By Issy Ronald, CNN
Photo: Netflix
After her family's well-trodden retreat from the British royals, the new Netflix show from Meghan, Duchess of Sussex marks something of a rebrand for the former Suits star, positioning her as a lifestyle guru and domestic goddess.
With Love, Meghan consists of eight glossy episodes, each centered around Meghan hosting a different friend, offering helpful tips and tricks for being the ultimate hostess, cook and homemaker.
The series, which was filmed in Montecito and celebrates living in California, premiered on Tuesday after it was delayed from its planned release on 15 January due to the wildfires that devastated the Los Angeles region.
Like most other influencer or influencer-adjacent content, it is both aspirational and relatable, with Meghan showcasing the seeming ease with which everyone else could achieve a Pinterest-perfect lifestyle.
Stepping back into this world is familiar territory for Meghan, who previously ran a successful lifestyle blog called The Tig, which she closed down prior to marrying Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
Here are five things we learned from the first episode of the new series.
Meghan makes bath salts for her guests
Preparing for houseguests seems almost like a ritual for Meghan and she shares her tips for how to best welcome them into your home.
You must think about what's at the side of the bed for them and what's in the bathroom for them, she says, explaining how to be a thoughtful hostess.
Photo: Netflix
In that vein, she prepares a tray full of gifts for Daniel Martin - her close friend and longtime makeup artist - who is the guest in the first episode of the series.
She makes her own bath salts from a mixture of Epsom salts, arnica oil, lavender, pink salt and leaves a gap at the top of the jar for a "teabag" containing rosebuds and dried lavender. That way, the dried plants won't get stuck in the drain. "You don't want to have to clean this out of your bathtub after you've taken a nice bath," she says.
For the bedside, Meghan arranges a small bouquet of flowers and makes some truffle popcorn in case her guests want a "late night nibble."
Meghan enjoys beekeeping…
Accompanied by bright closeups of yellow flowers, the series begins with Meghan watching as beekeeper Branden Aroyan pries open a beehive to harvest the honey inside.
"It's that reminder to do something that scares you a little bit," she says tentatively. "I'm trying to stay in the calm of it because it's beautiful to be this connected."
Photo: Netflix
Later, Meghan scrapes the honey off the hive frame, clearly in awe of the whole process, and sieves it to get rid of the honeycomb.
She never really cared for honey before keeping bees, she says, but now she "appreciates" it so much after learning the process.
…and making beeswax candles
The series also contains Meghan's tips for crafting and, in the first episode, that takes the form of candle-making.
She and Martin melt the leftover beeswax from her hives and pour it into containers with scented oils to make the candles. To keep the wick still while the candle sets, she suggests sticking it to the bottom of the container with a little wax and then slotting the top through a lollipop stick with a hole in it, laid across the rim.
They have to work fast while the wax stays at the right temperature. "We would be great in The Amazing Race", they quip, referencing the reality show in which teams compete to race across the world.
Meghan's tips to elevate your cooking
Throughout the first episode, Meghan constantly returns to the idea of "tiny details" making a difference when cooking, crafting and decorating, and offers tips for the audience to elevate their own homes.
She prepares a crudites platter - "there's nothing so fancy about a crudites platter except it's called crudites," she says - and makes it "more artistic" by adding small fresh flowers on top of the vegetables.
Photo: Netflix
When cooking spaghetti, she gives tips on how best to plate it: Put a little of the sauce on the plate first, then twist the spaghetti around a fork so it becomes a distinguishable shape rather than just a lump of pasta. She then finishes the look with some tomatoes from the sauce, basil, and a sprinkling of cheese.
And when baking a cake Meghan uses a serrated bread knife to even out each layer before assembling them. Instead of using a piping bag for the buttercream, her "hack" is to use a plastic Ziploc bag with one of the bottom corners cut off.
In this way, she pipes buttercream and raspberry jam in overlaid spirals between each layer to achieve a swirled frosting effect and make a cake that's "beautiful on the inside."
Homemade berry jam
The raspberry jam Meghan uses to decorate the cake is homemade using berries from her garden, she says.
Viewers who continue into episode two of the show will learn there are rows of berry bushes in Meghan's garden that produce basketfuls of fruit when they are ripe.
She then goes on to reveal that her favorite preserve is apple butter because her grandmother used to make it so it is "sentimental"; she hopes that her children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, will associate her own jam-making with sweet smells wafting through the house when they come home from school.
To originally launch her lifestyle brand in April 2024, Meghan sent jars of homemade strawberry jam to influencers and friends, each one labeled with a number from one to 50.
But labeling the jam jars caused "people … to take it very personally," Meghan tells actress and writer Mindy Kaling, who is the featured guest in episode two.
"It was not a ranking. It was just 'let me share them,'" she says - adding, however, that she saved the jar labeled one of 50 for her mum.
- CNN
