Continuing what is becoming a regular series on “preposterous things Meghan said today”, we’ll start with Château Meghan itself, the gracious home into which she will one day, no doubt, invite Hello! because it’s the obvious next step for an influencer. We’ll move on to the publicity drive for her new brand, which already feels old. And we’ll finish by finding ourselves a nice, dark room and rocking slowly back and forth until it all goes away. Feel free to skip straight to the last bit.
Her former Royal Highness La Duchesse has graciously filmed a short video of herself in the kitchen of her Montecito home. The vibe is California château: big limestone arch thing over the range cooker, blue and white tiles, and lots of those wooden cupboards with fancy iron handles that you see in French country houses. There’s lots and lots of brown: cupboards, wooden-topped island unit, floor. Some think this explains why she didn’t shoot her TV programme here, but I think it compounds the mystery. All Meghan ever wears on screen is white, and white looks good against brown, but apparently it looks even better against someone else’s grey kitchen up the road. Hey ho.
There have been hints about the kitchen in her previous home videos, when she was baking with the fashion designer who made her wedding dress, because her shtick is “all my friends popped in to adore me”. Turns out it’s cavernous, big enough for two island units, one wooden, one marble-topped. The ceiling stretches high, high above her head, and is hung with some fancy cast-iron cage thing big enough to hold literally dozens of copper pans. So many copper pans! More copper pans than there are in a copper pan shop. Keeping them clean must be a full-time job for someone. A little person, one imagines, not someone with a silent HRH in front of their name.
Meghan has launched a range of products “inspired by her long-lasting love of cooking”
There isn’t just a vast range cooker, which we now learn is Viking and therefore presumably a collab waiting to happen, there’s also a double oven and a microwave. By my reckoning, that’s four ovens, maybe five depending on the Viking, a sentence I never thought to type but really quite enjoyed. She has an Ottolenghi cookbook, and marinates strawberries in sugar and lemon juice, and there’s a framed photo of a young Harry with his mother on the wall, because William has presumably been edited out of the Montecito script.
And so to the video, and a new article in The New York Times, a newspaper with a reassuring track record when it comes to Meghan’s “beastly Brits” narrative. In the video, she’s in a white knit and white trousers, so perfect for cooking, with her messy (done) hair and her natural (umpteen products and hours in the chair) make-up. She sprinkles flowers on a pudding, because she sprinkles flowers on everything, then watches while her mother tastes it and spits it out (I wish, but that would be funny so therefore, no). Doria says it’s delicious, because that’s the only thing people who eat Meghan’s food are allowed to say, even when it’s spaghetti in hot water sauce. Watch episode one of her TV programme if you don’t believe me, or take my advice: don’t. Trust me.
Harry pops in to tell his wife that he’s “getting on a work call”, which in the old days could have been code for “popping out for a pint with my mates” but these days, which pub? Whose mates? Poor Harry. Poor Thomas Markle too — Meghan’s father, who’s also written out of the script. Meg has a podcast coming up about women, so men are now surplus to the back story. In previous tellings, she was brought up by her father, who paid for her education and arranged for a car to pick her up from school if he was too busy at work. In this telling, she’s a latchkey kid with a job from the age of 13, brought up by her doting mother, and drawing on the homespun wisdom and apple pie of Grandma Jeanette, Doria’s mother. Oh, and someone called Alvin. I forget who he is, but he has roots in Tennessee. Honestly? I’m weary of this. Tennessee? Alvin? Did I nod off and miss it? Was he invited to the wedding or was he not attractive enough?
• Meghan’s As Ever jam goes on sale: ‘Mimic the magic of Montecito’
We learn that Meghan’s quick with a lemon zester, which must at least be better than the alternative, and has frozen chicken nuggets and Tater Tots for the children. If I had more strength to critique the guff about how she “fled Britain and its relentless criticisms to settle in this sunny, affluent enclave”, I would remind her of all the gushing “breath of fresh air” and Markle Sparkle stuff that was said. However, I would also concede that Windsor, although an affluent enclave, can only rarely be described as sunny and Frogmore Cottage doesn’t have the same ring as Château Megs.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on whether her calligraphy and gift-wrapping skills will “set her apart in the crowded influencer field”. I think they’d set her apart as a sales assistant in Tiffany. But then my hard, cynical heart softened when I learnt that Meghan truly cares which way the radishes are pointing on the charcuterie board. Which of us can say, hand on heart, that we don’t? But shame on us for being so judgey. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chrissy Teigen don’t have “professional culinary training”, we are told, so why should Meghan? What a compelling argument, with no flaws at all.
Someone says, “I think she manages to present an authentic version of herself within that artificial space”, which I think is meant to be a compliment. I have a question. What if your authentic version of yourself is grumpy? Do you still celebrate your authentic grumpiness in your artificial space, or suppress it? And how many versions of you can be authentic before the whole façade becomes fake? Other questions: when does “someone wanting to share their joy” about their multimillion-dollar life turn into bragging? When does urging us to “mimic the magic of Montecito” morph into “let them eat cake, but first buy my flower sprinkles”?
“Don’t they know my life hasn’t always been like this?” Meghan says in a despairing attempt to … who knows? Deflect criticism? Make us love her? Yes, Meghan, we do know your life hasn’t always been like this. The question is: why should we care?