Ahead of the Tuesday premiere of Meghan Markle’s highly anticipated, “make-or-break” Netflix lifestyle show, the Montecito-based Duchess of Sussex has promised to launch a new podcast in the spring while bristling at the idea of being called an “influencer” or a “tradwife.”
In a new interview with People magazine, the often-polarizing American wife of Prince Harry also explained that she has embraced her Duchess of Sussex title as part of her children’s royal identities, even though she and Harry are estranged from his royal relatives. She also addressed critics’ negative portrayal of her as an amateur businesswoman who may have botched the launch of her associated home product line, As Ever — formerly American Riviera Orchard — by getting mired in trademark issues and facing accusations of copying other people’s ideas, product names and logos.
“There are tons of twists and turns — even with the name,” Meghan said, in what People magazine boasted was her most intimate interview in years. “I was figuring it out in real time.”
And, even though Meghan has faced intense public scrutiny for every professional step she’s made since she and Harry left royal life in 2020, she insisted to a sympathetic People magazine writer that the experience has been defined by growth. She said, “I appreciate everyone who gave me the grace to make mistakes and figure it out and also to be forgiving with myself through that. It’s a learning curve.”
There’s also intense focus on her return to Instagram, where her 2 million followers get to analyze her outfits and tastes in home decor, as fans tend to do with their favorite influencers. But Meghan told People she prefers to be called an “entrepreneur” or a “female founder,” instead of “influencer.” She said, “If the brand ends up influential, then that’s great.”
For those who’ve followed Meghan’s path before and after her time with the British royal family, it’s also clear why she doesn’t see herself in the mold of “tradwife.” This identity refers to mom influencers who embrace traditional gender roles by eschewing careers, supporting their husbands’ professional aspirations and staying home to raise the children and keep house.
While Meghan would probably say she supports Harry’s seemingly less-defined career aspirations, she has notably spent her life being focused on “hustling and working and doing,” as Michael Steed, the director of her Netflix show, “With Love, Meghan,” told People. According to “American Hustle,” a rather critical recent Vanity Fair profile of her and Harry’s post-royal challenges, she’s seen as the partner in the marriage who is more likely to be the primary breadwinner.
“I like being able to do a hybrid,” Meghan told People, saying she encourages others to strive for balance, not perfection, despite her show’s presentation of an idealized, aspirational view of how to make one’s home and culinary offerings look beautiful.
“This series is about doing what you can do, and doing it with love,” Meghan explained, while acknowledging that the show was not in fact filmed in her own Montecito mansion.
To further shrug off the “tradwife” label, Meghan specifically explained that she is not above ordering in Chinese food, instead of making it herself, though she insists that she tries to “plate it beautifully.”
As for Meghan’s “female founder” persona, she offers People magazine a glimpse into how she struggles to balance her professional life while being a wife and mom to their two children, Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3.
The People cover story opens with Meghan’s description of being curled up in bed with a sleeping Archie on a recent winter evening. She’s home on her own, taking care of the children, while Harry is in Canada for the Invictus Games. But instead of resting herself, Meghan said she caught up on emails and finalizing details of her show’s debut, and the launch of her As Ever jam and other lifestyle products.
At one point, Meghan said, Archie stirred awake and sleepily told her, “Mama, don’t work too hard.” While recalling that moment to People, Meghan gushed, “It was the sweetest thing.”
Whether Archie really said those exact words, Meghan knows that her fans will love reading about such a loving interaction with her child. As the Daily Beast recently pointed out, Meghan has ramped up social media posts that include her children, as she promotes her Netflix show.
In the past, Harry and Meghan have fiercely guarded their children’s privacy and barely allowed any images of them to be seen, the Daily Beast’s royal correspondent Tom Sykes wrote. But in recent weeks, the former TV actor seems to have shared more images of her children than have been seen in the past five years. And even though the photos still show the children from the side or back, without their faces in full view, Meghan is still deploying a common lifestyle influencer strategy of using her children in her marketing.
The landing page for her new brand, asever.com, also features a photo of Meghan and Lilibet at a distance, hand in hand in their backyard. In a post over the weekend, Meghan furthermore shared the clearest view let of the red-headed Lillibet, playing the board game Candy Land with the duchess’s good friend, Serena Williams, Sykes reported. The post was tagged with a message saying, “3 days until the party begins, all are invited, @netflix.”
For Meghan, a lot is riding on the success of “With Love, Meghan,” especially after the lengthy Vanity Fair story, published in January, and a new royal book, revived the “Duchess of Difficult” allegations, portraying her as a bullying “Mean Girls” boss, who doesn’t make good business choices and has had trouble managing her staff in the U.K. and the United States.
Meanwhile, her efforts to launch herself as a media mogul, since moving back to the United States, have been mostly disappointing. She and Harry were dropped from their reported $20 million deal with Spotify after only she managed to produce 12 episodes of a podcast that faced mixed reviews and limited interest. Meghan has since signed a new deal to produce a podcast with Lemonada Media, and promises to launch it in the spring, though she didn’t offer any more details to People.
Meanwhile, after signing a reported $100 million deal with Netflix in 2020, she and Harry initially enjoyed success with their 2022 documentary series, “Harry and Meghan,” which depicted their struggles within the confines of royal life and their decision to leave it. But critics said it was only a hit because it showcased the couple dishing dirt and airing their grievances about the British royal family. Their next three Netflix projects with Netflix, including Harry’s much-maligned series about his elite, polo-playing friends, also failed to gain traction, and reports say Netflix may end its five-year deal with the couple at the end of this year.
According to People, Meghan’s eight-episode Netflix series is a “return to her roots” as an aspiring lifestyle entrepreneur. In 2014, while filming Suits in Toronto, she launched The Tig, a blog on food, travel, and wellness. But as she began dating Harry and after they got engaged in 2017, she shut down The Tig and deleted her Instagram account before joining royal life.
With the Netflix show, she hopes to start a legacy for herself and her family of four. While Harry only briefly appears in the final episode of the show, he brought the children to the set to watch her filming. “I loved that my children were able to watch me working and see the balance of that and understand what Mama does and is working to create and share,” she said.