Review: In ‘With Love, Meghan,’ Meghan Markle Is Tireless in Her Pursuit of Joy, but to What End?

With Love, Meghan opens with a scene that could be familiar to many people who worked with her, from palace aides to Spotify producers: the Duchess of Sussex, with the best of intentions, has entered an area she’s unfamiliar with and requires expertise to navigate. She proceeds with gusto, closely overseeing a skilled employee. She expresses personal concerns about the potential pitfalls of the project. When the endeavor is complete, she touts the positive impact, with her husband Prince Harry’s support. In this case, beekeeping—and With Love itself—are the newest iteration of Meghan Sussex. (Not Markle anymore, we learn.)

Meghan has kept a colony for about a year, because the Montecito property where she lives with Harry and their two children previously had no bees on it. Meghan employs a professional to maintain the hive because it scares her when the bees come out, and also because she is not an apiarist. Still, Meghan basks in the result. “I’ve got good vibes,” she says of the 70,000 bees being sent out to pollinate the flora of California, thanks to her. “Good vibes for good hives.”

proudly square, saying things like “Working hard or hardly working?” and “Love is in the details, gang” to the camera. She says she has never heard an outfit referred to as a “lewk.” Meghan is adamantly pro-joy and anti-perfection, words that are repeated across the eight episodes. Her time in the monarchy—notwithstanding her title as Duchess of Sussex—is obliquely referred to only as the “during” in the “before, during, and after” of Meghan’s life.

To watch With Love is to microdose quotidian revelations. Meghan pairs Zara with Loro Piana and once worked at a donut store! Harry likes super-salty food and the smell of sauteing onions! The non-narrative chat between Meghan and her guests is mostly nostalgic (“What did you eat growing up?”), or the sort of conversation you might have in line for an aura photo at a Goop conference (“Nature is so grounding”). Everyone is grateful to be there; Mindy Kaling talks about clocking what number was on the label of the famous American Riviera Orchard jam she received to see how she ranked among friends (Meghan is mortified she didn’t think of how that might be interpreted), and chef Roy Choi says, “I was blown away that I was even asked to do the show—that you even know who the hell I was.” (Meghan runs to hug him!) In the case of Alice Waters, Meghan is the gusher; she turns to the camera and whispers, “Alice Waters!” in front of the woman. “You are going to change my life—you already have,” Meghan tells Waters. “I feel like you’re watching me fall in love. It’s very, very awkward.” (What a show that would be.)

The fact that fresh peas look best when they’re presented on the half-pod is given two separate segments in the four-hour season. Much hay is made of adding flowers—to crudités, to ice cubes, to frittata, to toast, to donuts, to hummus, to cookies, to salad, to sun tea and honey, to the seemingly hundreds of vases around the set of the show. Meghan told People she decided to film at a house near the Sussexes’ mansion rather than the family home because, “I wanted to protect that safe haven. We’re a close-knit family, and I love those moments—putting Lili down for a nap, having lunch together, having sacred time together at the end of the day. Our kitchen is where Mama just cooks for the family, and with a crew of 80-plus people, that’s a lot of people to have in your house!” Meghan is evidently fine with bringing cameras and what Netflix surely hopes will be millions of eyes to the larger safe haven of Montecito, which is mentioned by name many times during the show and filmed so beautifully that Meghan’s guest and makeup artist Daniel Martin says, “I feel like this is all fake.”

For a show that is ostensibly built on the expertise of homemaking, Meghan doesn’t seem to know intermediate-level terminology, like that the spiky floral arrangement tool is called a frog or what “crumb” is in breadmaking. That lack of advanced knowledge in Meghan’s fussy homeyness make the show feel more authentic than her last high-profile solo venture, the podcast Archetypes.

With Love also seems to be deliberately pushing back on the staff “bullying” narrative that has plagued Meghan since she was a working royal. The fourth wall is repeatedly broken and the camera turned to capture the crew as Meghan encourages them to consume something she just made. “The only thing better than eating food is making food for someone and watching them eat it with delight!” she says in episode six, beaming as director Michael Steed takes off his headset and chews a breakfast sandwich under Meghan’s expectant gaze.

In the first episode (“Hello, Honey!”), Meghan explicitly ties With Love to an earlier independent project: her pre-Harry lifestyle website The Tig, which featured recipes like “Crostini Five Ways” and a guide to Manhattan’s Lower East Side that included a recommendation for floral-dress chain Reformation. Lainey Gossip’s Elaine Liu previously told VF that Markle’s forthcoming lifestyle brand As Ever (née/RIP American Riviera Orchard)—which was to be pegged to With Love and is also produced in partnership with Netflix—“is giving 2014. It’s not giving 2024. Fame arrests you at the moment it arrives. And I wonder if that is your health-and-wellness-lifestyle version of that, where she had to suspend The Tig and quit it the moment that she became Harry’s girlfriend, then fiancée, and then his wife. [It] is maybe picking up from where The Tig left off.”

You get the sense that even when not being documented by Netflix, Meghan really does stock guest rooms with snacks and would happily tell you exactly how she salt-bakes fish if you asked. It absolutely tracks that Meghan considers a manuka honey stick to be a party favor for a child. One person told VF they received a gift basket of produce and jam two years before American Riviera Orchard was announced—or three years before the As Ever rebrand. Everyone on the show both seems awed by Meghan’s thoughtfulness and not at all shocked—the most genuine part of With Love is that Meghan seems to desperately want everyone to know how much she cares. This manifests in one of many such moments as Meghan telling Tatcha founder Vicky Tsai that she personally made creamer for Tsai’s specific sweet and light coffee preference. “I know both of us love extra credit,” Meghan tells Tsai while forgiving them both for not home-making dumpling wrappers. “We like to get the gold star.”

Other projects on With Love, like making beeswax candles, were explicitly contrived as lessons for the show, though it’s unclear where one would acquire raw beeswax to make their own candles if one doesn’t have a colony on their property. Likewise, when Meghan decorates a cake while the candles are drying, it is as enviable as anything else we see on camera but it doesn’t feel actionable or attainable—the guest, makeup artist Martin, visibly wilts when presented with the additional task. Even the duchess admits she doesn’t actually like to bake—a refreshing respite from the enthusiasm. These moments seem to exist not for aspiration, but to highlight Meghan’s work ethic. As a source familiar with the couple previously said, “I think there’s one thing that no one could take away from Meghan is how hard she works, how much effort goes into everything that she does. Ultimately that’s all she needs.” With Love, Meghan succeeds as a monument to effort.