https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/inauthentic-moi-no-this-is-the-real-meghan-hvcngzr9p
- Saying she is authentically being her inauthentic self
“With Love, Meghan looks to follow her usual recipe: an “authentic” snapshot of a glamorous and inspirational life, storyboarded to the nth degree and with nary a perfectly coiffed hair out of place.
An upbeat guitar track jangles as Meghan spoons unctuous substances into bowls, takes dainty sips from spoons, instructs fawning guests in remedial cooking skills and sticks labels on jam jars. The viewer has to imaginatively supplement the scores of kitchen assistants hovering anxiously just off screen.
“We are not in the pursuit of perfection,” says our relatable home cook as a small splash of lemon juice escapes obediently from her citrus squeezer and she emits a high-pitched gasp. Harry pops up briefly in a bit part at the end, furnishing a well-practised spontaneous-looking cuddle.
Overlaid graphics tell us, somewhat ambitiously: “Everybody’s invited to create wonder in every moment”. As I watched the trailer, I mostly wondered whether this latest collaboration between the Sussexes and Netflix would finally grant us merciful release from the ideal of “authenticity” as represented on screen — a fantasy that seems to have bewitched the viewing public for several decades. For one thing, the show’s prettily folksy food content is about as hackneyed as it gets, replicated on thousands of Instagram accounts elsewhere already. Second, not her kitchen. And, third, has there ever been a person so obviously prone to ruthless control-freakery about every aspect of self-presentation, while purporting to be natural, candid and “real”, as Meghan?
References to authenticity are an insistent motif throughout her brand. Her biographers Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie tell us in their book Finding Freedom that “most important to Harry, Meghan came across as authentic … He felt as though he was getting the real Meghan from day one.” When last year the duchess revealed the name of her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard — a name so random you might have confused it with a what3words location tag — an insider was quoted as saying it was “perfect” and “authentic to her”.
Over on Instagram she has just reactivated her account: a trusted source says she will “authentically share moments of joy and inspiration from her life”. True to upside-down Meghan-world form, the first video post features its barefoot heroine on a beach, dressed all in white and jogging self-consciously along in a way that won’t mess up her hair before leaning down to write “2025” carefully with her finger in the sand. Prussian military manoeuvres have looked less planned.
Yet I suppose there is a sense in which the duchess indeed may be giving us authenticity. Certainly, her new show seems of a piece with earlier ventures. Before meeting her future husband, way back in 2014 she set up a lifestyle website called The Tig to complement her acting career; according to Durand and Scobie it was “polished and optimistic” and focused on “food, fashion and travel” as well as “social issues such as gender equality”.
On its pages, they recount, you might find such completely natural outdoor scenes as “Meghan walking a rugged coastline in a perfectly belted camel coat”. Later, during the pair’s courtship, the authors treat the reader to such unprompted romantic moments as when Meghan “whipped up her signature roast chicken for the prince sitting in her sleek all-white chef’s kitchen” while her “sweet dogs ran underfoot”. Even granting room for hagiographical gush, one gets a sense that in the actress’s head back then, cameras were permanently rolling in service of a future possible rom-com.
Whatever the truth of the person behind the self-composure and inspirational quotes, we can only hope that the charade of With Love, Meghan sounds the death knell for “structured reality shows”, “unscripted dramas” and other such contradictions. Millions of hours of human life, mine included, have been wasted on sitting slack-jawed in front of these things. When other such programmes purport to provide a glimpse behind the curtain into someone’s “real life”, there is, at least usually, a lot of vaguely exciting melodrama to keep us distracted from the fact that each scene was designed by a committee and brutally pruned afterwards into an even more distorted shape. But clearly, by virtue of their sort-of-royal-but-not-quite status, the Sussexes feel they have to maintain some kind of dignity; and so we aren’t allowed to see them screaming at each other after too many Whispering Angels at a Montecito baby shower, or to watch with glorious schadenfreude as Meghan’s towering croquembouche for Harry’s birthday slowly topples over and gets eaten by the dog.
Instead, we get repressed and frankly very boring content, whose pretensions to be perfectly open with the viewer only add insult to injury. Which is ultimately marvellous, because it allows us to fully take in the artifice of what we are watching. As in the film A Clockwork Orange, we should all be made to watch With Love, Meghan on a loop with our eyelids clamped open, and then never watch another so-called reality show again.”