Meghan Markle’s Fake Plagiarism Problem

Meghan Markle is once again facing allegations of plagiarism. This time around, it involves her new Netflix cooking show, With Love, Meghan.

The show debuted in March 2025 and was met almost immediately with a slew of negative reviews. However, the backlash started even before the show was fully released.

In January, Netflix released a first look at the show. Almost immediately after, people claimed that it was too similar to a YouTube cooking show named Emma’s Kitchen. However, a month later, a different set of allegations compared that preview to a different celebrity cooking show, Cooking with Love by Pamela Anderson.

Anderson, for her part, said that she did not feel Markle’s show was a rip-off. In a recent interview on the podcast Archetypes, she rated the similarity a 1 out of 10 and said, “I didn’t invent cooking shows. She’s just doing her thing.”

However, this wasn’t her only plagiarism allegation this year. In April, she was accused of plagiarizing an unreleased animated series entitled Pearl. In February, she was accused of ripping off the branding for her new lifestyle brand. This came after she was forced to change the brand name following a conflict with a different trademark.

But the allegations go back to at least 2021. Then, in a now-familiar story, she was accused of plagiarizing a children’s book, only to have the original author deny there was an issue.

So why do these allegations follow Markle around, even when they are so dubious? The reason is simple: Controversy.

A Polarizing Figure

Markle, without a doubt, is a highly polarizing figure. She began her public career as an actress with a prominent role on the show Suits. However, today, she is best known for marrying Prince Harry in May 2018 and being a member of the UK royal family.

However, she has been very critical of the royal family. In 2021, she gave an interview claiming she experienced racism both inside and outside the royal family. That interview proved to be divisive, with some expressing support for her and others saying she was trying to make herself a victim despite her privileged position.

All in all, that’s the theme of much of the vitriol against Markle: that she is exploiting her position for her gain. This includes publishing books, launching lifestyle brands and hosting cooking shows. They view her as a fraud, saying that she isn’t genuine about these ventures.

And that brings us back to the plagiarism question. If you want to prove that someone is a fraud, one of the easiest ways is to show that they are a plagiarist. After all, there isn’t much more fraudulent than not being original.

As such, her critics often look through everything she does through the prism of plagiarism. They want to find the source of her inspiration, even if the similarities they discover aren’t always compelling.

And that is the major problem: none of the plagiarism allegations panned out. Even the most damning allegations, the branding ones, dealt more with a lack of due diligence than traditional plagiarism.

But that doesn’t mean they’re likely to stop any time soon.

A Different Kind of Weaponization

I’ve talked a great deal on this site about the weaponization of plagiarism. It’s where individuals use plagiarism allegations, of varying severity or accuracy, to target political, business and other kinds of rivals.

We saw this a great deal in late 2023 and throughout 2024. Plagiarism accusations were used to target academics who were either supporters of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or were seen as “DEI hires.” Others went the opposite way and filed plagiarism accusations against conservatives.

Though some of the allegations did point to serious issues, most did not, and, after some initial success, the allegations began to fade.

Here we are seeing a very similar kind of weaponization. But instead of academic work being challenged, it’s everything that Markle does.

This lends serious credibility to the idea that these allegations are spawned not by a sense of justice, but by distrust and dislike of Markle herself.

Given that at least two of the allegations were denied by the alleged victim, it’s clear that these are more about Markle herself than actual plagiarism. This doesn’t mean that they should be dismissed out of hand, but they should be scrutinized closely.

Unfortunately, that simply makes it more difficult for legitimate plagiarism accusations to be heard. But that is the impact of dubious claims, it makes it more difficult for the real ones to break to the surface.

Bottom Line

To be clear, I don’t think Markle plagiarized her cooking show. Yes, there are a lot of similarities between other shows, but that would be expected. Cooking shows, especially celebrity cooking shows, are going to share elements.

Besides, even if there were plagiarism, would she be the one most responsible? Yes, she runs the show, but she isn’t the cinematographer, editor, or myriad of other people who have input in the show. It’s ultimately a collaborative work. As we saw with the recent Pokémon plagiarism controversy, the error often lies elsewhere.

That said, in reading the reviews of the show, there seem to be plenty of things to dislike about it without bringing plagiarism into the equation. It’s perfectly fine to claim that a work is bad or that it is inauthentic without also accusing it of plagiarism.

However, bad reviews don’t grab as many headlines. Plagiarism accusations sting much more.

As such, Markle’s critics are likely to continue making plagiarism allegations. However, she won’t be the only celebrity to deal with them.