On the second episode of With Love, Meghan, Meghan Markle hosts Mindy Kaling for a small-scale garden party at a rented house in Montecito where the show was filmed. Before sitting down for breakfast, Meghan reveals that the strawberry jam she sent out to friends as a promotion for her lifestyle brand, then called American Riviera Orchard (and was recently renamed As Ever), was actually handmade at her home stove. Last spring, the jam went out to a handful of Meghan’s friends, numbered from one to 50. The duchess says the numbered jars did not reflect rank among friends, but her mother, Doria Ragland, did get the first delivery.
“It was not a ranking, it was just…let me share them,” Meghan told Kaling with a laugh. “I did save one of 50 for my mom, it just felt like the right thing to do. Then I thought anyone who got one of those 50 jars that I was making on my stove, in my actual kitchen, in my house, I hope they all feel like ‘Oh, I want to share this with you.’”
“It was extremely good,” Kaling replied. “A lot of people asked to taste it, and you know what I told them? ‘Get your own.’”
Though With Love, Meghan is filmed at a rented house near the Montecito estate Meghan shares with Prince Harry and her children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet of Sussex, the second episode begins with the duchess picking blackberries outdoors at her actual home. “It’s a daily job, this time of year, to harvest berries,” she said. “These vines were here, actually, when we first moved in. This is actually what inspired my jam and preserve making.”
Kaling was also a guest on Meghan’s podcast, Archetypes, in 2022, where she discussed having two children as a single woman. For the episode, Kaling joined Meghan for a model children’s birthday party, complete with homemade gift bags and a balloon arch. During the episode, Meghan shares a never-before-seen home movie taken of her blowing up an earlier balloon arch to celebrate Archie’s first birthday in May 2020.
While preparing small sandwiches for the garden party, Meghan explains to Kaling why she prefers to be called “Sussex,” the name Queen Elizabeth gave her and Harry on their wedding day, instead of “Markle,” her maiden name.
“It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle. You know I’m Sussex now,” the duchess said. “You have kids and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children. I didn’t know how meaningful that would be to me, but it just means so much to go, this is our family name, our little family name.”
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