Meghan hit by humiliating number

How else to explain the situation currently playing out over on YouTube regarding the trailer for Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s new at-home-on-the-$30,000-range entertaining series With Love, Meghan?

Here we are, just over 24 hours since the With Love video debuted - 110 seconds of just-so strewn tablescapes and reams of edible flowers and hand pressed Tuscan olive oil and napkins that will never end up smeared in HP sauce - and the numbers… Well, the numbers can only be explained by Nussbaum’s concept. 

At the time of writing, the With Love trailer has gotten nearly 7,500 thumbs ups and 48,000 thumbs downs. 

MORE: Harry, Meghan’s insane US costs exposed

One one level this is hardly surprising. Have you heard of misogyny? Racism? Irrational spittle-flecked dislike? Meghan could parachute into Kyiv tomorrow and single-handedly manage to end the war in Ukraine while wearing camo cashmere and a business-like bun and there are vast, vast sections of thin-lipped, peevish sorts on the internet who would still find fresh ways to condemn her. 

And yet on another level, that number hardly portends great and shiny things for the future of Meghan and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s $160 million-odd Netflix deal. 

Everything now rests solely on their bet that people will want to watch an eight-parter of whimsical cocktail bites and oddly English desserts being loyally moaned over by the duchess’ troop of longtime friends. (Sponge cake and Eton Mess are on the With Love menu. Maybe Harry needs regular sugary reminders of his homeland to fend off all those dark nights of the soul lit only by the glow of the fridge light.)

This year, the Sussexes’ current deal with the streamer will come to an end and after a procession of duds, With Love will need to rise like a perfect souffle if they want any sort of new one.

MORE: $7.2m deal: Meghan, Harry’s US life didn’t cut it

In less than two short weeks we will know if this final roll of the TV dice will pay off or if their Netflix deal will end up as a cautionary tale about the perils of thrusting fist-fulls of cash at famous faces with an abject lack of experience and reportedly flaccid worth ethics . (The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the duke and duchess ”at times [seemed] surprised by the work required to finish entertainment projects,” according to staffers and associates.)

Four and a half years after signing on with Netflix, the duke and duchess’ only success has been their 2022 documentary Harry & Meghan which rated like the proverbial for the most obvious of reasons - watching King Charles’ son and daughter-in-law lay into Crown Inc made for compelling tele. 

But the rest of what the Sussexes’ Archewell Productions has produced has sunk sans any sort of trace. Live to Lead and Heart of Invictus nearly immediately limped off into the dim, dark recesses of the Netflix archive and Harry’s recent Polo was met with gleeful mockery from critics and near total viewer disinterest. 

(Oddly, subscribers didn’t want to watch wealthy, unappealing sorts flaunt their gargantuan Rolexes and testeroney-egos as they galloped about large bits of Floridian lawn and droned on about winning. Unless Polo was meant to be a slyly devious undermining of capitalism? The critique is coming from inside the house?)

Netflix clearly had a sense that Polo series was going to be a stinker given they did exactly zero promotional activity for it and the duke himself didn’t do a single interview or bit of PR.

So will audiences want to watch Meghan lovingly instruct them in the joys of hand-dipping candles and focaccia-fiddling? The next 11 days, until With Love’s January 15 release, will be telling - will Netflix plough their efforts and budget into pushing With Love or will they let it sink or swim on its own merits like some sort of digital witch trial? 

We all know there are tens of millions of dollars riding on With Love working but there is also the success of the Martha-by-way-of-Montecito rebrand that the duchess has been toiling away on for the last two years. 

Since 2022, the last time that Meghan released a solo project, and as the Harry & Meghan and Spare dust settled and Harry stewed about his father and brother in his man shed, there have been countless reports about how the duchess was gearing up to remake herself in the mould of the billion-dollar arbiters of good taste who clog Instagram feeds and Kmart shelves. 

No longer would Meghan be defined by the family she married into (and then kept banging on about) but by her exquisite choice of linen napery and handy way with a whisk. I am woman, hear me roast a chicken!

It was a concept that would come with an entrepreneurial and commercial arm and in March last year, the duchess unveiled her American Riviera Orchard (ARO) brand, which has yet to release a single product or for her to even be able to get the trademark application across the line. 

What remains to be seen is if there will be With Love product tie-ins or some sort of ARO line put out in conjunction with the show, which would at least give the Sussexes an independent revenue stream. 

That is, if the series works. 

Could she be about to make a freshy, shiny fortune or is some warehouse somewhere about to find itself full of unsold $300 julienne peelers and hand-hewn charcuterie boards languishing away and gathering dust? 

Because the world might still be indulging in plenty of hate-watching and in Netflix’s book surely a stream is a stream is a stream - but humans aren’t to get into the hate-buy. 

Fundamentally, the Duchess of Sussex is about to put herself through her biggest (and bravest) test yet. She is about to directly ask people if they want to buy into her as a brand and as an aspirational ideal. It might not exactly chime with the discomforting tradwifery of With Love, but that willingness takes some serious cojones. 

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.