Think Again: Meghan Markle’s Show Is a Success—It Reboots the Cali Lifestyle for Our Chaotic Era

Last April, Netflix announced that Meghan Markle was making a lifestyle show, and Selena + Chef executive producer Leah Hariton would be the showrunner. Nearly a year later, With Love, Meghan has finally arrived, facing mixed reviews (and an instant second-season renewal). In hindsight, Hariton’s inclusion should have been a sign that the food wouldn’t necessarily be the show’s main focus.

Selena + Chef, a cooking show starring Selena Gomez, began as a remote production during the pandemic with the conceit that Gomez was an admittedly mediocre cook. Various kitchen luminaries would instruct her via video call, walking her through fairly achievable recipes. For a viewer, the primary appeal was Gomez’s charisma: the funny faces she made when she caused a near catastrophe, her inability to put down her phone, and choppy segues into spotlights on the day’s chosen charity. In one episode, she and her sidekick Raquelle Stevens forget what a food processor is and whether Gomez actually has one. The hunt for the kitchen appliance provokes five minutes of crashing noises and vocal-fry, slapstick comedy at its finest.

In 2025, viewers’ expectations for “lifestyle media”—whatever that is—are in flux. Food on TikTok is ASMR, restaurant performance art, or viral lunch recipes, or, sometimes, porn. Relatable cookbook authors like Alison Roman have carved out a substantial niche on YouTube by making cooking videos indebted to 2000s workplace sitcoms with visual gags and a proneness to breaking the fourth wall. “Slow living” and “grandma hobbies” like crochet, knitting, and weaving are social media trends du jour. Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman are famous for aesthetic lifestyle content equal parts nostalgic and baffling. Step aside, Ina Garten. The food professional turned domestic goddess is out; pleasurably chaotic homemaker bestie is in.

Selena + Chef was an early and successful attempt to adapt that energy for traditional food TV. With Love, Meghan follows in those footsteps, recasting its silly luxury in an elder-millennial Pinterest lover’s glow. Within the first 20 minutes, Meghan says she doesn’t consider herself a great baker, and her frequent refrain is that she isn’t aiming for perfection. Instead, the show tracks the duchess’s emotional highs and dorky endearments to guests she is meeting for the first time. It lingers on the comical mishaps, from dropped dumplings to the green bandage she tenderly applies to makeup artist Daniel Martin’s finger after he cuts himself while picking a cherry tomato. In its structure and edits, the show has the speed and familiarity of a TikTok recipe, cutting out the process and nitty-gritty, and Meghan’s quaint address of her crew feels very (Alison) Roman-esque. When she hops into the chicken coop to see her hens or wears a pastel dress, it’s easy to see the romance of Ballerina Farm in a more politically palatable package.

Every episode begins with Meghan alone in the kitchen as she prepares a gift or treat for her guests, taking both their preferences and quirks into account. I was reminded not of any cooking show, really, but of the 1990s Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen series You’re Invited. Over 10 episodes, the twins would begin with an idea for a party—sleepover, costume, or Christmas, for example—and go through a series of crafts and activities for the theme with their guests, all set to original songs. As a kid, I never intended to learn how to mimic the Olsens’ parties, though eventually I would. Instead I watched the VHS tapes over and over again, just basking in their presence. In forging a parasocial relationship with their viewers, the Olsens were early influencers—occasionally to their chagrin—and the coincidental similarity might explain why With Love, Meghan is the way it is. More than modeling her skill at floral arranging or making breakfast sandwiches, Meghan is aiming for influence over authority, giving the audience a guidebook to making others feel special.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with this realization until the final season one episode of With Love, Meghan, when Alice Waters, Berkeley chef and founder of Chez Panisse, is on her way, and the duchess’s enthusiasm goes through the roof. Meghan can hardly contain herself as she wraps a present for Waters, and she even fantasizes about inviting the chef she has long admired over for Thanksgiving. “I’m a California girl, so what you’ve done for the world, we know, but as a Californian, my gosh,” Meghan says when Waters makes it to the kitchen set. “You’re speaking my language, but it’s a language that I learned from you, even though we haven’t met before.”

Waters’s presence isn’t just a key to understanding Meghan’s intentions for her Netflix show, it may also reveal who she is at her core. Living in California isn’t just a lifestyle, it’s also an ideology, and when it comes to defining its cultural and political demands, few have been as influential as Waters. In 2025, few reflect it better than Meghan, and after leaving the royal family, being a Californian became an ever larger part of Meghan’s identity. While she and Korean American chef Roy Choi reminisce about their childhoods, Meghan puts it simply: “We’re just two kids from LA.”

Plenty of reviews have pointed out the folly of watching a “competent but unremarkable amateur” in the kitchen and decried the basicness of Meghan’s declarations about joy. But Waters might argue that our typical standards for food TV are beside the point. Though she is best known for spotlighting farm-fresh, local, seasonal produce, the chef also has a love for elevating simple recipes through beautiful presentation. While the food at Chez Panisse is the main attraction, its elaborate menu art and slow approach to dining are what have given it global recognition. Back in 2011, I had a fellowship at an urban farm that Waters helped to found, and we called this “conviviality,” the idea that the people, the environment, and the presentation were just as important as the food itself.

Still, the quest for wellness and healthy food feels hopelessly dated now. Waters and the slow-food movement she represents had their peak influence on the culture more than a decade ago. By the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, standard-bearer Michael Pollan was lamenting that trends he sparked hadn’t led to the hoped-for revolution. Even Michelle Obama’s school lunch programs feel like a pipe dream, as the Trump administration unleashes bedlam at the USDA. The focus on purity and health that gave us all-organic everything mutated, by way of “the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline,” into the MAHA movement.

Meghan and Harry’s stated aim to make “uplifting” programming in our current moment does seem a bit quixotic. Besides the stresses of the political climate, Meghan’s orderly style is out of step with a women’s media culture more centered on Bravo reunions, “unverified” gossip, and PR conspiracies. To use the argot of political theory, Meghan is a high-trust person making content for a low-trust audience, and it’s only natural that it would draw a few raised eyebrows.

Throughout With Love, Meghan, I got the sense that she is trying to reboot her wellness sensibility for a new era. The duchess embraces real dessert, talks nostalgically of fast food, and pushes back against the orthorexia of old-school Californian dining to embrace something more modern and multicultural. Though she clearly loves a plate of crudités, the most fascinating moment of the series comes when Meghan and Choi make a dry rub for Korean fried chicken. When it’s time to add powdered monosodium glutamate, a salt-like additive that increases the umami flavors in a food, Meghan hesitates a bit.

“A little bit of MSG? I don’t know enough about it. I just remember there came a time in the ’90s or early 2000s when you were ordering food—‘no MSG,’” she said. “I don’t quite know why that happened.”

Choi’s answer emphasizes how a diversifying food scene has changed ideas about what counts as healthy or harmful. “Do you want to know the real reason? It was racist. It was racist against Asians. It was a thing about Chinese restaurants,” Choi replied. “What we have now is this more democratic food culture where information can be accessed. You don’t see any young people saying MSG gets you sick anymore.”

It’s a pointed moment in a show otherwise light on disclosure, but it stuck with me. Now that her brand As Ever has revealed its first products—raspberry preserves, flower petal “sprinkles,” and more—it’s clear that the duchess’s ambitions are somewhere closer to distribution at Williams-Sonoma locations nationwide than Martha Stewart–style total home domination. But considering the attention that Meghan and Harry’s Archewell Foundation has paid to the impact of media on public attitudes and the crisis of social isolation, it gives credence to the idea that the duchess might actually take thoughtful gifts and small gatherings extremely seriously.