The latest episode of Masterchef Australia aired on Sunday. This was the episode featuring the Duchess of Sussex as a guest-judge. Meghan filmed “late in the season,” the quarterfinals, which is traditionally when a lot of people tap back into a competition series, to see who will make it to the final and who will win. Still, given all of the advance notice viewers had about Meghan’s appearance, the tabloids were absolutely pushing a narrative of “people hate Meghan, so everyone will boycott her episode of MasterChef!” Instead, the network promoted the hell out of Meghan’s appearance, and her episode pulled in a huge audience:
Meghan Markle’s MasterChef appearance pulled in a massive audience for the Channel 10 program, despite viewers threatening to boycott the episode.
A whopping 1,160,000 people tuned in on Sunday night to see the Duchess of Sussex serve as a guest judge on the show, according to TV Tonight.
Meghan gave contestants a variety of ingredients she’d love them to highlight in their cooking – including strawberries, celeriac and carrots.
Viewers had previously threatened to boycott the episode when Meghan’s appearance on the show was teased in April. But it seems that Aussies couldn’t help themselves.
In fact, it was the show’s highest rating Sunday audience since June 14, when 1,175,000 people tuned in to watch Adriano Zumbo kick off Sweet Week. The only other higher-rated Sunday episode was the show’s premiere, where 1,301,000 people tuned in.
Meghan looked genuinely excited to be on the show, talking about how much she’d love to cook in the pantry and being excited by the cook’s stories.
That’s great, especially when you consider that MasterChef Australia is really just the local franchise, airing only IN Australia. This was not supposed to be something for a global audience. Instead, Meghan brought a global audience to a MasterChef franchise. It’s crazy work that people were screaming “boycott” about this too, just Meghan appearing on MasterChef. No one threatens to boycott the Princess of Wales’ sad, annual piano recitals but those Christmas concerts are some of the most poorly-viewed television specials in the UK. Organic, quiet boycotting, I guess.
Incidentally, the Telegraph carried their own summary/review of Meghan’s MasterChef appearance, just as the Times did. Much like the Times, the Telegraph’s Bitter Betty was disgusted at the very idea of Meghan “benevolently drop[ping] by the Masterchef Australia quarter-final…to tell us mere mortals how we should be living.” They were also mad that the contestants were excited to see her AND that Meghan had her own extensive garden on her 7.5 acre Montecito estate. FUMING! RAGE! Who does Meghan think she is???
Photos and screencaps courtesy of Channel 10 and MasterChef’s Instagram.
