OUCH

Martha Stewart Shades Meghan Markle’s Netflix Show: ‘Has It Started?’

The original home and lifestyle maven dropped a sly dig when asked about Meghan’s new TV show this week.

Martha Stewart hasn’t watched Meghan Markle’s Netflix show.

While promoting her upcoming NBC culinary competition series, Yes, Chef!, on Access Hollywood, Stewart was questioned about With Love, Meghan, Markle’s new Netflix show that launched on March 4 to cruel reviews and much mockery.

Stewart’s response: “Has it started?”

Informed that, yes, it was indeed available to view, Stewart replied that she was “curious” and willing to give it a try. “I’ll watch an episode and see how she does,” she added.

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Stewart’s co-host on the new show, celebrity chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, a friend of Meghan’s, was more generous in his assessment of Meghan, saying: “I love Meghan, that she puts herself out there.”

Andrés also clapped back at Tina Brown and Justine Bateman’s suggestion that Meghan and Harry came across as “disaster tourists” in the wake of the California wildfires, saying that she was “not trying to take attention or anything to herself, on the contrary.” He added, “It was great that she was there, like many others, front and center, one more Angeleno next to people that needed hope and empathy.”

With Love, Meghan gained early traction on Netflix, landing in the streamer’s Top 10 worldwide, drawing 2.6 million views and 12.6 million hours watched. A second season is already in the can and expected to premiere this autumn.

It drew eyeballs despite cruel reviews: Variety delivered one of the harshest critiques, characterizing the Duchess as a self-obsessed figure for whom “no amount of praise seems enough,” adding, “The show plays out like a forced march, one in which Meghan’s guests must, as the price of getting to share an afternoon in a made-for-TV kitchen with her, praise her first.”

Time magazine didn’t mince words either, describing Markle’s attempts at relatability as overly polished and hollow: “With each glossy new program, podcast, and lifestyle brand, the promise of authenticity has given way to an impersonal performance of perfection.”

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Even traditionally Meghan-friendly outlets weren’t convinced. The Guardian could only muster one star. The publication took aim at the show’s tone-deafness, writing, “It’s the lack of humor, irony, self-awareness and apprehension of the reality of this deeply unequal and apocalyptic world that makes With Love, Meghan so unlovable in the end.”

We await Martha’s review with bated breath.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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