After Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in 2018, she experienced an inevitable culture clash. The British Royal Family is known for its reserved nature and traditional values. Meghan, however, is a former actress from Los Angeles, California, a place associated with liberal values and a laid-back attitude.
CALIFORNIAN EXILE The apparent contrast between Meghan and the Royal Family and even British culture in general, provoked attacks from the UK media, which she once described as “almost unsurvivable.” In 2020, those attacks drove Meghan and Harry to abandon their royal duties and move thousands of miles away, to Montecito, California.
Now the couple and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, have settled into their lives on the sunny Californian coast. And Meghan is bringing Hollywood glamour and fame to her royal position, by establishing herself as a Netflix star, lifestyle guru, and social media influencer.
A lifestyle brand The same year that Meghan and Harry moved to California, they founded their own company, Archewell Inc. , and signed a deal with Netflix, reportedly valued at $100 million. Two years later, they starred in the mega-successful Netflix series Harry & Meghan , about their lives together. This year, however, it’s all about Meghan! In March, Netflix released With Love, Meghan , a lifestyle series in which Meghan cooks, curates, decorates, and talks about her life growing up in Southern California.
WITH LOVE The series is filmed at a luxury farmhouse in Montecito and promotes an aspirational lifestyle. Some people have criticised it for being out of touch with reality. However, it debuted in Netflix’s global top 10 most-watched programmes and has been renewed for a second season, which will debut this fall .
Meghan is also busy establishing her lifestyle and cooking brand, As Ever , which began selling herbal teas, honey, and other artisanal products in the US in spring. And early this year, she returned to Instagram, where she has already accumulated over three million followers.
A normal life Despite her royal status and celebrity career, Meghan says she and her family have a relatively normal life in Montecito, far from the imperial gaze of the British monarchy. She told People magazine she goes to group yoga classes, with forty to fifty other people from the local community. “I mean, that’s part of how you connect. I love it.”
And she praised the locals for allowing her to live a normal life. “Once you know us, I think you want us to have the same normalcy as parents and for our children as they do, despite [sic] however unique our situation is,” she said.
content is king Since the monarchs in Europe don’t really rule anymore, royalty has become content: a folk narrative consisting of representation and entertainment — lots of gossip and criticism to bask in and a bit of aspirational lifestyle for the masses to dream of.
As the smart Millennial couple that they are, Meghan and Harry understood this perfectly. After a few years in the limelight , they decided that they couldn’t or wouldn’t cope with the stale state of royal affairs in Britain. They became aware that in order to regain control of their narrative, they needed not only to create their own content, but also package it and sell it. And so they signed a lucrative dealwith Netflix and dressed it in a stylish cloak of philanthropy.
The US does not have a royal family; they have many. And they are used by different demographics in different contexts and for different purposes; the Kennedys, the Kardashians, the Trumps… Built as brands, each of them needs a a mission statement to establish their influence in the American (now global) culture. The Sussexes claim that theirs is simple: “Show up , do good .” They have indeed made some shows, and they have done extremely well .
