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I started watching With Love, Meghan this morning, but I couldn’t even finish the Mindy Kaling episode because I had to start work (work = writing about WLM!). I got the vibe of WLM and it’s what I expected – Meghan cooking and entertaining, hanging out with her friends and providing fun tips for family-friendly stuff and “girls’ nights” and more. Meghan whipped up a breakfast/brunch of frittata, bacon and parfaits in like five minutes and I was SHOOK. Then she started doing a balloon display and I was like… oh, that’s why she cooks so fast, because it takes several hours to do a balloon arch, even with a balloon inflator.
Watching WLM is going to be a trip this week, because it’s really just a sweet little cooking/entertaining show with zero drama and with little to do with the left-behind Windsors. And yet, the left-behinds have been in a full-blown panic about WLM for two months now, and William and Kate have already been sent out to bake cakes and talk about jam. The British media is trying their damnedest to make WLM into the most controversial program ever, and a show in which the entire Sussex Endeavor rests. As in, if WLM isn’t successful, then the Sussexes will be failures and something something they’ll come crawling back to the UK! As such, the Sunday Times had this piece: “With Love, Meghan: as duchess returns to Netflix, was $100m well spent?” Would you believe that the Times found “insiders” who claimed that Netflix hates Meghan??
Since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed a deal with Netflix in 2020 for an estimated $100 million (some company insiders dispute this sum, although one former employee claimed it was “even more”) there has been one mega-hit and three relative duds. The biographical Harry & Meghan was the streaming service’s biggest documentary debut, watched in almost 29 million households in its first four days, but Polo, a sports docuseries, Live to Lead, about “global justice activists”, and Heart of Invictus, about the prince’s games for injured soldiers, did not set the streamer charts alight.
In Los Angeles, many have assumed that the Sussexes’ relationship with Netflix is now on borrowed time, especially amid talk that the couple were difficult to work with. “The word bandied around internally is ‘nightmare’,” said a company insider. The chances of a deal being renewed were thought to rest on With Love, Meghan proving a major success.
However, last month, the streamer’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, insisted the company was still “really excited” to be working with the couple, describing Meghan’s hospitality series as “such a great take on a lifestyle show and a showcase for California, Montecito and nature”. Initially, the deal had been for them to make TV, film and children’s shows.
“As long as Meghan and Harry are selling themselves, people will tune in — whether they’re fans or watching through their fingers,” said a royal source. “It’s where they have ventured beyond themselves and tried to say something about the wider world that they have struggled.”
The series will doubtlessly be criticised for being out of touch (while the trailer claims “everyone’s invited”, no one will be watching this for budgeting tips), and the authenticity of the show and its star will certainly be questioned. It is filmed in a Californian farmhouse, not the couple’s Montecito mansion with its Tuscan architecture and 13 fireplaces — but so long as it is being talked about, will Netflix care?
“There’s a feeling that Netflix hasn’t got great value for money [from the Sussexes] because they were buying exclusivity — but then the couple appeared in other places, like their podcasts, and because their popularity has nosedived,” said a source with knowledge of the original deal. “This might be a way to milk some value out of them.”
I’ve said this before: it’s abundantly clear from the way the British media covers the Sussexes’ businesses and contracts that the British media has no idea how any of this works. To the Times, Netflix is only “Bridgerton, The Crown and the Sussexes,” and they assume that Netflix’s business model is that simplistic and localized. The British media doesn’t want to acknowledge the huge amount of support Netflix is giving WLM and Meghan’s product line, As Ever. Netflix put up a WLM ad in Times Square, for goodness sake. Those moves indicate that Netflix plans to be in the Sussex business for a while.
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
