As Ever Part 6: Definitely NOT a trad wife

[Strudie]

Previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5286597-as-ever-part-v-two-stunt-lemons-with-love-meghan

Carry on! Reviews from the US are trickling in, so far, not so good - https://variety.com/2025/tv/reviews/with-love-meghan-markle-netflix-duchess-of-sussex-1236327469/

Pippa is already doing something similar.

The media don't seem to have worked out yet that every recipe is for an As ever product and it’s just an infomercial.

Also, having seen the flower segments of the advert:

• Abby talking about how meg always has flowers at home and helped her with bouquet designs for her business
• that Meg elevates supermarket flowers
• she talks about pink carnations a lot

I think there’s going to be a range of supermarket bouquets with her As ever label. There will be a pink carnation one and a beige one.

I think this business is pretty much just like any other celebrity brand endorsement/collab. Like Billy Sheperds range at George at Asda etc. But they are trying to make it look like Meghans baby. It’s not, she’s being paid to front this and make adverts for it.

@SpreadingJammyTodgerLove she already detailed she was a latchkey kid with tv dinners and fast food - not sure if that's at Doria or her father. Poor Meghan .

@PullTheBricksDown all this is at odds with being the wealthiest & highest status in Montecito and beyond. She/he need millions more than they have? How to get? They’ll be those who are competing with her now in this sense & scoffing. She won’t like that. I wonder if Harry has helped her re: your sensible points on what really matters?

I do get how she’s felt marginalised & this is result of all that stored rocket fuel to ‘win’. How will she feel about the reception? There were really good things about The Tig & she has great style.
Would this have been rescued a bit if H had more of a role? Are there any positive reviews?

That sounds like it might work & bring in £ at least. M feels she’s helping the working Mom too even if optics are a bit Lady Bountiful.

Even as a mere pleb I swerve carnations & the dreaded ‘gypsy’.

Didn’t she say her Dad took her to fast food places, they ate well, he did his best?

I haven’t seen anyone linking the column by Julie Burchill in the Spectator? It’s very funny.
You could almost feel sorry for her – almost, if she wasn’t such a thick-skinned, attention-seeking no-mark.
The Spectator

These threads are currently on fire 🔥 Thank you all, some very funny reading here. I love it when the mean girl gets her comeuppance, on a world wide stage no less.

Agree with you it could work. But these celeb collabs dont run forever.

Where I vehemently disagree agree with you is on the subject of carnations and gyp! I love them! In the floral world, the 80s look is making a comeback 😂

Neither MM or Doria look like they survived on TV dinners and fast food. Thomas Markle however. I would imagine Doria the hippie yoga instructor ate well, cooked from scratch for her child and would be disappointed to MM discribes her upbringing as such. You would wonder if MM just says things that pop ino her head with no filter in order to generate sympathy in the moment .... "recollections may vary".

TBF I have I used to have a fancy whisky cardboard tube that I used for spaghetti. ( until it inevitably went all greasy and manky cos you can't wash cardboard)
There you go, a positive note!

It’s number four in Canada. I wonder if most people were tuned into Trump? I was “watching” both, Trump on TV, Meghan on my laptop. Couldn’t decide which made me feel more sick to my stomach.

I suspect what she meant was that she ate microwaved food with her father, which was most of the time, but when with her mother , her mother cooked 'soul food., Another reason it seems strange that Doria couldn't have her daughter with her when she knew she was being fed crap. However, it's' the usual good guy/bad guy thinking. Doria is wonderful and her father is never mentioned.

Meghan's Instagram is still hovering just about the 2 million mark. So the show hasn't given her follower numbers much of a boost. It's hard to see what could change that now, so it seems she's stuck at what is an embarrassingly low follower count for someone of her level of fame.

Does she do any of her mum's recipes in this series? I know Doria probably is camera shy, but it would have been nice for MM to do something to connect to her roots through cooking/hosting a relative.

She did that ridiculous "making toast" thing pre-Harry, when she talked about her grandma's apple butter, but rather than showing us how to make that, she just made the toast, told us not to be scared of making the toast, and then spread some on.

She's also talked about surviving off $4 salads.

She also went to 2 very high priced private schools, which no doubt provided some lunchtime food options of decent quality.

She's also talked about spending her after school time on the set of Married With Children with her Emmy Award winning, high earning father, who no doubt had the means to buy her a decent restaurant dinner if required, so that's not going home alone and eating TV dinners.

It's anyone's guess!

@WendyFromTransvisionWamp ouch re: Julie Burchill article. Harsh to suggest she’s lost her looks and on the ‘zempy. She’s very attractive (still) & hardly in her dotage. She def has looks & style going for her, credit when due. She’s always been thin. I worry for her mental health as everyone has a breaking point & am not sure she’s as thick skinned as commentators say.

Hopefully ‘As Ever’ gives her £ for heart’s desire & she can live quietly. Didn’t know Daniel Martin (?) make-up chap was a John Fowles protagonist, hopefully not ‘The Collector’.

Doria is wonderful and her father is never mentioned.

Which is a recent reversal - as in The Tig, Thomas as wonderful and Doria was never mentioned.

@Belladonne not at all? Parents referred to as rare ‘gems’ etc?

Good point.

Look how much media attention this show/infomercial has got. No other show would get this much. Yet it has had no impact on her Meghan account or As Ever account.

The almost unanimous (NY Times gave her a positive review) derision, on both sides of the pond, on all sorts of media, of all persuasions, is a death knell. I don't have twitter or any form of "fast" social media so don't know what they are saying. But the print press is enough.

Personally, I think Meghan has revealed herself. It's very much like looking behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz. Ultimately, she is a normal person with normal levels of talent and skill, but with an enormous structure around her which had thus far protected her from being seen. But her hubris pushed her to put herself out there for all to marvel at her glory - and it turns out there's nothing to see.

I anticipate a quiet slide into no further major projects; they'll persist with the faux tours; she'll do her podcast which she'll promote on her Instagram and which some papers will write about; she'll continue to appear at Harry's works; she'll go deathly quiet for ages while she absorbs and then post on Instagram about healing and growing; we'll see more and more about her ordinary life as a mom and as a wife; we'll see her frolic with friends in the California sunshine; we'll see her children; she'll turn up on increasingly obscure red carpets; there'll be nothing significant for her to do than spend their money and live a rich housewife's life. Still not bad. But certainly not what their manifesto said upon flouncing out of the UK.

@WendyFromTransvisionWamp (great name, btw) thank you for the Julie Burchill link.

Regrettably, the new brand name ‘As Ever’ sounds like a funeral parlour whereas the previous one ‘American Riviera Orchard’ sounded like a retirement home.

...a show so dull it makes watching paint dry seem like Saturday night at a supermodel lesbian chem-sex orgy

Double ouch!!

It's the same old problem for her, isn't it?

As ever, she gets a level of attention and media coverage others could only dream of, but it rarely translates into anything positive or profitable for her. 2 million followers is really very low, and potential business partners will be very aware of that.

@Onlyonekenobe I think that's about right. I think they will get increasingly less attention from the media as the years go by.

After all that time her creativity was stifled she is apparently finally free. It's not clear who she believes so restricted her ( the royal family?). But whoever they were they clearly were doing both her and us a huge favor.

'It’s like that notorious Time cover where he stood behind her looking like a hairdresser assuring her the highlights took a good five years off her'

Meow

"it adds to the feeling that Meghan is in the habit of having ‘imaginary friends’, the real power-players of showbiz having turned against her some time ago."

Wow - said out loud - that's a wake-up call