legend.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation – sitting alongside crafting, including making jewellery with dried flowers – is Meghan’s affection for the UK.
The couple quit the country in 2020, and Meghan later talked about having struggled with suicidal thoughts and having no one to help her in her new royal role. She added that she had her passport taken away after marrying Harry.
She has not set foot in the UK since September 2022, when the couple were on a charity visit and the Queen died. Harry has since said that he believes that the country is unsafe for his wife and children, and also has let it be known that he is never returning to live here from California.
But she seems almost nostalgic when talking about the UK with Tan France. She tells France, who was born in Doncaster: ‘One of the things I miss most about the UK is the radio stations.’ Magic FM was her favourite of them.
When teased that it is a ‘grandma’ station, she says that her new favourite station to listen to in the car is called Mom Jeans and plays vintage soft rock.
Their children are being raised with the influence of both cultures. In episode six, she tells Clare Smyth, the Northern Irish-born Michelin-starred chef who cooked at the couple’s wedding, that their children mix British and American pronunciations.
‘My kids, they’ll say a little bit of both, but never cooking terms because I guess Papa’s not cooking as much. They both say ‘Zebra’ though instead of ‘Zeebra’.’
Meghan is nostalgic about the meal served at their 2018 wedding, which included braised lamb. She said: ‘Remember we had the map where everything was sourced? We really wanted people to appreciate where every ingredient was coming from. I mean that was the most delicious meal. Everyone still talks about it.’
Smyth created a special recipe for fried chicken for the after-party at the wedding and tells Meghan: ‘We still do it for only an off-menu item.’
During the show, Meghan also reflects on starting out on Deal or No Deal
‘Oh my gosh. I love that we have created something off menu,’ Meghan tells her.
She and her best friend, the makeup artist Daniel Martin, enjoy a ‘double date’ with Michelin-starred chef David Chang and Christina Tosi, chef and cookbook author.
They make caramelised onion tarts for their guests before they arrive – topped with the very small eggs laid by her own Silkie chickens. ‘The eggs are so tiny,’ says Meghan.
‘Have you ever seen them? They’re hilarious. They make very small eggs. It’s not as small as a quail egg but they’re tiny. So I thought we could fry a couple of eggs and put them on those bites.’
Meghan creates a headscarf for Christina Tosi and a pocket square for David Chang using a technique called water marbling.
She makes a salad which she calls a ‘love letter’ to California with the Iranian-American chef and food writer Samin Nosrat.
She and Teigen talk about the old days when they were both briefcase models on the television game show Deal or No Deal. ‘I was just so happy I got health insurance,’ Meghan says. ‘How far we’ve come.’
She remembers getting nervous auditioning as a young actress: ‘I’d always get blotches on the chest. So then I started auditioning in turtle necks only. I was, like, nothing to see here.’
