Meghan is no Martha – but in this crucial way they are cut from the same (table) cloth
Meghan’s rebrand as a domestic goddess will be complete this week with the launch of her new Netflix show, but while she shows little of the expert mettle of Martha Stewart, who went before her, both are trying to fix something much deeper through homemaking perfection, writes Debora Robertson
Off camera, a man’s voice says, “Let’s make a show!” Meghan smiles broadly, her face framed by her perfectly unstyled dark hair. She sizzles something in a pan, pats an aged beagle, wanders along the rows of a grand potager, basket in hand, and arranges flowers as she tells us, “I see what colour I gravitate to and everything comes from there”. The unspoken is as long as that colour is white, taupe, oatmeal, bone, string, putty, the whole beige rainbow. This is the trailer of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, new show, With Love, Meghan, which comes to Netflix on 15 January.
The vibe is everyday princess, just like you. “I’ve always loved taking something pretty ordinary and elevating it, surprising people with moments that let them know I was really thinking of them”.
To be fair to Meghan, she’s always been interested in the domestic arts. Before marrying Harry, she had a blog called The Tig (named after her favourite red wine, Tignanello) where she documented favourite restaurants, cocktails, backyard barbecues.
On the night Harry proposed, she was apparently making a roast chicken and the lore quickly developed that it was Ina Garten’s “engagement chicken”, a recipe apparently so delicious you’re guaranteed an ethically sourced diamond before you’ve even simmered those bones into stock.
But at first glance of the show’s trailer, it isn’t fun-time recipe pusher and cocktail queen Ina Garten who comes to mind, but the uber-domestic-goddess, Martha Stewart, she who parlayed a rich-lady Connecticut catering company into a billion-dollar empire of magazines, books, television shows and Kmart towels. It’s hardly surprising that, in Martha’s own recent Netflix documentary, she described her five-month prison stint as “a rest”.
