I read most of Tina Brown’s 2022 book, The Palace Papers, and it felt at times like she had gotten other royalists to ghostwrite certain sections. There was a schizophrenic quality to it, especially in the chapters about Prince William and Kate versus the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. In the years since The Palace Papers, Brown has maintained this general perspective on the two couples: William and Kate are unprepared for everything and William is sick with jealousy over his brother’s charisma, freedom and happiness; on the other side, Brown believes that Meghan is ghastly and that she’s manipulating poor, dumb, charismatic Harry. This is all background for Tina Brown latest attempt at royal commentary, obviously about Meghan’s Netflix show.
Tina Brown, the founding editor of The Daily Beast, has said that Meghan Markle’s much-derided new Netflix show is a “cultural fossil” and that her appearance on it was “unbelievably inauthentic.”
In a Substack chat with Janice Min, the founder of the Hollywood gossip newsletter The Ankler, Min joked that the show, With Love, Meghan, felt like it was filmed in a “mental institution for wealthy women” and that Meghan’s guests looked like they were in “a hostage situation.”
Brown said: “To me, I felt like it was a cultural fossil…She’s always brilliant behind the curve, Meghan. You know what I mean? This was like flashback to 2013 to the era of The Tig, her blog, which was sort of shout-outs for humanitarian causes and Diptyque candles…it’s almost as if she wanted to airbrush out everything that happened since and sort of go back to that moment in time.”
Min responded: “It’s a little HGTV 2012, right? It was like when Megyn Kelly left Fox News and came to NBC and did her daytime talk show, and she’s like, ‘You know what? This is who I really am. I love moms and I love to cook and talk about raising kids.’ And then that flames out and she gets paid her check, and she comes back to, ‘I’m here to embrace Donald Trump and kill my enemies.’ She tried on a persona. It didn’t work…this is very, as the kids would say, trad wife. I was very surprised.”
Brown replied, “It was just so unbelievably inauthentic. She’s still searching for that thing that makes her authentic…It should have been her sitting there saying, ‘Will someone for God’s sake, get me an effing project? I don’t have anything to do. I can’t hang on to staff. I’m at my wit’s end. I mean, it actually would’ve been refreshing to have seen a bit of that.”
Min responded, “I would watch that all day long.”
Brown said: “I just feel bad for her because it’s like, she just gets it wrong. When she announced it, suddenly there was the fire. So she then has to put it off. So she puts it off and what happens is like, oh, World War III is happening around her. We have everybody’s minds on Zelensky and Ukraine, and she’s standing there with her country basket full of chives or whatever.”
Min said: “It feels like it was filmed in a mental institution for wealthy women. It kind of had that lobotomized vibe.” Min said she expected that the couple would remain in the limelight forever, not least because Archie was going to be “the coolest royal” and the “fresh prince of Montecito.”
Let’s talk about the “inauthentic” criticism, because I find that very British-coded. As in, that’s how so many British people (especially upper-class Brits) reacted to Meghan and Meghan’s race and Americanness. They were suspicious from the word go that this American actress smiled and wanted to do charity work and had any kind of work ethic. They found Meghan “inauthentic” simply because she is a Black, American woman with a sunny disposition, and because Meghan wasn’t desperate to “fit in” with their world and jump through their hoops. They’re even more upset these days because she took the better prince and they both refuse to “come to heel.”
The thing about “this is very HGTV 2012” is also sort of interesting to me because the way WLM is filmed and the sunniness of the host and the style IS very Obama-era, very “remember The Tig?” I hesitate to call it “retro” because that was just a decade ago, but it absolutely is the vibe. But I also think that’s fine? Like, there was a reason why that programming was so successful in its time, and I’m really pleased that Meghan is bringing it back. I’m tired of every cooking show being a “competition” these days. Just let me watch an attractive hostess with a pleasant voice cook & arrange flowers in a beautiful home. Anyway, Tina Brown has always had a bug up her ass about Meghan. If only Tina would turn her ire to the heir full-time.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Netflix.
