America is falling out of love with Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.
The last two days have seen a stream of reports from American media about Meghan’s fall from grace, following Netflix’s decision earlier this month to divest from Meghan’s lifestyle brand “As Ever”.What’s different is that the takedowns aren’t just coming from from Fox News or Trump-aligned media who usually criticise Meghan. They’re coming from liberal publications who she was once the darling of.
This week, Variety magazine ran a piece about how Netflix is “done” with the Sussexes, and more broadly “A-list talent and directors were hesitant to work with the pair” (both the Sussexes and Netflix deny the claims in the article). Just three years ago, The Cut made Meghan their cover star in a seminal profile which made all the headlines for telling “her side” of Megxit. On Wednesday they ran a piece entitled “Sounds Like Netflix Is Drowning in Meghan Markle Jam” – about how Netflix had over $10 million worth of Markle’s As Ever lifestyle brand products going spare, and gave it away for free to employees. In response, a spokesperson said giveaways from sample closets are standard practice at studios.
I see the brand of Meghan falling apart more widely too. Where once every American influencer would be defending Meghan from us stiff-upper-lip Brits, there has been a slow slide over the last year or so. Many of the top reels on Instagram relate to Meghan’s unrelatability via statements such as “I work so hard”, or clip her Netflix lifestyle show (With Love, Meghan), where she casually refers to not using tap water for ice cubes or putting sparkling water in scrambled eggs. One of the Meghan-isms most gleefully parodied by Americans is a podcast interview where she makes great stock out of how empowering it is to add the word “yet” to statements: “I can’t do it…. yet”. Her pandering host, visibly awestruck, repeats back “My business hasn’t got traction… yet” (that one must sting).
American friends tell me they are starting to see why Meghan grated on us. You can partly understand why they took Meghan’s side back in 2020. There was considerable evidence for the racism – both explicit and unconscious – she suffered while living in Britain from our press, online and more widely. But now Americans are starting to understand that we had legitimate reasons to find her irritating.
In previous years, Meghan’s popularity rating among Americans was usually between 35 and 40 per cent according to YouGov – over the last six months it hit record lows, and at the start of this year stood closer to 30 per cent. In the UK, her popularity rating is 22 per cent – only 19 per cent of us have a favourable view of her (and 66 per cent a negative one).
So why did it take so long for Americans to come round to our point of view?
Meghan embodies everything Brits and Americans don’t get about each other. There’s her over-the-top gushing – while Americans see it as genuine, we’re wise to anything other than understatement and subtlety as insincere. Her buzzwords: “voices”, “healing” and, erm, “when you anchor into your own knowing” fit in with an emotional transparency Americans place high value on, but which we’re mistrustful of. We prefer self-deprecation. And then there’s telling “your truth” – the stated rationale for her tell-all about her treatment by the Royal Family with Oprah back in 2021, but a phrase mocked ad nauseam in the British press.
In the US, Meghan has the backdrop of the American Dream – wealth being earned through hard work – to lend legitimacy to being offensively rich. In the same way that a First Lady can splash out on designer clothes in a way our PM’s wife never could, and a high-profile left-wing politician can send their kids to private schools with minimal backlash in the US, unlike our MPs.
Nor has there been a perceived contradiction between Meghan repeating her desire for privacy and releasing tell-all documentaries; distancing herself from The Firm while holding steadfast onto her title – for many Americans she is merely “reclaiming” or “owning” her narrative. In the UK, we thought Meghan was trying to have her cake and eat it – especially given how duty-bound other royals were, who have been less demanding about their privacy.
So what’s made Americans catch on now?
I think it is because they’ve have had time to assess Meghan as an individual, rather than as a woman at odds with the Royal Family – whose customs are anyway anachronism to them and who have displayed plenty of behaviour worthy of disapproval. The sheer volume of output from Meghan via podcasts, streaming and interviews over the last few years means even Americans are a bit saturated with her LA inspo-babble, and starting to notice the platitudes: failures don’t “break you”, “no matter what life throws at you, trust us when we say: love wins”. And her money-spinning – as per news earlier this month of her £1700-a-head “girls’ weekend” in Australia.
Authenticity is a problem for any celebrity, but for Meghan it poses a particular issue because she speaks so often about it, alongside statements like “we’re not in the pursuit of perfection”. So her ultra-curated appearances and polished content increasingly clangs.
Ironically, the constant brand-building is slowly disintegrating Meghan’s brand.
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