The Duchess of Sussex’s As Ever products officially go on sale today! The press releases were sent out and monarchy-destroying jam and teas will be sold out shortly, I’m sure. Per PR Newswire, Meghan developed As Ever “in partnership with Netflix’s CPG division” and “products will be available to ship nationwide across all 50 states with plans to expand globally.” The press release also confirmed the appointment of As Ever’s Chief Operating Officer, Melissa Kalimov, who has 15 years of experience in “scaling brands, go-to-market execution, and strategic leadership for companies of all stages.” To introduce As Ever, Meghan also agreed to a profile in the New York Times. The piece is called “Inside Meghan’s Real Kitchen, Away From the Cameras.” They sent writer Julia Moskin, a very suspicious white woman, to Montecito. There are chunks of the NYT piece which parrot British tabloid talking points, but Meghan comes across well here – unbothered and food-obsessed. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Why Meghan is launching her brand: Why would someone who has for years endured the worst kind of public attention put herself back under the microscope? One reason, of course, is money. The production deal Meghan and Harry signed with Netflix in 2020 ends this year, and most of their other recent efforts — documentaries about polo and Harry’s Invictus games — flopped. But Netflix is betting on her: The show has already shot a second season, and the company is an investor in her As Ever brand. And despite the criticism, in the past month millions of fans have showed up for her. According to Netflix, the show was in the top 10 in 24 countries in the week after the premiere, with 2.6 million views. Many of the clothes on Meghan’s ShopMy page sold out within hours or days. Since Jan. 1, when she started a fresh Instagram account (she deleted the old one shortly before marrying into the royal family), she has gained 2.7 million followers.
Meghan just loves to work: “I need to work, and I love to work,” she said, pointing out that until she met Harry, she hadn’t been without a job since she was 13. With two young children to raise, she said, “This is a way I can connect my home life and my work.” (Prince Archie is 5 and Princess Lilibet is 3; they are sixth and seventh in line to the throne.)
Meghan isn’t paying attention to the online BS: Befitting a global brand chief, members of her team comb comment sections and social media so she doesn’t have to. When I told her about the Le Creuset controversy, she was baffled. “This is a thing, in 2025?” she said, throwing up her hands and turning to her mother. “Everyone is coming in hot these days,” Ms. Ragland, 68, said calmly. Then the women moved on to discussing more important business, like whether a person needs an air fryer, why immersion blenders are so good for soup and whether Grandma Jeanette filled her hand pies with dried or fresh apples.
The “authenticity” debate: But she is clearly bothered by accusations that she is unrelatable and out of touch. She may be living a fairy tale, but not all that long ago, she was a not-very-famous actress on a medium-popular TV series. She was divorced, in her mid-30s and unsure where her next job or home would be. “Don’t they know my life hasn’t always been like this?” she said, gesturing at the sweeping views and sleeping dogs.
Doria talks about her parents: Her father, Alvin, had roots in Tennessee. “My father carried a bottle of Red Rooster hot sauce everywhere he went,” she said. For her mother, Jeanette, as for many Black women of her time, cooking and gardening skills were a given. At home in the Crenshaw neighborhood, Meghan said, her grandmother grew collard greens and tomatoes in the yard, whipped up hand pies from scratch after dinner and did nearly all her cooking in one cast-iron skillet.
Meghan’s interest in food: Meghan started cooking for friends as an undergraduate at Northwestern University, with a Rachael Ray recipe for grilled cheese sandwiches upgraded with fontina cheese and sliced pears. “At 20, in a tiny little apartment in Evanston, serving that sandwich and a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck — that was when Trader Joe’s was getting big — we all thought it was so fancy,” she said. In the years that followed, she threw dinner parties in Toronto, where the series “Suits” was shooting, started a lifestyle blog called the Tig and taught Prince Harry how to roast a chicken. (Ina Garten’s Perfect Roast Chicken, to be specific, which they were making together when he proposed.)
Meghan’s Montecito kitchen: Unlike the sleek white kitchen in the show, this kitchen — designed and built by the previous owners — has a weathered wooden island (in addition to a marble one), a well-used Viking stove and classic accents of blue-and-white tiles. There’s an old-fashioned butler’s pantry with cabinets holding glasses and tea sets, and a modern pantry stuffed with carefully organized ingredients and snacks. Shelves hold cookbooks by Giada De Laurentiis, Yotam Ottolenghi and Toni Tipton-Martin, and a well-thumbed copy of “From Seed to Skillet,” the 2010 classic by the celebrity gardener Jimmy Williams about creating and cooking from a home garden. And just outside the door, a framed picture of Harry as a boy with his mother, Princess Diana, holds pride of place.
Unused pizza ovens: Meghan is quick to admit she has a lot to learn. The house is equipped with two pizza ovens that are mostly dormant, and she said her first attempt at sourdough bread was both boring and traumatic enough to send her back to bakeries. “There are professionals who do that better than I ever will,” she said.
What the kids eat: When it’s just her and the kids for dinner, she said, she often relies on chicken nuggets, veggie burgers and Tater Tots (the freezer is stuffed with them).
What Meghan wants from her mom: “My mom still has Grandma Jeanette’s cast-iron skillet,” she whispered to me. “That’s what I really want.”
Yeah, Meghan’s not getting Grandma Jeanette’s cast-iron skillet anytime soon. I bet you anything that Meghan only gets to use the skillet on special occasions, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, then Doria packs it up before Meghan can slip it into one of her cabinets. Anyway, I enjoyed the description of Meghan’s kitchen and I’m glad she’s not paying attention to most of the BS. I’m not surprised that Archie and Lili mostly eat nugs and tots – I bet they also have a butter noodle obsession, it seems most kids love butter noodles these days.
Update: The As Ever products sold out in less than an hour. Hahaha.
Photos courtesy of Netflix, As Ever.
