It’s prompted more hilarious howls than Keir Starmer’s ill-timed plea for sausages – but Meghan Markle’s Netflix show and her US career are on life support. Even its name makes you want to headbutt the wall. ‘With Love, Meghan’ sounds like a range of teddy bears holding hearts, the type found in upmarket greetings cards shops.
It’s basically her preparing nibbles for virtue-signalling US ‘celebrity’ woke guests I guarantee most of us have never heard of. One is a ‘makeup artist to the stars’. We’re clearly in for deep, profound conversations. According to Netflix she invites “friends and famous guests to a beautiful California estate, where she shares cooking, gardening and hosting tips.”
One such vital life hack that had US late night talk shows giggling was ‘pretzel-gate’.
She made her own peanut butter pretzel bags for a guest by opening a big bag of supermarket pretzels, putting some into a separate plastic bag, secured with a string bow, and calling it her ‘snack prep’.
Has she not heard of a bowl?!
The original bag had a helpful label, warning it’s completely full of nuts. Meghan needs one herself.
Her new clear bag had a handwritten label that read “peanut butter” because, as the duchess says in the show, “you always want to be conscious if someone has a nut allergy.”
If I was handed a clear, sealed plastic bag of crisps at a party, complete with a bow, I’d assume I was supposed to take it home – or it was a really naff Christmas present.
The hack was so ludicrous it became a meme and mocking fodder for America’s late night chat show hosts like Jimmy Fallon that love fresh celebrity prey.
In US military terms, pretzel-gate started the ‘mission-creep’ that Netflix was dreading. It was open hunting season on the Sussexes. Meghan was grouse on the glorious 12th.
In X, formerly Twitter, one user wrote: “I’m so glad I can watch her take pretzels out of a labelled bag and put them into a new bag… then label it. The people’s Martha Stewart!”
The show originally premiered in March before a second season, filmed at the same time, was released later in August but both have been panned more than a Sierra Nevada riverbed.
The first episode was called ‘Hello, Honey!’ (Pass the vomit bag please, quick!)